A Great Russian Tone-Poet, Scriabin #231783

The author lays no claim to have written a full biography of Scriabin. The material to hand was not sufficient for this; and many channels of information were closed by the great European war. Scriabin domiciled in at least three countries - Russia, Switzerland, and Belgium; and toured in eight foreign lands. One of his aims has been to furnish an account of some of the most interesting and important experiments which have ever been made in musical art. Scriabin's activities were many-sided and far-reaching; and, in one respect at least, he may be said to have himself consummated the possibilities of their application.<br><br>Many people have wondered where the purely physical development of music on the lines adopted by Debussy and others was leading us; Scriabin shows us its fullest possibilities - and its limitations. He gives us a completely new system of harmony; he abolishes the major and minor modes; he annihilates modulation and chromatic inflection; he abandons all key-signatures; and finally applies his ideas to the most modern scale we have reached so far, i.e. the "Duodecuple."