About this edition
Composed between 1905 and 1908, Aleksandr Scriabin's Poème de l'extase, Op. 54, is one of the most audacious single-movement orchestral works of the early twentieth century. Scored for a huge orchestra with prominent solo trumpet and organ, this roughly twenty-minute tone poem unfolds as a single continuous arc from restless yearning to blazing self-affirmation, its shimmering, chromatic harmony pushing right up to the edge of the more radical language Scriabin would fully embrace in his later works. It stands as the orchestral culmination of his mystical and philosophical preoccupations, rendered in sound of extraordinary color and intensity.
This score reproduces the edition issued in Leipzig by M.P. Belaieff (plate 3213, 1922). Belaieff was founded in 1885 by the timber magnate and devoted amateur musician Mitrofan Belyaev with the express purpose of publishing the works of Russian composers, and under the guidance of the editorial board he assembled — Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, and Lyadov among them — the firm became the principal publisher of Scriabin's orchestral output, both during his lifetime and in the years following his death in 1915. Belaieff scores were engraved to exacting German standards, and copies from this house remain valued by conductors, performers, and scholars as clean, dependable sources for study and performance.
About this edition:
- Full orchestral score
- Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches
- Reproduced from a public domain historical source
- Published by Purple 4R Publishing
Because this historical Belaieff score has long since entered the public domain, we're glad to bring this landmark of Russian orchestral music back into print at an accessible price — a handsome, practical edition for conductors, orchestral musicians, students, and anyone eager to have Scriabin's ecstatic vision on the stand or the shelf.