Scriabin came in a remarkable generation of Russian composers - Rachmaninov, Medtner, Glazunov, etc., and he was a decade older than Stravinsky. A magnetic figure his lifetime, both as a pianist and a composer, he was an almost fanatic Theosophist and believed that his music was prophetic of a new world order. By dying (apparently from some rare form of blood poisoning) in 1915, still only in his early forties, Scriabin at least missed the Russian Revolution and the collapse of his world. His eroticism, his megalomania, his friendships with writers, and the unending tours and concerts which ate into his energy, are all recurring features of this strange man's life. During the two World Wars Scriabin's music became almost a dirty word, but there has been a considerable revival, particularly of the piano sonatas, in the last two decades.