Alexander Scriabin believed his masterpiece, a seven-day ritual in a temple in the Himalayan foothills called the Mysterium, would dissolve the physical universe in a wave of cosmic bliss. He died in 1915 at 43 from sepsis that began as a pimple on his upper lip. This deep dive traces how a frail, coddled boy born in Moscow in 1871, whose pianist mother died of tuberculosis, arrived at that vision.

The episode covers his notoriously small hands, the practice rivalry with Josef Lhévinne that wrecked his right hand, the First Sonata written as a cry against fate, his abandonment of traditional harmony during European exile with Tatyana Schloezer, and his color-coded circle of fifths realized in the color organ part of Prometheus: The Poem of Fire. It also sets his diary claim that he was God within the context of Russian cosmism and the idea  ...