Rebecca Mitchell is assistant professor of history at Middlebury College. She lives in Vermont.

“Modernity fragments, but music unites: such is the thesis of this haunting, provocative book.  Highlighting Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and the Medtner brothers, Mitchell examines those intense pre-Bolshevik decades when Russian musicians and music-lovers drew on Schopenhauer, Soloviev, and the youthful Nietzsche to elevate and harmonize their homeland. Their ‘musical metaphysics' promised apocalyptic synthesis. Like Orpheus, all was soon dismembered.”—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Rebecca Mitchell is assistant professor of history at Middlebury College. She lives in Vermont.

“Modernity fragments, but music unites: such is the thesis of this haunting, provocative book.  Highlighting Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and the Medtner brothers, Mitchell examines those intense pre-Bolshevik decades when Russian musicians and music-lovers drew on Schopenhauer, Soloviev, and the youthful Nietzsche to elevate and harmonize their homeland. Their ‘musical metaphysics' promised apocalyptic synthesis. Like Orpheus, all was soon dismembered.”—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Rebecca Mitchell is assistant professor of history at Middlebury College. She lives in Vermont.

“Modernity fragments, but music unites: such is the thesis of this haunting, provocative book.  Highlighting Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and the Medtner brothers, Mitchell examines those intense pre-Bolshevik decades when Russian musicians and music-lovers drew on Schopenhauer, Soloviev, and the youthful Nietzsche to elevate and harmonize their homeland. Their ‘musical metaphysics' promised apocalyptic synthesis. Like Orpheus, all was soon dismembered.”—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University