Scriabin’s Prometheus

It is said that Scriabin thought of Prometheus as the same character as Lucifer the fallen Archangel who refused to submit to God and therefore, he was expelled from heaven. With this, Prometheus was thrown back to earth, but upon his descent, he was stricken as the Morning star or venus. This is perhaps the reason for the low and high string trills at the beginning and toward the end of the piece. The rising and falling chromaticism in the strings most likely has to do with upward and downward motion that Prometheus, the Venus star travels.

After examining the metaphysics combined with the musical language that had not been discovered before 1910, Scriabin ventured to say that there was no difference between melody and harmony. He argues that they are one and the same. In this atonal nature, he thrives on the eery harmonies that are simple. Scriabin reasoned that he didn't want to have what he called wasted notes to flood his piece's musical landscape. He has limited his character, Prometheus, to six tones A, B, C#, D#, F#, and G. He arranges the building of these pitches on his famous synthetic chord structure of fourths, augmented, diminished and perfect.For further analysis, he has a mystic Promethean chord, also called the Ur-Chord that is used off and on throughout the textures in this music. The synthetic harmony had entered his harmonic vocabulary as early as early as 1903 when he finished his Fourth Piano Concerto, Opus 30. 

What is striking when we look at Scriabin's Orchestral works, especially , is the fact that it was very seldom performed and little understood, but it could be the very best known work by the composer in his lifetime.Prometheus It may have been misunderstood just because atonal language hadn't yet had it's cover revealed completely until the 1920's and Schoenberg's part writing. This piece, originally programmed for an enormous orchestra (by the standards of that time), featured an optional chorus and the piano, which were odd instruments for an orchestral work. This piece is most famous for combining, for the first time, the aspects of music and light. Although, Scriabin needed a character and a story to portray this music and light and chose Prometheus, the supposed father of the sun for this colorful portrayal.

Another interesting attribute of this work is the use of the color organ. Throughout the piece, the organ is asked to play altering notes that are continually held as a drone around which other elements of the orchestra travel. Scriabin prompted Professor of electrical Engineering, Alexander Mozer to invent the instrument that operated via a network for turnable electric switches (the depressed keys) to perpetuate the appropriate colored light when synchronized with the orchestral music.

Prometheus also utilizes Scriabin's famous color scale derived from the circle of fifths. Each pitch has also the distinction of being titled besides being denoted in letter. For example, the pitch C or "Will" as it is titled is colored red. Going to the right, G or "Creative Play" is colored orange. The note D or "Joy" is colored yellow. The note A or "Matter" is colored green. E or "Dreams" is colored sky blue. B or C-flat entitled "Contemplation" is colored pearly blue.F# or G-flat ("Creativity") is colored bright blue or violet. D-flat or C# ("Will of Creative Spirit" is colored violet or purple. A-flat is violet or Lilac. E-flat, otherwise known as "Humanity" is a flesh color. B-flat is rose for "Lust or Passion." F is a deep red. 

To extend the synesthetic reach of the piece the optional choir can be heard between rehearsal numbers 47 and 53 and in the final 12 measures of the piece, singing the vowel E, radiating a violet light, an A (steel-violet light) and "O" which initiates a pearly white sometimes red light, depending on the variance of pitch. The supple choral hum within the last 10 measures of the piece initiates a pearly blue color, the color of moonlight.

In all, there are 18 different motives scattered throughout the piece. The first popular motive appears in measurewith the notes F#, D#, G, (then repeating) F#, D#, G. Then, to complete the first motive Scriabin takes the repeated F# up an ascending fourth B, then to B-flat, G, F#, and G# before going onto the second motive.  What's special here is the use of the ascending fourth. It is part of his mystic chord. The second motive in the lower instruments would consist of A, C, D-flat, A, C, D-natural. What is interesting about this motive is it varies the last pitch of the latter set of three pitches. The ear would expect to hear the D-flat in the series repeat. Therefore the ear would pick this up and pay special attention to its direction.

According to , the motive that is suggested in thealmost never comes around as a consistent melodic motive, but the other motives such as the F#, D#, G motive are all present, painted in varying parts throughout the piece. However, subsets of the figure labeled 6-34 in the book (G, D#, A, C#, G, C#, D#, G) are present in melody and harmony.The Music of Alexander Scriabin  These pitches echo the first sightings of the Prometheus motif. On first analysis, I was lead to say that the use of repeating melodic motives, subtle or not, shall be repeatedly used and therefore not "wasted, but a composer can always vary the motives in different guises, so they are not wasted. In fact, many of the notes in this motive are pitched almost entirely in fourths that make up Scriabin's mystic chord.

Other motives throughout the piece include the motive placed in the low register of the horns in measures 5-11. The melody in this section features repeated notes (for example, the repeated F#'s) and enharmonic sorts of harmony (F double sharp). The complete melody is: F#, F#, G, A#, F-double-sharp, G#, F#, D#. Notice that the tail end of this melody begins the first of the 18 different motives used throughout the piece.

Other motives include the repetition in varying sequences of the F#, D#, G motive in the woodwinds, particularly the solo lines starting on D# in the oboes. The A, C, D-flat motive starts cascading through the oboe and flutes one and two in a soloistic fashion and then carries into the brass. In measure 21, there is a stack of fourths (G, C, F) atop the varying G, D#, A, C# motive that was found earlier but it is now in another form in the low brass and strings. This is another instance of the mystic motive. In measures 23 and 24, forms of another motive (A#, G,B, C, F) are used in as much the same way as the first motive, but are followed by chromatic ascending flourishes in the oboe while the lower pitches of this motive are played b the English Horn. In measure 26, the familiarity of the two motives is cancelled out completely by a new motive started in the lower register of the flute (F#, F#, G, A#).  The rest of this motive appears to be carrying some of the characteristics of the previous two motives, as it moves to G, then to A#, to F double-sharp, to the first pitches of the first major motive in the piece, F# and D#. The third flute has part of the second motive's melody, then holds out on a G.

According to Baker, he says that this occurrence of motive is quite different from the ones used earlier in the piece. I disagree. He is taking various pitches or pitch sets from the previous two motives and setting them in different guises or forms. This could very well be a new theme derived from past material or the end of the last theme of the piece, signaling a new theme. Until measure 53, the same motivic material shows itself in various forms, echoing throughout the orchestra in a free-flowing sounding tempo with no innate rhythmic pulse to guide it.

The next new material comes in with the piano striking thirty-second notes starting on D with the following melody (D, G#, A double-sharp, C#,A#, E#, F double-sharp, C#, A#).  Harp I answers them with this material (C-flat, F, G, D-flat, B-flat). Much of the rest of the orchestra responds to the dialog that the harp and piano have started all the way through the rest of rehearsal numbers two and three until we get within seven measures of starting rehearsal number four where the rhythm in the piano is minute sixteenth-eighth combinations with much of the orchestra following its lead. The overall effect of the whole section is splashes of color free flowing everywhere in the score. I can definitely see a similarity between this and what Berg and Webern were doing. They were writing colorful music for the time, but it was with Scriabin that the idea of creating atonal color in music was born.

In the final measures of the piece, Scriabin averts all the wild eighth-sixteenth combinations, the triplet and sextuplet action in the lower strings, the rapid tremolos in the strings and tonguing in the woodwinds, and the bold radiance of the horns, to a conclusion of whole and half notes. In a sense, all flourishes of color seize six measures or so before the end to reveal starkness. The ending pitches leave sharp tones of bright blue, violet, and rose in Scriabin's mind. In my mind the colors are somewhat different. I equate this kind of music to painting a bright, beautiful canvas. This piece of music is probably one of the most thought-out provocative and beautiful presentations of a composer who uses his ear to paint a picture like none other in the world of atonal music.