Polina Dimova (BG-Swiss Fellowships for Bulgarian Diaspora Scholars, May – Jul ‘25) will present on:

The Skriabin Century: Aleksandr Skriabin’s Myth and Music in Twentieth-Century Russian Culture

on 22 May (Thursday), at 16:30 h.

Abstract: This lecture investigates the synaesthetic ideas, multimedia music, and legacy of Russian composer Aleksandr Skriabin in the twentieth century by presenting vignettes from Dimova’s ongoing book project Skriabin’s Myth and Music. It will first introduce the concept and experience of synaesthesia or color-hearing (tsvetnoi slukh) that led Skriabin to imagine his Mysterium, the multisensory artwork that would transform the world. It will then trace the creation of the myth of Skriabin as a madman and messiah in the 1900s and 1910s and consider the Soviet appropriation of Skriabin’s work in the 1920s when it merged with the cult of electricity and was interpreted as a prophecy of the Revolution. The talk will briefly examine the posthumous influence of Skriabin’s work on the poetics of such major Russian authors as Viacheslav Ivanov, Osip Mandelstam, and Evgenii Zamiatin and explore Skriabin’s sway over émigré communities in Germany and France after the Revolution. It will pinpoint several Skriabin-inspired multisensory instruments that combine touch, sound, and images (the theremin, la Croix sonore, and the photoelectronic synthesizer ANS). The lecture will close by reflecting on how composer Nikolai Obukhov and writer Vladimir Sharov aspired to stage a synaesthetic apocalypse thus perpetuating Skriabin’s multisensory art.

Moderated by Dr Oleg Rusakovskiy.