Scriabin's 6th Piano Sonata

Alone with something come to take the soul,
the incubus that just leaves a husk.
Once the Music pupates, it comes out whole,
when the host has to go out and busk.

Ich mache Ihnen ein Gestandnis.
The call, obsession and infestation,
are stages in the sonata’s anguish.
The imago undergoes gestation

quick time, emerging fully deployed,
for the performance. The void is one thing;
awareness this is with us in the void,
is another. The piano clings

a moment, then takes off. This music
ate Scriabin, a mantis intrinsic.

Woodford Halse - 9 September 2024

Scriabin’s 6th Piano Sonata of 1911.

An umlaut on Gestandnis. That line is what Adrian Leverkuhn is made to say in Thomas Mann’s Dr Faustus.