It is as if in adopting the
system based on the "mystic chord" that persisted 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.
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