1. True or False. Scriabin met Stravinsky.

2. True or False. Scriabin memorized all the Beethoven sonatas.

3. True or False. In his youth, Scriabin would sleep with a volume of Chopin under his pillow.

4. Which of his 10 sonatas did Scriabin compose first?

5. Give at least one good reason why Scriabin might have disliked Rachmaninoff.

6. It is known that Scriabin lost the use of his right hand due to over-practicing in 1894 while studying at the Moscow Conservatoire. But do you know what pieces he was working on so relentlessly?

7. True or False. Scriabin had a fight with Rachmaninoff about the latter's performance of Scriabin's Fsharp minor Prelude in Op.11, because Rachmaninoff played it too fast.

8. One of the sonatas bears a nickname that Scriabin did not invent himself. Which is it?

9. Scriabin once made a comment to a famous composer about Schubert's F minor Fantasy. What was that comment and who was Scriabin talking to?

10. Imagine you found the score of a piece by Scriabin. It is in E major and consists mainly of trills. What was most likely the idea behind the composition of this given piece?

A. Insects digging into the ground in search for food.
B. A windy afternoon near a lake.
C. Fire burning inside a temple.
D. Purple butterflies flying in zigzag.

1. True
3. True
5. I suppose you're talking about Rachmaninov winning the gold at the Moscow Conservatory leaving the silver for Scriabin? But then Scriabin and Rachmaninov were friends; Rachmaninov even played at a series of concerts in memory of Scriabin.
8. Black Mass, the 9th sonata I think.
10. I'm guessing C.

I'm not so sure that he "lost the use" of his right hand entirely? However, I think the piece concerned was possibly Liszt's "Don Juan Fantasy".

David

I go with Magnezium's answers. Also:

5. They were probably always fighting over whose turn it was on Zverev's piano! Also, they had pretty differing styles and Scriabin probably disliked Rachmaninoff's solemn way of playing, as well as his seriousness of character which was totally different from Scriabin, mercurial drunkard he could be, the scoundrel. Also, Rach got the Great Gold Medal from the Moscow Conservatoire and he only got the Little Gold Medal... (Hmm I can think of lots of reasons these two wouldn't have got along!)

6. Yeah, the Don Juan Fantasy - apparently he was trying to copy Josef Lhevinne's style of playing (ie bloody loud)

9. I'm really interested to know what this is! Are you going to post the answers and pull us out of the terrible suspense?

Peter

True, probably

I doubt it, since iirc he did not like Beethoven's music

probably true

hmmm ? So you mean it's not the first ? Ok, let's try 2

..?

I didn't know he 'lost the use of his r.h'. He performed his sonatas in public, didn't he ?

If true, take it as a possible answer to 5

7th, White Mass

I'm curious to hear this

C, if you are thinking of 'Vers la flamme', the insects are in the 10th sonata, but they don't dig into the ground :-)

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Ha! So you gave up so fast.

Here are the correct answers to some of the questions.

#1 TRUE

#2 FALSE.
He had the project to do so, but later abandoned it. Therefore I think it would be wrong to say that Scriabin didn't like Beethoven's sonatas. Here's some more evidence.
One of his graduation pieces at the Moskow conservatory was Beethoven's Op.109. In addition, the influence of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is obvious in Scriabin's Sonata N.2

#3 TRUE

#5 I was referring to the Gold Medal. Rachmaninoff got the Big one and Scriabin the Small one. But I think there are other reasons too.

#6 He got repetitive strain injury on his right hand. The doctors told him he would never recover from it, but he later did. He was practicing Liszt's Don Juan Fantasy and Balakirev's Islamey, and as somebody mentioned was trying to catch up with Lhevinne.

#8 The correct answer is the Black Mass (sonata N.9) I think the nickname was invented by one of Scriabin's friends.

#10 I actually put a lot of thought into this question. The correct answer has not been given yet. It is an objective question based on known facts about how Scriabin associated different keys and color, and the meaning he gave to some ornaments. I may have not been clear enough in the question. The piece I am referring to is unknown, but given the information you can objectively draw a conclusion.

I'll eventually reveal the answers to the other questions as well.
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I don't know what the original poster was thinking of for #5, but how about the fact that Scriabin wrote a piano concerto that is at least as good as any of Rachmaninov's but isn't nearly as well known?

Come on...noone knows any more of the answers...can we have em pretty please??

Ok fine fine :p

#4 was a badly formulated question. Scriabin wrote more than 10 sonatas. The first one he wrote was the Sonata-Fantasie in G sharp minor. He didn't want to publish this work, perhaps thinking it didn't have the scale to be published as a sonata. It is not the same work as the Sonata #2 also in G sharp minor and also nicknamed the Sonata-Fantaisie. I know, it's very confusing.
If you are talking about the published Sonatas 1 to 10 the first one he started writing was Sonata #2, but the first one he published was Sonata #1. Yet the first Sonata-like work he ever wrote was Sonata-Fantaisie in G sharp minor (not Sonata #2 in G sharp minor nicknamed Sonata-Fantasie) Are you confused yet? That was the point :p

#7 It is true that they had a dispute about that prelude (beautiful piece by the way), but not for the reason I mentioned. the reason was the opposite. Rachmaninoff played it too slow! Scriabin suggested a fast tempo for the piece, and Rach was thinking of something more lyrical.

#9 When the two composers met in Switzerland, Stravinsky mentioned Schubert's F minor Fantasy, and Scriabin said. "C'est pour les demoiselles." Basically that means. "That's for girls."
It's not that big of a deal, but I just thought it was a nifty comment, that's all

#10 The best answer to the question is B and here's why.
Scriabin associated the key of E with the color blue, and trills with atmospheric phenomena (wind, clouds, etc...)
C and D would not work because the BLUE color doesn't match with those answers.
He also once mentioned that he thought of insects in his Sonata #10 with trills, but hey Insects digging into the ground in search for food. That's not a very romantic image is it?? Plus the ground is brown or greenish right? That would be another key. NOT E major.

I'm really not sure what he meant by that comment about the Fantasie (a work I really like a lot) being 'for girls'. It's certainly beyond the technical capacity of most 'demoiselles', and there's really nothing girly about it - it's a very manly piece I'd say - robust, serious, and hell-long. But hey, it's no skin off my nose -- we all know Scriabin was a bumbling, drunken lunatic anyway, right, so who cares what he thinks?

Peter

P.S. Very clever last question by the way.