Scriabin’s Lisztian-Stravinskian Sonata Forms

Abstract Responding to Kenneth Smith’s recent essay, I theorize that Lisztian two-dimensional sonata form and Stravinskian ‘block’ structure exhibit a tightly bound relationship in Alexander Scriabin’s late sonatas. Such analysis stitches Scriabin both backwards in time towards Liszt, through the latter’s disciple Alexander Siloti, and forwards in time towards Stravinsky and the fragmented aesthetic of much twentieth-century musical modernism. Thus Scriabin’s late works, often thought to be hermetically sealed from traditions before and after him, are situated in direct contact with two practices. Though of little note in isolation, biographical connections to Liszt and Stravinsky are also compelling from a sonata-specific perspective. I examine not just how Scriabin’s mature sonatas are Lisztian-Stravinskian, but why.