From Scriabin to the Second Avant-garde: Why Is Everything That Surrounds Us the Music?

Abstract

The paper defines the relation of musical conceptions of Scriabin and the post-war avant-garde composers. Scriabin’s world view was being formed at the moment when the romantic idea about the artistry of the whole world with music being the heart of any art was transforming into the avant-guard conception (the music is all around us). To the greatest extent its uniqueness is reflected in the «Mysterium» project which became the source for the 20th-century music expansion into the life around us. In the historical and cultural environment where the ideas of theurgical and mysterial art had been in the air for a long time Scriabin foresaw the absolute and total fusion of music and physical worlds — ​such a dissolution of matter in the music, which is impossible to imagine in our world. His later work is the part of epochal revolution in the understanding of music and the musical: the musical material has ceased to be fully separated from the real, physical world. This revolution, just in the present perspective, was felt by J. Cage who has put it into practice in his own way.