Scriabin’s “The Poem of Ecstasy”: The Spirit Takes Flight
For the Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), music formed a mystical passageway to a transcendent level of consciousness. In the final years of his short life, Scriabin, a virtuoso pianist, moved beyond the early influences of Chopin and Liszt to a series of boundary-pushing symphonic works which, in the words of the conductor Marin Alsop, “break down the traditional tonal structure and experiment with new methods of organizing sound.” For Scriabin, who experienced synesthesia, …