The Psychoanalytic Drive in the Harmonic Language of Alexander Skryabin
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Abstract
This paper – recently presented at the International Conference on Music and Emotion at Durham University – explores a theory by which the psychoanalytic concept of drive might pertain to harmonic discourse in music. Based on Alexander Skryabin’s musings on desire found in his sketchy philosophical notebooks,
I propose certain ways in which these theories can have bearing upon his tonal language. Whilst Skryabin’s philosophy is often somewhat disorganised, he betrays a fundamental distinction between “desire” and a deeper driving force, which in many ways approaches the Freudian “drive”. Applying more refined psychoanalytical apparatus, I find a musical embodiment of the model of the human drive by Jacques Lacan. Through an analysis of Skryabin’s Prometheus chord, I attempt to show that multiple “dominant seventh” impulses are contained in his various harmonic structures. I further illustrate that these potential driving forces slowly work through the harmonic progressions that unfold throughout the piece, and often build towards a more assured, “conventional”, diatonic motion. Supported by psychoanalytic theory, this motion can be conceptualized as a move from an economy of seemingly disjointed drives with no particular tonal goal, towards a tightly-focused object of tonal desire.
Keywords: Skryabin, Lacan, Drive, Desire, Prometheus chord
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