Arts Alive

Arts Alive


The Mystery Behind Scriabin’s Mystic Chord

January 20, 2020

For most of his life, Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1871 – 1915) was obsessed with the occult and religious symbolism. He is often linked as being a part of the Russian symbolist movement and with having been a follower of Theosophy, a movement in the 19th century that was fascinated with the supernatural and with the achievement of higher psychic and spiritual powers. Scriabin’s fascination with the occult culminated towards the end of his life with the development of a harmony which he described as the “chord of the pleroma” or a chord that captures the totality of divine powers. This chord became nicknamed “the mystic chord.”