The Piano Sonata No. 9, opus 68, commonly known as the Black Mass Sonata, is one of the late piano sonatas composed by Alexander Scriabin. The work was written around 1912–1913, and although its nickname was not invented by Scriabin—who did however refer to his Seventh Sonata as White Mass—he personally approved of it.

Structure and content
The ninth sonata spans a single movement, typically lasting 8–10 minutes, marked as follows:

1. Moderato quasi andante - Molto meno vivo - Allegro molto - Alla marcia - Allegro - Presto - Tempo primo

Like Scriabin's other late works, the piece is highly chromatic and atonal. The Black Mass Sonata is particularly dissonant because many of its themes are based around an interval of a minor ninth, one of the most unstable sounds. The ninth sonata is an unmistakable masterpiece; notable Scriabin contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky praised it. Its marking 'legendaire' exactly captures the sense of distant mysterious wailing which grows in force and menace. The opening theme is constantly transformed, from the early trill arpeggio's sounding unsettling and then completely shifting, eventually tumbling in rapid cascades into a grotesque march. Scriabin builds a continuous structure of mounting complexity and tension, and pursues the combination of themes with unusual tenacity, eventually reaching a climax as harsh as anything in his music. The piece ends with the original theme reinstated.

Like Scriabin's other sonatas, it is both technically and musically highly demanding for the pianist, sometimes extending to three staves as opposed to the standard two used in piano music.

Recordings
As one of Scriabin's more well known works, the ninth sonata has been recorded and performed extensively, most notably by Vladimir Horowitz, Vladimir Sofronitsky, and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

The above text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ( creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ). It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sonata No. 9 (Scriabin)" ( en.wikipedia.org/ ... iki/Sonata_No._9_(Scriabin) ).