man of the school of Chopin. More than that of any modern master,
his art is rooted in the great romantic tradition as it comes to us
through Chopin, Wagner, Liszt and Strauss; and develops almost logically
out of it. And in the compositions of his first period, the period that
ends, roughly, with the piano concerto, the allegiance is marked, the
discipleship undeniable. The influence of Chopin is ubiquitous.
Scriabine writes mazurkas, preludes, etudes, nocturnes and waltzes in
his master's cool, polite, fastidious general manner. These pieces, too,
might seem to have been written in order to be played in noble salons
lit by massive candelabra, to countesses with bare shoulders. The
twenty-four preludes Opus 11, for instance, are full of Chopinesque
turns, of Chopinesque morbidezza, of Chopinesque melodies. The harmonic
scheme rarely transgresses the limits which Chopin set himself. The
pieces are obviously the work of one who in the course of
concert-playing has come to discover the finesses of the Pole's
workmanship. And yet, Cesar Cui's caustic description of the preludes as
"Bits filched from Chopin's trousseau," is eminently unjust. For even in
those days, when Scriabine was a member of the Russian salon school,
there were attractive original elements in his compositions. There is
real poetry and freshness in these soft-colored pieces. The treatment of
the instrument is bold, and, at moments, more satisfactory than
Chopin's. Scriabine, for instance, gives the left hand a greater
independence and significance than does as a rule his master. Nor does
he indulge in the repetitions and recapitulations that mar so many of
the latter's works. His sense of form is already alert. And through the
silken melodic line, the sweet, rich harmonies, there already makes
itself felt something that is to Chopin's spirit as Russian iron is to
Polish silver.

It is perhaps only in the compositions subsequent to Opus 50 that
Scriabine emerges in the fullness of his stature. For it is only in them
that he finally abandoned the major-minor system to which he had
hitherto adhered, and substituted for it the other that permitted his
exquisite delicious sense of pianistic color, his infinitely delicate
gift of melody, his gorgeous, far-spreading harmonic feeling, free play.
And it is only in these later pieces that he achieved the perfection of
form, particularly of the sonata form, of which the Ninth Sonata is the
magistral example, and wh