In the last decade of his life, Russian composer Alexander Scriabin became increasingly obsessed with planning his Mysterium, a massive ritualized performance that he hoped would transfigure reality.
I have an idea to create some kind of a Mysterium. I need to construct a special temple for it, perhaps here or perhaps far from here, in India… But people aren’t ready for it. I must sermonise. I must show them a new path.
— a. scriabin
Scriabin’s sudden death in 1915 prevented him from completing more than libretto and 55-pages of sketch material. To his friends, however, it was clear that the project as he conceived it was impossible to complete. Scriabin envisioned thousands of celebrants enacting a ritual that would occur over seven days and nights in a specially designed temple located in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. At a certain point, the vibrations thrown off by the performance would cause the temple to crumble, opening the ritual to the heavens. Scriabin hoped the participants themselves would ultimately be dematerialized, allowing them to achieve spiritual unity with divine cosmos.
In his authoritative biography of Scriabin, Faubion Bowers writes:
He said that a fusion of all the arts was essential, but not in the theatrical, Wagnerian, sense. Art must combine with philosophy and religion to produce something indivisible. This was the new Evangel to replace the old outworn Gospels.
— yulii engel
Scriabin overflowed with plans. He spoke of tactile symphonies. He called incense an art which joins earth and heaven. He described the Mysterium. He explained this great final, cataclysmic opus as synthesising all the arts, loading all senses in a hypnoidal, many-media extravaganza of sound, sight, smell, feel, dance, decor, orchestra, piano, singers, light, sculptures, colours, visions.
In the Mysterium, Scriabin sought to revive the lost theurgic function of ancient mystery plays. Russian Mystic Symbolists had explored the possibility that a work of art could have a material effect upon reality, Theosophy had introduced him to the Vedic idea that the cosmos was permeated by a divine energy called Akâsa, a single vibration that possessed spiritual properties of breath, sound, light, and touch. In the Mysterium, Scriabin believed he could attain the Symbolist ideal by channeling Akâsa through the careful coordination of elements designed to stimulate multiple sensations.
The work would combine a mythic symbolic text, rhythmicized speech and song, music based upon previously-unheard tonalities, colored lights and scents, ritual dancing and caresses, and the geometry of sacred architecture. The interaction of these elements would generate a vibration so powerful that it would trigger material disintegration, ecstatic universal death, and communal rebirth on a higher plane. By setting his Mysterium in India, he believed himself to be physically and metaphysically returning humanity to its spiritual origins.
Together [with Emile Sigogne] they worked on an absolutely new language for the Mysterium. It had Sanskritic roots, but included cries, interjections, exclamations, and the sounds of breath exhaled and inhaled.
— faubion bowers
The Mysterium must transfigure and accomplish all the macrocosmic and microcosmic processes of our era. Like the Prefatory Action, it too was a work of art to be performed in a theatrical manner, but it was more mystic and liturgical. Not a musical drama, nor an oratorio, neither presentation nor re-presentation, but a “direct experience”.
— faubion bowers
Set at the Thikse Monastery in the centenary year of the composer’s death, Scriabin in the Himalayas combined music composed throughout Scriabin’s lifetime with vocalization, dance, and multimedia. The performances paid tribute to Scriabin’s idea of using multiple artforms to stimulate multiple senses for the purposes of spiritual uplift.
Incidentally, it was the highest publically attended piano concert in history, and the only multi-sensory concert of Scriabin's music to have been performed in a Buddhist temple in the Himalayas.
Oh country of visions!
How different from this life
Where I have no place
But there, I hear voices,
A world of beatific souls I see...
— a. scriabin
In the last decade of his life, Russian composer Alexander Scriabin became increasingly obsessed with planning his Mysterium, a massive ritualized performance that he hoped would transfigure reality.
I have an idea to create some kind of a Mysterium. I need to construct a special temple for it, perhaps here or perhaps far from here, in India… But people aren’t ready for it. I must sermonise. I must show them a new path.
— a. scriabin
Scriabin’s sudden death in 1915 prevented him from completing more than libretto and 55-pages of sketch material. To his friends, however, it was clear that the project as he conceived it was impossible to complete. Scriabin envisioned thousands of celebrants enacting a ritual that would occur over seven days and nights in a specially designed temple located in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. At a certain point, the vibrations thrown off by the performance would cause the temple to crumble, opening the ritual to the heavens. Scriabin hoped the participants themselves would ultimately be dematerialized, allowing them to achieve spiritual unity with divine cosmos.
In his authoritative biography of Scriabin, Faubion Bowers writes:
Scriabin overflowed with plans. He spoke of tactile symphonies. He called incense an art which joins earth and heaven. He described the Mysterium. He explained this great final, cataclysmic opus as synthesising all the arts, loading all senses in a hypnoidal, many-media extravaganza of sound, sight, smell, feel, dance, decor, orchestra, piano, singers, light, sculptures, colours, visions.
He said that a fusion of all the arts was essential, but not in the theatrical, Wagnerian, sense. Art must combine with philosophy and religion to produce something indivisible. This was the new Evangel to replace the old outworn Gospels.
— yulii engel
In the Mysterium, Scriabin sought to revive the lost theurgic function of ancient mystery plays. Russian Mystic Symbolists had explored the possibility that a work of art could have a material effect upon reality, Theosophy had introduced him to the Vedic idea that the cosmos was permeated by a divine energy called Akâsa, a single vibration that possessed spiritual properties of breath, sound, light, and touch. In the Mysterium, Scriabin believed he could attain the Symbolist ideal by channeling Akâsa through the careful coordination of elements designed to stimulate multiple sensations.
Together [with Emile Sigogne] they worked on an absolutely new language for the Mysterium. It had Sanskritic roots, but included cries, interjections, exclamations, and the sounds of breath exhaled and inhaled.
— faubion bowers
The work would combine a mythic symbolic text, rhythmicized speech and song, music based upon previously-unheard tonalities, colored lights and scents, ritual dancing and caresses, and the geometry of sacred architecture. The interaction of these elements would generate a vibration so powerful that it would trigger material disintegration, ecstatic universal death, and communal rebirth on a higher plane. By setting his Mysterium in India, he believed himself to be physically and metaphysically returning humanity to its spiritual origins.
The Mysterium must transfigure and accomplish all the macrocosmic and microcosmic processes of our era. Like the Prefatory Action, it too was a work of art to be performed in a theatrical manner, but it was more mystic and liturgical. Not a musical drama, nor an oratorio, neither presentation nor re-presentation, but a “direct experience”.
— faubion bowers
Set at the Thikse Monastery in the centenary year of the composer’s death, Scriabin in the Himalayas combined music composed throughout Scriabin’s lifetime with vocalization, dance, and multimedia. The performances paid tribute to Scriabin’s idea of using multiple artforms to stimulate multiple senses for the purposes of spiritual uplift.
Incidentally, it was the highest publically attended piano concert in history, and the only multi-sensory concert of Scriabin's music to have been performed in a Buddhist temple in the Himalayas.
Oh country of visions!
How different from this life
Where I have no place
But there, I hear voices,
A world of beatific souls I see...
— a. scriabin