Mystic chord

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In music, the mystic chord or Prometheus chord is a six-note synthetic chord and its associated scale, or pitch collection; which loosely serves as the harmonic and melodic basis for some of the later pieces by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. Scriabin, however, did not use the chord directly but rather derived material from its transpositions.

When rooted in C, the mystic chord consists of the pitch classes: C, FTemplate:Music, BTemplate:Music, E, A, D.

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This is often interpreted as a quartal hexachord consisting of an augmented fourth, diminished fourth, augmented fourth, and two perfect fourths. The chord is related to other pitch collections, such as being a hexatonic subset of the overtone scale, also known in jazz circles as the Lydian dominant scale, lacking the perfect fifth.

NomenclatureEdit

The term "mystic chord" appears to derive from Alexander Scriabin's intense interest in Theosophy, and the chord is imagined to reflect this mysticism. It was coined by Arthur Eaglefield Hull in 1916.<ref name="Impossible">"Skryabin and the Impossible", p.314. Simon Morrison. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 51, No. 2. (Summer, 1998), pp. 283–330.</ref>

It is also known as the "Prometheus chord", after its extensive use in his work Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60. The term was invented by Leonid Sabaneyev.<ref name="Impossible"/>

Scriabin himself called it the "chord of the pleroma" (аккорд плеромы akkord pleromy),<ref name="Impossible"/> which "was designed to afford instant apprehension of—that is, to reveal—what was in essence beyond the mind of man to conceptualize. Its preternatural stillness was a gnostic intimation of a hidden otherness."<ref>"Chernomor to Kashchei: Harmonic Sorcery; Or, Stravinsky's 'Angle'". Richard Taruskin. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 38, No. 1. (Spring, 1985), pp. 72–142. Cited in Morrison (1998).</ref>

QualitiesEdit

Jim Samson<ref name="Samson">Template:Cite book</ref> points out that it fits in well with Scriabin's mainly dominant quality sonorities and harmony, as it may take on a dominant quality on C or FTemplate:Music. This tritone relationship between possible resolutions is important to Scriabin's harmonic language, and it is a property shared by the French sixth (also prominent in his work) of which the synthetic chord can be seen as an extension. The example below shows the mystic chord rewritten as a French sixth with notes A and D as extensions:

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The pitch collection is related to the octatonic scale, the whole tone scale, and the French sixth, all of which are capable of a different number of transpositions.<ref>"Orthography in Scriabin's Late Works", p.60. Cheong Wai-Ling. Music Analysis, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Mar., 1993), pp. 47–69.</ref> For example, the chord is a whole tone scale with one note raised a semitone (the "almost whole-tone" hexachord, sometimes identified as "whole tone-plus"), and this alteration allows for a greater variety of resources through transposition.<ref>"The Evolution of Twelve-Note Music", p.56. Oliver Neighbour. Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 81st Sess. (1954–1955), pp. 49–61.</ref>

Leonid Sabaneyev interpreted the Prometheus chord as harmonics 8 through 14, without 12 (1, 9, 5, 11, 13, 7 = C, D, E, FTemplate:Music, ATemplate:Music Template:Music, BTemplate:Music Template:Music), but the 11th harmonic is 48.68 cents away from the tritone (FTemplate:Music), the 13th harmonic is 59.47 cents away from a major sixth (ATemplate:Music).

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However, to quote Carl Dahlhaus, "the interval-distance of the natural-tone-row [overtones] [...], counting up to 20, includes everything from the octave to the quarter tone, (and) useful and useless musical tones. The natural-tone-row [harmonic series] justifies everything, that means, nothing."<ref>Sabbagh, Peter (2003). The Development of Harmony in Scriabin's Works, p.12. Universal. Template:ISBN. Cites: Dahlhaus, Carl (1972). "Struktur und Expression bei Alexander Skrjabin", Mu sik des Ostens, Vol.6, p.229.</ref> Elliott Antokoletz says the "so-called 'mystic chord'" approximates harmonics 7 through 13 (7, 8, 9, 10, (11,) 12, 13 = C, DTemplate:Music Template:Music, ETemplate:Music, FTemplate:Music Template:Music, (GTemplate:Music Template:Music Template:Music,) ATemplate:Music, BTemplate:Music Template:Music Template:Music Template:Music).<ref>Antokoletz, Elliott (1992). Twentieth-Century Music, p.101. Prentice Hall. Template:ISBN.</ref> {{#if:Mystic chord on C overtone scale seven through thirteen.mid|{{#ifexist:Media:Mystic chord on C overtone scale seven through thirteen.mid|<phonos file="Mystic chord on C overtone scale seven through thirteen.mid">Play</phonos>|{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Mystic chord on C overtone scale seven through thirteen.mid" not found}}Template:Category handler}}}}

The notes of the chord also conform to a Lydian dominant quality, the fourth mode of the melodic minor scale.

Use by ScriabinEdit

Some sources suggest that much of Scriabin's music is entirely based on the chord to the extent that whole passages are little more than long sequences of this chord, unaltered, at different pitches; but this is rarely the case. More often than not, the notes are reordered so as to supply a variety of harmonic or melodic material. Certain of Scriabin's late pieces are based on other synthetic chords or scales that do not rely on the mystic chord.

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In in his 2023-2024 essay "Scriabin's Compositional Methods: Analysis and Review," Reise updated his position noting that Scriabin's close colleague and biographer Leonid Sabaneyev wrote that "Scriabin often said his music was based on his 'synthetic harmony.'"<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Since this is how the composer himself described his famous chord, Reise has adopted the term in place of “mystic chord” (a term Scriabin never used) throughout his essay. Reise further points out (as have others) that in many of the late pieces, Scriabin extends the synthetic harmony by adding the note G - the next ascending P4. Reise posits that this expanded harmony, which contains all the notes of the acoustic scale, might be reasonably called the synthetic harmony+.

File:ScriabinChordScale.png

The synthetic harmony(+) is the referential element for the orthography, the procedures governing the voice leading of the whole tone and octatonic scales, the registral distribution of the harmony, and the derivation of the complete octatonic scale. According to Reise, all scales (including the 9-note scale of the Poème Op. 71 No. 1) either resolve or impliy resolution to the octatonic or whole scales.

Matthew Bengtson writes, “...the mystic chord acts as a kind of mediator, a convenient means of transit, hovering, as in mid-air, between the whole-tone and octatonic harmonic worlds."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Other sources suggest that Scriabin's method of pitch organization is based on ordered scales that feature scale degrees. Since the mystic chord is a synthetic chord, the scale from which it derives, sometimes called the "Prometheus scale", is an example of a synthetic scale.

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For example, a group of piano miniatures (Op. 58, Op. 59/2, Op. 61, Op. 63, Op. 67/1 and Op. 69/1) are governed by the acoustic and/or the octatonic scales.<ref>"Principles of Pitch Organization in Scriabin's Early Post-tonal Period: The Piano Miniatures". Vasilis Kallis, Music Theory Online, Vol. 14.3 (Sep 2008)</ref>

Contrary to many textbook descriptions of the chord, which present the sonority as a series of superposed fourths, Scriabin most often manipulated the voicings to produce a variety of melodic and harmonic intervals.Template:Efn A rare example of purely quartal spacing can be found in the Fifth Piano Sonata (mm. 264 and 268). Measures 263–264 are shown below.

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Incomplete versions of the chord spaced entirely in fourths are considerably more common, for example, in Deux Morceaux, Op. 57.

According to George Perle, Scriabin used this chord in what he calls a pre-serial manner, producing harmonies, chords, and melodies. However, unlike the twelve tone technique to which Perle refers, Scriabin, like Perle, did not use his Mystic chord as an ordered set and did not worry about repeating or omitting notes or aggregate combinatoriality.Template:Efn Template:Efn

Use by other composersEdit

Template:Image frameWith the increasing use of more dissonant sonorities, some composers of the 20th and 21st centuries have used this chord in various ways.Template:Citation needed.

In jazz music, on the other hand, such chords are extremely common, and in this setting the mystic chord can be viewed simply as a C^{13Template:Music11} chord with the fifth omitted. In the score to the right is an example of a Duke Ellington composition that uses a different voicing of this chord at the end of the second bar, played on E (E^{13Template:Music11}).