An Analysis of the Pitch Organization of Scriabin’s Late Works Under the Influence of Nietzsche’s “Superman” Philosophy——Take the Prelude “Op.48 No.4” as an Example

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_62How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Scriabin; late harmonic system; “superman” philosophy

Abstract

Russian composer Scriabin ( Александр Николаевич Скрябин) was one of the famous musicians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by the relationship between color and music, he created a mystical style of composition. Through the three-degree superimposed chord structure and its variations, he broke the traditional harmony function and tonality unity, and in his later years, he pioneered a unique “3–6-3” pitch organization principle to control his works. His mystical style was influenced by Nietzsche’s philosophical thoughts, and he showed different characteristics in both color and chord structure. Among them, Op.48 No.4 uses the central chord constructed by Scriabin’s “3–6-3” principle on the basis of traditional tonality to radiate the whole piece, achieving the purpose of controlling the work. This paper explores how Scriabin incorporates Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas into music creation by analyzing the structure, harmonic language and emotional content of the work, thus showing an artistic pursuit of evolving towards the ideal of ‘superman’.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xinwei Li
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/22
TI  - An Analysis of the Pitch Organization of Scriabin’s Late Works Under the Influence of Nietzsche’s “Superman” Philosophy——Take the Prelude “Op.48 No.4” as an Example
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 527
EP  - 537
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_62
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_62
ID  - Li2025
ER  -