Intimidated by the giant shadows cast by Beethoven and Schubert, composers in the succeeding generations of the nineteenth century were reluctant to write piano sonatas. Such keyboard masters as Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, and Liszt did not collectively produce ten. In the twentieth century, the piano sonata largely recovered on the strength of Scriabin and Prokofiev. Of Scriabin's ten numbered sonatas, the second through fifth are his most popular. Less widely performed, the Seventh, an imaginatively crafted work, enjoys the reputation of a rewarding work and was his own favorite. Like all of the sonatas after the 1903 Fourth, it is cast in a single movement. This work has been called "the world's first 12-tone composition." Serial it is not, but it is on the threshold of serialism and sounds like it. It is typical of the music Scriabin was writing in his late period in its mystical and ethereal moods and advanced harmonies. The work, dubbed "White Mass" by the composer, imparts a weirdly ceremonial air, its music evoking bell-like sonorities as well as chant and a mystical sense relating to the composer's Eastern-influenced religious ideas. In approximate sonata form with three subjects, it is full of poetic directions in French that set the mood throughout, for example: mystérieusement sonore (mysteriously sonorous); avec une sombre majesté (with sombre majesty); avec une céleste volupté (with heavenly delight); très pur, avec une profonde douceur (very pure, with profound sweetness); avec une volupté radieuse, extatique (with radiant, ecstatic delight); comme des èclairs (like flashes of lightning); and finally, avec une joie débordante (brimming over with joy). The sonata nervously and violently opens, tolling chords first seeming to calm the roiling, only to spur later. Whenever the music settles to reasonable calm, it turns mystical, but soon flares up again with tension always hovering, even through playful swirls and cold trills. Midway through, just before the recapitulation, the music intensifies in a brutal, bizarre buildup with dissonance and percussive chords abounding. The mood soon shifts again to a more mystical manner, subsequently suggesting various, even extreme, moods, culminating in a fortissimo 25-note arpeggiated chord. Finally, the sonata ends in a peaceful, ethereal mist. This work typically has a duration of ten minutes.

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