been conceived much earlier. The initial nine bars of the first theme of the exposition, Presto con allegrezza (mm. 47 ff.), can be found in a notebook from 1905 to 1906, when Scriabin was in Chicago. Another notebook from 1906 contains the Imperioso theme (mm. 96 ff.), while elements from the Meno vivo (mm. 120 ff.) can also be made out, as well as sketched-out passages for a few other sections. Scriabin included an epigraph to this piano sonata, extracted from his essay Le Poème de l'Extase: Original Russian text Я к жизни призываю вас, скрытые стремленья! Вы, утонувшие в темных глубинах Духа творящего, вы, боязливые Жизни зародыши, вам дерзновенье приношу! Original French translation Je vous appelle à la vie, ô forces mysterieuses! Noyées dans les obscures profondeurs De l'esprit créateur, craintives Ebauches de vie, à vous j'apporte l'audace! English translation I call you to life, O mysterious forces!Drowned in the obscure depths Of the creative spirit, timid'' Shadows of life, to you I bring audacity! Five months after its completion, Scriabin published the work himself in Lausanne, producing an edition with 300 copies. He later gave the autograph as a present to his pupil Alfred La Liberté. In 1971 the pianist's widow gave the manuscript, along with various other documents, to the Scriabin Museum. The work was premiered on 18 November 1908 in Moscow by pianist Mark Meitschik. Structure The piece is written in sonata form with an introduction. The structure of the work is described in the table below: Harmonic language According to Samson, unlike his later sonatas, the sonata-form of this work still has some meaning to the work's tonal structure. That means the sonata is arguably in F-sharp major (owing to the initial key signature of six sharps), but the sonata could also be said to be atonal due to its lack of a definite tonal center. The work does not contain any perfect cadence, nor any consonant chord. The work features one of the strange occurrences of the complete mystic chord spelled in fourths (mm. 264 and 268). Jim Samson points out that it fits in well with Scriabin's predominantly dominant quality sonorities and harmony as it may take on a dominant quality on C or F. This tritone relationship between possible resolutions is important to Scriabin's harmonic language, and it is a property shared by the French sixth (also prominent in his work). The