It is a pity it was not granted him
to achieve this work. The theosophic programs of his orchestral works
are, after all, innocuous. Much of the half-mystical, half-sensual
coloration of his orchestra is due them. And had the score of the
"Mysteria" been as much an improvement over that of "Prometheus" as
"Prometheus" is over the other symphonic works, Scriabine might indeed
have proved himself as eminent a writer for the orchestra as for the
piano.
It is indeed likely that to-morrow the world will find in his
piano-works its new Chopin, that Scriabine will shortly be given the
place once occupied by the other. For not only is he in many ways the
artistic superior of the man who once was his master. He is, as well,
one of the beings in which the age that is slowly expiring about us
became conscious and articulate. Russia bore him, it is true, elemented
him, gave him her childlike tenderness and barbaric richness and mystic
light. But in developing out of the Russian "universal" school into
perfect liberty and individuality, he became indeed a universal
expression, the first really produced by the group. He became, like the
intensely "national" Strawinsky, one of those men into whom an age
enters. He is symbolic of his time. He seems to have felt his age's life
in its intensest form.
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