ed in his imagination,
the chord built up in fourths from the tones c, d, e, f-sharp, a, b, he
had managed to rid himself of all the influence of the classic masters,
to give every note that he employs an intense, poignant, new value, and
through that revolution to achieve form comparable to the most eminent.
His fantasy ranges over the keyboard with complete freedom; he creates
new rhythms, new combinations of tones that cause the hands of the
performer to become possessed of a new and curious intelligence, to
make significant gestures, and to move with a delightful life. And these
latter compositions are entirely structure, entirely bone. There is a
complete economy. There is not a note in the Ninth Sonata, for instance,
that is not necessary, and does not seem to have great significance.
Here everything is speech. The work actually develops out of the
quavering first few bars. The vast resonant peroration only gathers into
a single, furious, tragic pronouncement the material deployed in the
body of the work. Scarcely ever has the binary form, the combat between
two contradictory themes, been more essentialized. Scarcely ever has the
prelude-form been reduced to simpler terms than in the preludes of
Scriabine. These works are indeed radical. For they give us a fresh
glimpse of the archetype of their forms.

And yet, how strange, how infinitely complex and novel a thing they are.
There is indeed little music that throws into sharper relief the miracle
of communication through material form. A few sounds, broken and
elusive, are struck out of an instrument, die away again. And yet,
through those vibrations, life for an instant is made incandescent. It
is as though much that has hitherto been shy and lonely experience has
undergone a sudden change into something clarified and universal. It is
as though performer and auditor have themselves been transformed into
more sensitive instruments, and prepared to participate more graciously
in the common experience. It is as though in each one the ability to
feel beauty has been quickened, that each for an instant becomes the man
who has never before seen the spring come over the land, and who,
glancing upward, for the first time beholds an apple-bough flowering
against the blue. And Scriabine fills one with the need of making
wonderful and winged gestures. It is as if for instants he transforms
one into strange and radiant and ecstatic beings, into new and wonderful
things.

F