A Great Russian Tone-Poet, Scriabin. A.Eaglefield Hull. 1921.
£6
Description
A Great Russian Tone-Poet. Scriabin. by A.Eaglesfield Hull. With 165 musical illustrations and 4 plates. Second Edition (Revised) Second Impression. 1921.
From the foreword.........."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 sactivities 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. 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"
Aleksandr Nikolayevich Scriabin 1872–1915, Russian composer and pianist. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he later taught (1898–1903). In his piano compositions, including nine sonatas and such pieces as Satanic Poem, he introduced chords built in fourths instead of the conventional major and minor triads, producing an exotic, mystical effect. He aspired toward a fusion of the arts, and his Divine Poem (1904; the third of three symphonies), a programmatic orchestral work, attempts to unite music and philosophy. Prometheus: a Poem of Fire (1908) calls for a color organ that produces a play of lights upon a screen during the performance. A projected composition, Mysterium, that would have employed the media of all the arts, including colors and scents, was never realised.
In clean, tightly bound used condition. Signs of age and use to boards and spine, bumped corners and age related wear including marks. Internally it is good order, tanning and a small, neat ink name & date to the blank endpapers. Internally in good order, will show light marks, foxing etc and there are a number of light pencil annotations throughout.