50 Facts About Alexander Scriabin

Later, and independently of his influential contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Scriabin developed a much more dissonant musical language that had transcended usual tonality but was not atonal, which accorded with his personal brand of metaphysics.

Alexander Scriabin found significant appeal in the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk as well as synesthesia, and associated colours with the various harmonic tones of his scale, while his colour-coded circle of fifths was inspired by theosophy.

Alexander Scriabin is often considered the main Russian Symbolist composer and a major representative of the Russian Silver Age.

Alexander Scriabin was an innovator as well as one of the most controversial composer-pianists of the early 20th century.

Alexander Scriabin was born in Moscow into a Russian noble family on Christmas Day, 1871, according to the Julian Calendar.

Alexander Scriabin's mother, Lyubov Petrovna Scriabina, was a concert pianist and a former student of Theodor Leschetizky.

Alexander Scriabin belonged to an ancient dynasty that traced its history back to Rurik; its founder, Semyon Feodorovich Yaroslavskiy, nicknamed Schetina, was the great-grandson of Vasili, Prince of Yaroslavl.

Alexander Scriabin died of tuberculosis when Alexander was only a year old.

Alexander Scriabin's father left the infant Sasha with his grandmother, great-aunt, and aunt.

Alexander Scriabin's aunt Lyubov was an amateur pianist who documented Sasha's early life until he met his first wife.

Apparently precocious, Alexander Scriabin began building pianos after becoming fascinated with piano mechanisms.

Alexander Scriabin performed his own plays and operas with puppets to willing audiences.

Alexander Scriabin studied the piano from an early age, taking lessons with Nikolai Zverev, a strict disciplinarian, who was the teacher of Sergei Rachmaninoff and other piano prodigies, though Scriabin was not a pensioner like Rachmaninoff.

In 1882, Alexander Scriabin enlisted in the Second Moscow Cadet Corps.

Alexander Scriabin ranked generally first in his class academically, but was exempt from drilling due to his physique and given time each day to practice piano.

Alexander Scriabin later studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Anton Arensky, Sergei Taneyev, and Vasily Safonov.

Alexander Scriabin became a noted pianist despite his small hands, which could barely stretch to a ninth.

Alexander Scriabin's doctor said he would never recover, and he wrote his first large-scale masterpiece, his Piano Sonata No 1, Op.

In 1894, Alexander Scriabin made his debut as a pianist in St Petersburg, performing his own works to positive reviews.

Alexander Scriabin expounded its ideas in the course of normal conversation.

Alexander Scriabin began working on his Symphony No 3 here.

Alexander Scriabin began to compose "poems" for the piano, a form with which he is particularly associated.

In 1907, Alexander Scriabin settled in Paris with his family and was involved with a series of concerts organized by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who was actively promoting Russian music in the West at the time.

Alexander Scriabin subsequently relocated to Brussels with his family.

In 1909, Alexander Scriabin permanently returned to Russia, where he continued to compose, working on increasingly grandiose projects.

Several late pieces published during Alexander Scriabin's lifetime are believed to have been intended for Mysterium, such as the Two Dances, Op.

Alexander Scriabin gave his last concert on 2 April 1915 in St Petersburg, performing a large programme of his own works.

Alexander Scriabin received rave reviews from music critics, who called his playing "most inspiring and affecting", and wrote, "his eyes flashed fire and his face radiated happiness".

Alexander Scriabin himself wrote that during his performance of his Sonata No 3, Op.

Alexander Scriabin noticed a resurgence of a little pimple on his right upper lip.

Alexander Scriabin had mentioned the pimple as early as 1914 while in London.

Alexander Scriabin's doctor remarked that the sore looked "like purple fire".

Rather than seeking musical versatility, Alexander Scriabin was happy to write almost exclusively for solo piano and for orchestra.

Alexander Scriabin wanted his music to have a radiant, shining feeling, and attempted this by raising the number of chord tones.

Alexander Scriabin 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 No 9, Op.

The relationship of the tonic and dominant functions in Alexander Scriabin's work is changed radically; for the dominant actually appears and has a varied structure, while the tonic exists only as if in the imagination of the composer, the performer, and the listener.

Alexander Scriabin was interested in Friedrich Nietzsche's Ubermensch theory, and later became interested in theosophy.

Alexander Scriabin used poetry to express his philosophical notions, though arguably much of his philosophical thought was translated into music, the most recognizable example being the Sonata No 9.

Alexander Scriabin did not, for his theory, recognize a difference between major and a minor tonality with the same tonic, such as C minor and C major.

Alexander Scriabin wrote only a small number of orchestral works, but they are among his most famous, and some are performed frequently.

Alexander Scriabin's original colour keyboard, with its associated turntable of coloured lamps, is preserved in his apartment near the Arbat in Moscow, which is a museum dedicated to his life and works.

Alexander Scriabin himself made recordings of 19 of his own works, using 20 piano rolls, six for the Welte-Mignon, and 14 for Ludwig Hupfeld of Leipzig.

Roslavets was not alone in his innovative extension of Scriabin's musical language, as quite a few Soviet composers and pianists, such as Feinberg, Sergei Protopopov, Nikolai Myaskovsky, and Alexander Mosolov followed this legacy until Stalinist politics quelled it in favor of Socialist Realism.

Alexander Scriabin's music was greatly disparaged in the West during the 1930s.

Alexander Scriabin's music has since undergone a total rehabilitation and can be heard in major concert halls worldwide.

In 2020, a bust of Alexander Scriabin was placed in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

Alexander Scriabin was the uncle of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourozh, a renowned bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church who directed the Russian Orthodox diocese in Great Britain between 1957 and 2003.

Alexander Scriabin was not a relative of Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, whose birth name was Vyacheslav Skryabin.

Alexander Scriabin had seven children in total: from his first marriage Rimma, Elena, Marina, and Lev, and from his second Ariadna, Julian, and Marina.

Alexander Scriabin co-founded the Zionist resistance movement Armee Juive and was responsible for communications between the command in Toulouse and the partisan forces in the Tarn district and for taking weapons to the partisans, which resulted in her death when she was ambushed by the French Militia.