01 / Current research
Starting 1 October 2026
Constraints and Choices
Technical Limitations and Artistic Decision-Making in a Chamber Arrangement of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy
This three-year project treats arrangement as a meaning-producing artistic practice. Through experimental case studies and a new chamber arrangement of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, it examines how technical limitations continuously reshape musical identity, rhetoric and form.
This artistic research project investigates the intertwined relationship between technical limitation and artistic decision-making through the creation of a chamber arrangement of Alexander Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy (1908). While arrangements are often framed as practical reductions, this project approaches arranging as a meaning-producing practice in which feasibility, instrumentation, balance, texture, and rehearsal reality directly shape musical identity, rhetoric, and form. The research is structured over three years and begins with short experimental case studies based on Scriabin’s piano works from 1907–1909 (opp. 52–57), providing a controlled environment to test arranging strategies and develop a documented decision framework. In the later stages, these insights are applied to the full chamber arrangement for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, culminating in rehearsals, performance, and recording. The methodology combines iterative compositional experimentation (draft–test–revise), reflective documentation (version archive, logbook, annotated scores), and practice-informed evaluation through workshops and expert consultation (including internal support and external input from Scriabin specialists). By articulating how technical constraints continuously transform artistic choices, the project aims to contribute both a new chamber work to the repertoire and transferable insights into arrangement as an artistic research method.
