Comments on: The D5 Not Existing

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:37:19 +0000

Yo dudes, thanks for the comments.

If someone ever goes back in time to chat with Scriabin, they should *totally* throw in a question about that D. Maybe we could dramatize it….

By: Yvonne

Yvonne — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:12:37 +0000

Plain old sloppy editing perhaps? It’s notated with the “octave” sign, so if both composer and the publisher’s music editor weren’t paying sufficient attention then it could slip through – after all it doesn’t “look” too high as far as its physical presentation on the page goes.

Why did he write it? Sheer musical logic and what he was striving for in his head does in fact seem to be the most plausible answer. (I don’t know whether Scriabin composed at the keyboard or not – that’s a very pertinent question here. You’d expect him to, being a pianist although not a concert pianist, but maybe not…)

By: Zoltan

Zoltan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:11:25 +0000

Two small notes Ben (no pun intended):
- the small picture you gave is actually the the chord with the C5. The one with the D5 is in the score on the last page, second row where the “star” for the comment is.

- you wrote in the original message that it’s a D8 while now you wrote D5. Both are correct — in a way. The score example is from an “Edition Peters” score, coming from Germany. The names for notes are a different in German. Here’s a comparison: http://www.ingovogelmann.com/2006/04/06/klaviatur-frequenzen-notennamen-pianotastatur/
Now, since an English D8 would be written as d””’ in German, it’s easier to write d5 (note the small “d”). Of course, Edition Peters forgot to mention that in the English translation in the score.

By: JonJ

JonJ — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:41:58 +0000

It’s been a long time since I was a piano student, but I still play guitar, and the practicing principles are about the same, I think. At any rate, I don’t think musicians generally practice each page until it is “perfect” and then go on to the next one. Usually one plays the whole piece until it is reasonably good, and then concentrates on improving the hard parts.

In any case, why the missing D? I’m not a Scriabin expert either, but possibly he wrote it in because the logic of the piece required it, even though it couldn’t actually be played. Perhaps he then changed it to a C in order to give players something they could actually play.