Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer known for visionary symphonies and piano music, which grew out of his experience with theosophical mysticism in Switzerland in 1903. Driven to express a vision of the future transformation of the world (in a moment of grand, collective ecstasy, not so different from the rapturists of today, though not apocalyptic), Scriabin began to write wholly original piano music and symphonies (No. 3, The Divine Poem, No. 4, The Poem of Ecstasy, and No. 5, Prometheus, The Poem of Fire). Scriabin invented many musical devices (like the octatonic scale and the "mystic" chord) that remained tonal in nature and yet produced a new sound which, while characterized both by the transparency of impressionism and the chromaticism of late romanticism, was a wholly new and strange sensation. ~ Blue Gene Tyranny, Rovi
