Alexander Skryabin
With his vision of synæsthetic artistic events, that is to say ones that address the entire system of human sensory perception, Alexander Skryabin, pianist, writer, philosopher and eccentric universal genius, went down in musical history. He was born in 1872 in Moscow and died early there. His greatest, yet unrealized project was a work to be performed over several days entitled "Mysterium" intended to take place in a temple to be especially erected for that purpose in India. The music would be joined by light, colors, fragrances and dance, the complementary combination of which, in Skryabin´s mystically adorned effect æsthetics, was to serve the function of making the "Mysterium" a "Gesamtkunstwerk" that would overwhelm and amalgamate all the senses - toward the goal of fostering a rebirth not only of the listeners and spectators but also of the participants in the spectacle. Skryabin´s psychedelically "delimited" sound worlds operate with a suggestive vortex effect in the borderline area between art and religion.