Editing Boris Pasternak (section)

=== Music ===
Boris Pasternak was also a composer, and had a promising musical career as a musician ahead of him, had he chosen to pursue it. He came from a musical family: his mother was a concert pianist and a student of [[Anton Rubinstein]] and [[Theodor Leschetizky]], and Pasternak's early impressions were of hearing piano trios in the home. The family had a [[dacha]] (country house) close to one occupied by [[Alexander Scriabin]]. [[Sergei Rachmaninoff]], [[Rainer Maria Rilke]] and [[Leo Tolstoy]] were all visitors to the family home. His father Leonid was a painter who produced one of the most important portraits of Scriabin, and Pasternak wrote many years later of witnessing with great excitement the creation of Scriabin's [[Symphony No. 3 (Scriabin)|Symphony No. 3]] (''The Divine Poem''), in 1903.

Pasternak began to compose at the age of 13. The high achievements of his mother discouraged him from becoming a pianist, but – inspired by Scriabin – he entered the [[Moscow Conservatory]], but left abruptly in 1910 at the age of twenty, to study philosophy in [[Marburg University]]. Four years later he returned to Moscow, having finally decided on a career in literature, publishing his first book of poems, influenced by [[Aleksandr Blok]] and the [[Russian Futurists]], the same year.

Pasternak's early compositions show the clear influence of Scriabin. His single-movement Piano Sonata of 1909 shows a more mature and individual voice. Nominally in B minor, it moves freely from key to key with frequent changes of key-signature and a chromatic dissonant style that defies easy analysis. Although composed during his time at the Conservatory, the Sonata was composed at Rayki, some 40{{spaces}}km north-east of Moscow, where Leonid Pasternak had his painting studio and taught his students.