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Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin
(Алекса́&
#1085;др
Никола́&#
1077;вич
Скря́би&#
1085;; sometimes transliterated as Skryabin or
Skrjabin) (January 6, 1872 – April 27, 1915)
was a Russian composer and pianist.

==Biography==
Scriabin was born in Moscow. He studied the piano
from an early age, taking lessons with Nikolay
Zverev who was teaching Sergei Rachmaninoff at the
same time. He later studied at the Moscow
Conservatory with Anton Arensky, Sergey Taneyev,
and Vasily Ilyich Safonov. He became a noted
pianist despite his small hands with a span of
barely over an octave (at one point he actually
damaged his hand from practicing pieces which
required greater hand spans). Scriabin, previously
interested in Nietzsche's übermensch theory, also
became interested in theosophy, and both would
influence his music and musical thought. In
1909-1910 he lived in Brussels, becoming
interested in Delville's Theosophist movement and
continuing his reading of Hélène Blavatsky
(Samson 1977). Theosophist and composer Dane
Rudhyar wrote that Scriabin was "the one great
pioneer of the new music of a reborn Western
civilization, the father of the future musician,"
(Rudhyar 1926b, 899) and an antidote to "the Latin
reactionaries and their apostle, Igor
Stravinsky|Stravinsky" and the "rule-ordained"
music of "Arnold Schoenberg|Schoenberg's group."
(Ibid., 900-901).

A hypochondriac his entire life, Scriabin died in
Moscow from septicemia. For some time before his
death he had planned a multi-media work, to be
performed in the Himalayas, that would bring about
the armageddon, "a grandiose religious synthesis
of all arts which would herald the birth of a new
world" (AMG
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADF
EAEE47F1DD94AA97F20C393327BD3B17BCD10DF7CFB9811326
A5DD3A13C49840138E253F89593E4BD3CEB3BF4B32FA44509C
CC8EE56F8906037388CE4A366285E36&sql=41:7982~T1).
This piece, Mysterium, was never realized.

He was the uncle of Vyacheslav Molotov, the
Russian politician and eponym of the Molotov
cocktail.  Molotov's original surname was
Scriabin.

Pianists who have performed Scriabin to critical
acclaim include Vladimir Sofronitzky and Vladimir
Horowitz.

==Music==
===Style and influences===
Many of Scriabin's works are written for the
piano; the earliest pieces resemble Frederic
Chopin and include music in many forms that Chopin
himself employed, such as the etude, the prelude
and the mazurka. Later works, however, are
strikingly original, employing very unusual
harmonies and textures. The development of
Scriabin's voice or style can be followed in his
ten piano sonatas: the earliest are in a fairly
conventional late-Romantic music|Romantic idiom
and show the influence of Chopin and Franz Liszt,
but the later ones move into new territory, the
last five being written with no key signature.
Many passages in them can be said to be atonal,
though from 1903 through 1908, "tonal unity was
almost imperceptibly replaced by harmonic unity."
(Samson 1977) See: mystic chord.

Aaron Copland praised Scriabin's thematic material
as "truly individual, truly inspired", but
criticized Scriabin for putting "this really new
body of feeling into the strait-jacket of the old
classical sonata-form, recapitulation and all"
calling this "one of the most extraordinary
mistakes in all music." According to Samson the
sonata-form of Sonata No. 5 (Scriabin)|Sonata No.
5 has some meaning to the work's tonal structure,
but in Sonata No. 6 (Scriabin)|Sonata No. 6 and
Sonata No. 7 (Scriabin)|Sonata No. 7 formal
tensions are created by the absence of harmonic
contrast and "between the cumulative momentum of
the music, usually achieved by textural rather
than harmonic means, and the formal constraints of
the tripartite mould." He also argues that the
Poem of Ecstasy and Vers la Flamme "find a much
happier co-operation of 'form' and 'content'" and
that later Sonatas such as Sonata No. 9
(Scriabin)|Sonata No. 9 employ a much more
flexible sonata-form. (Samson 1977)

===Influence of Color===
Though these works are often considered to be
influenced by Scriabin's synaesthesia, a condition
wherein one experiences stimulus in one sense in
response to real stimulus in another sense, it is
most likely Alexander Scriabin did not actually
experience the physiological condition of
synaesthesia. His color system, unlike most
synaesthetic experience, lines up with the circle
of fifths, indicating that it was a thought-out
system influenced by his theosophic readings and
based on Sir Isaac Newton's Optics. However, this
pioneering use of multimedia also was influenced
by Scriabin's theosophical beliefs; specifically,
he thought he could bring about the end and
rebirth of the world through a grand performance
including music, scent, dance, and light that
would take place in the Himalayas.

While Scriabin wrote only a small number of
orchestral works, they are among the most famous
portion of his output, and some are frequently
performed.  They include 3 symphonies, a piano
concerto (1896), Symphony No. 4 (Scriabin)|The
Poem of Ecstasy (1908) and Prometheus: Poem of
Fire|Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (1910), which
includes a part for a "clavier à lumières" - an
implement played like a piano, but which flooded
the concert hall with coloured light rather than
sound. Few performances of the piece, including
the premiere, have included this light element,
although a performance in New York City in 1915
projected colours onto a screen.

==See also==
* :~gpiana/dm4/dm4scrlt.htm The mythical time in
Scriabin by Lia Tomás
*http://prometheus.kai.ru/skriab_e.htm Was
Scriabin a Synaesthete? by B. Galeyev & I.
Vanechkina
*http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen2/scriabin.html
Scriabin in Aspen No.2 on UBUWEB (A short
biography by Faubion Bowers; four preludes and the
tenth sonata available for download)
*http://www.chopinmusic.net/forum/composer.php?c=s
criabin ChopinMusic - Scriabin (Scriabin -
Biography, Links, Discussion, Recordings, etc.)
*http://www.pianosociety.com/index.php?id=25 Piano
Society.com - Scriabin (A short biography and
description of the piano sonatas by Koji Attwood;
various free recordings available for download.)
*http://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/make-table.c
gi?Composer=ScriabinA&preview=1 Scriabin's Sheet
Music by Mutopia Project

==References==
*Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study
of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-1920. New
York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393021939. 
*http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2
298/is_2_17/ai_61551810 Dane Rudhyar's Vision of
American Dissonance American Music,  Summer, 1999 
by Carol J. Oja
**Rudhyar (1926b).