SYNESTHETES +++ CLAIMED.DISPUTED**

Alexander Scriabin

Composer · 1872-1915 · chromesthesia

Scriabin built a key-color system and scored a part for light, but scholars debate whether he perceived the colors or constructed the mapping intellectually.

Scriabin is the most famous name in color music and the most debated. He assigned colors to keys, arranged around the circle of fifths, and wrote a light part into Prometheus: The Poem of Fire. What is disputed is the mechanism: genuine chromesthesia, or a system built from theory and theosophy?

The doubters’ evidence is real. His mapping’s tidy geometric structure looks designed; contemporaries recorded him discussing it as doctrine as much as perception; and accounts of his disagreements with Rimsky-Korsakov, a fellow color-hearer, show him defending correspondences from principle rather than experience.

The honest verdict is uncertain: possibly a synesthete, certainly a system-builder. His influence does not depend on the diagnosis; the color system shaped a century of visual music either way.