Who's this new programmer you speak of?

Here are a few thoughts I certainly owe you on this etude, first off you've developed musically at an extraordinary pace and this piece is a really fantastic accomplishment. What's evident here, compared to earlier works, is much more consideration of both inner and outer voices which lends the music momentum and melodic coherence. I'm not sure you've studied counterpoint, if no you've absorbed a lot of it intuitively, but it is always worthwhile to go back and redo the species and then spend time with the keyboard music of avid contrapuntalists such as Bach, Brahms, or even Chopin, examining specifically the voices (structural notes aside). This study is applicable for both a composer and a pianist; a composer that sees in layers fundamentally changes his perception of the notes he writes and how he understands their relationship to eachother, whether conscious or not, and a pianist benefits from an understanding of how to prioritize different musical elements. Notice even in Chopin how chords do not function only as structural harmony, but in fact as a group of voices (ex. the left hand in the first theme of the 4th ballade).

Reducing an otherwise meaningless mess of dots into simple voiceleading is the first step, and the second is to determine what kind of relationships work best between voices, hence the study of counterpoint. This brings us to a few basic "rules" learned in species, and while these rules are not absolute, an important melodic consideration is when and why one uses an augmented second in any voice. The B# - A leap in measure 6 descends stepwise first from a C# and sounds fine, but in measure 40 (and again 42) the B# has no melodic set up since it is approached by a leap, and then left by another using the augmented second which to my ear sounds awkward, particularly in measure 40 where the B# furthermore does not have a harmonic function.

From M45 - 46, the melody goes G# - F# while the bass moves C# - B#. An open fifth moving in blatant parallel motion to a tritone in outer voices I think should be avoided, contrapuntally because of the awkwardness and musically in this context because it seems like such a quick movement away from such a strongly emphasized C# pedal which I think would actually be cooler if it were sustained through M46 (merely changing the B# octave to a C#). This also solves the issue of yet another augmented second leap from B# to A in the bass line from M46 in to 47. Be careful when using the viio7 chord because which inversion you use has a lot of implications about where the voices naturally resolve. Having gone (in the bass line) from B# to A, the A then moves up to an F while the viio7 subtly becomes a V7. This contradicts the function of A as the seventh of the viio7 harmony which dictates that the A resolves to G#, and furthermore the F# that the A moves to then resolves upward to G#; in this case (M49), in the V7, F# is the seventh and should similarly resolve downward in all circumstances to E. Revisions here cannot be made so easily, because if one were to simply modify the bass line and resolve F# to E then this would create hidden parallel octaves (where two voices resolve in the same direction to an octave even though the preceding interval was not an octave) between the bass line and melody. I'm not sure why you chose to change the melody here to "C# - B# - A -" and then "E" instead of "G#" which melodically would be most appropriate, both in terms of how A functions (making the V7 a V9 where the ninth also resolves downwards) and also how it has previously appeared going to G#. The harmony gets a little confused with the voices here in M50, where the bass line is asking for another V7 chord (because it outlines, with the A# as a passing tone, the G# and B# major third) while the right hand clearly states the i chord. I agree with the right hand here as going to i seems like an appropriate resolution here, but not to i64 which functions harmonically as a V and therefore cannot be resolved to FROM a V of any sort. Consider a rewrite of M49 that is rhythmically identical to the previous measures (two dotted eighths) and features the first chord as written and then a G#. Then in M50 the melody resolves to G# from A while the bass resolves to C#. The rest of the left hand in M50 can then be rewritten as desired to move the bass line from C# to A (in 51) which also removes the problem of yet another awkward augmented second leap from B# to A. Out of all the augmented seconds that I'm doting on so much in this piece, I actually think the one from M50 - 51 is the most obvious, especially given M50s harmonic identity crisis (dominant or tonic).

The change in texture here is a little too abrupt for my ears and after you've done such a fantastic job of weaving in left hand textures, the repeated octaves starting in 51 seem comparatively crude and brutish. I'm not sure what you'd prefer to hear that but I think this is a section worth revisiting texturally, in both hands. The chord in M58 I think should be redone also, it's far too delicate and deserves either greater character or a more modest scale-back from the C# minor chord in the previous measure.

Moving into this next section I promise you I'm sick of C# minor. To me it seems redundant to move immediately back to this orbiting around V. The chromaticism does not hide the almost slavish adherence to half cadences, and here in these first few measures you have such an excellent chance to write some chromatic ditty in E major to balance the piece out. Harmonically you give yourself the perfect set up for the relative major but instead move back into C# minor. Try and break out of these phrase lengths of [2 - 2 - 4] here because even harmonic considerations aside, that kind of square proportioning makes us feel like we really haven't heard anything different yet. Another small voiceleading note is the upbeat to M59, where the leading tone to E is doubled; consider changing the top D# in that chord to B, outlining a V65/III. Adding a B natural here would be especially relieving, I think, because of your religious avoidance of it in the previous section. The B naturals of M1 and 2 are alone in the entire first section, which is why the beginning of this piece is particularly divine, because it has a very exotic and appealing appreciation of notes on a greater spectrum. Notice how harmonically and melodically the first section in fact gradually constricts to a small number of materials, which is not unpleasant or reflective of poor writing (because I really think it's superb), but here after our big C# minor cadence it is time for serious reconsideration of what would compliment that best.

In fact I think if you went back and edited phrase proportions in this second part, and then translated as musically as possible everything up a third into E major, and then used that material as a basis to extend this section, it would be completely marvelous. The material is there but has no room to breath because it is both short and also still so strongly centered around C#.

The return to the A theme starting at M83 is completely fantastic, one of my favorite moments in this piece. I feel that M94 would move into M95 infinitely better if the A# in the bass were a passing tone, and if you preserved everything else harmonically (the right hand oscilates B and F#, to A#, and the both C# s in the left hand are changed to D#). Also the first note of M95 in the right hand, that E, seems very out of place since it's not in the melody and also clashes with the harmony.

The rest of the piece of course I've been over already so I think that's pretty much as much as I have to say. In summary, several voiceleading and contrapuntal considerations, I think the middle section deserves to be revisited extensively, and maybe more thought as to form and proportions, both in phrase lengths and how the sections related to eachother (hence, both small and large scale), but this is beautiful piece and a wonderful musical accomplishment. I'm so glad that Scriabin has inspired you to this extent and I am seriously looking forward to more contributions!

Sorry, just proofreading, the parentheses from the second to last paragraph are supposed to read "the right hand oscilates B and F#, NO (not to) A#, and the both C# s in the left hand are changed to D#".