Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was born on Christmas Day 1871 (January 6, 1872, by the modern calendar) in Moscow. His mother, a gifted pianist who performed her own compositions, died of tuberculosis when he was an infant; he was raised by his grandmother and aunt, who nurtured his extraordinary musical talent. As a boy he developed a fascination with piano mechanisms and even built instruments himself.

At the Moscow Conservatory, where Sergei Rachmaninoff was a fellow student, Scriabin proved a brilliant pianist and graduated in 1892 with the Small Gold Medal, though an injury from overpracticing Liszt and Balakirev left him with a weakened right hand. His early compositions, mainly for piano, show the influence of Chopin. But as his career progressed, Scriabin developed an increasingly personal harmonic language that pushed toward the boundaries of tonality.

After 1900, Scriabin became consumed by mystical philosophy, believing that music could serve as a portal to cosmic consciousness. He planned a grandiose work called Mysterium, a week-long multimedia spectacle to be performed in the Himalayas, after which the world would dissolve in bliss. This work remained unfinished at his death from septicemia on April 27, 1915, caused by an infected sore on his lip. He was forty-three.

Scriabin’s reputation faded after his death. In later decades, however, his music has been increasingly championed, and his importance as a pioneer of early modernism is now recognized.