Four Preludes Ascribed to Yulian Skriabin

Abstract

In 1940 the musical world was informed of the existence of a manuscript containing four preludes for piano ascribed to Yulian Alexandrovich Skriabin, son of the composer Alexander Nikolaevich Skriabin (hereinafter referred to simply as Skriabin).' Yulian was born on 12 February 1908, the second of Skriabin's three children by his second wife, Tatiana Fyodorovna Schloezer. (By a special dispensation of the Tsar in 1915, their common-law marriage was regularized, although the first wife, Vera, and two of her four children by Skriabin were still living; thus Yulian was accepted as a legitimate son and heir of the composer.) The boy was a little over seven when his father died in 1915. He continued to live with his mother, first in Moscow and later in Irpen near Kiev. Apparently they moved there at a time when Kiev was not in Soviet hands; the Soviet Army retook it in February 1919. In July 1919, Yulian was accidentally drowned while swimming in the Dnepr River. As Skriabin's other son Lev, born of his first marriage, had died in 1910, no male descendant of the composer 'The existence of these four preludes was announced by A. A. Alshvang in a short article entitled Neskol'ko slov o Yuliane Skriabine (Some Words about Yulian Skriabin) inAleksandr Nikolaevich Skriabin, 1915-1940, Sbornik k 25-letiiu so dnia smerti (Collection of Articles for the 25th Anniversary of his Death) (Moscow and Leningrad, 1940), pp. 241-42. Two of the preludes, those labeled op. 3, were printed in that volume. Apparently these two preludes were first performed outside the Soviet Union by Anton Kuerti in a TV program broadcast from New York late in 1969. A facsimile of the manuscript of all four preludes was published in Youthful and Early Works of Alexander and Julian Scriabin (Music Treasure Publications, New York, 1970), the text of which includes a translation of most of Alshvang's article.