Scriabin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich

Scriabin, Aleksandr Nikolayevich (1872-1915), Russian composer and pianist, whose music is characterized by great rhythmic complexity and melodies marked by upward leaps that convey an atmosphere of mystical yearning. He was born in Moscow, and trained at the Moscow Conservatory, where he later taught piano. After 1903 he devoted himself to composition and to concert tours, performing his own piano works.

Scriabin, greatly influenced by theosophy, envisioned a synthesis of all the arts in the service of religion. He attempted to demonstrate the relationship between pitch and colour by inventing a clavier à lumières, or colour keyboard, which would project on a screen colours supposedly corresponding to musical tones. It was never built, and his orchestral tone poem Prometheus, The Poem of Fire (1910), was performed with simple colour slides. Scriabin extended tonal harmony with his own system based on a “mystic” chord built entirely on intervals of a fourth: C F-sharp B-flat E A D. His works include ten piano sonatas; his third symphony, The Divine Poem (1903); and The Poem of Ecstasy (1908), for orchestra.