When rooted in C, the mystic chord consists of the pitch classes: C, F♯, B♭, E, A, D.
This is often interpreted as a quartalhexachord 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.
Scriabin himself called it the "chord of the pleroma" (аккорд плеромы akkord pleromy),[1] 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."[2]
Qualities
Jim Samson[3] 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 F♯. 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:
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.[4] 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.[5]
Leonid Sabaneev interpreted the Prometheus chord as harmonics 8 through 14, without 12 (1, 9, 5, 11, 13, 7 = C, D, E, F↑, A♭, B♭), but the 11th harmonic is 48.68 cents away from the tritone (F♯), the 13th harmonic is 59.47 cents away from a major sixth (A♮).
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."[6] Elliott Antokoletz says the "so-called 'mystic chord'" approximates harmonics 7 through 13 (7, 8, 9, 10, (11,) 12, 13 = C, D-, E, F♯, (G↑-,) A, B♭-).[7]Playⓘ
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.
There seems today to be a general consensus that the mystic chord is neither the key nor the generating element in Scriabin's method.
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.
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.[9]
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.[lower-alpha 1] 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.
Incomplete versions of the chord spaced entirely in fourths are considerably more common, for example, in Deux Morceaux, Op. 57.
The mystic chord as a dominant chord (in this case, as V/V) in Duke Ellington's 1958 piano piece "Reflections in D" . The E dominant 9th chord has ♯11th and 13th appoggiaturas added, which resolve conventionally.
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With the increasing use of more dissonant sonorities, some composers of the 20th and 21st centuries have used this chord in various ways.[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 C13#11 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 (E13#11).
↑ In the same manner that a dominant seventh, built on superposed thirds, will deploy intervals of a sixth, fourth, and/or second under inversion.
↑ "Half a dozen years or so after Scriabin's death, Schoenberg came up with the principle of ordering and Hauer with the principle of partitioning as a means of differentiating representations of the universal set of twelve pitch classes from one another, the foundational requirement for a twelve-tone system. Scriabin's sketches for his projected 'Prefatory Action' show that in the last year of his short life he was already preoccupied with the same problem."[10]
↑ "Scriabin, in his employment of a...complicated set, of transpositions of the set, of invariant segment that function as pivotal elements among the various transpositions, and of consistent variants of the set, may be considered the first to exploit a set systematically as a means of compensating for the loss of the traditional tonal functions."[11]
Related Research Articles
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An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. However, the term most often refers to the ancohemitonic symmetric scale composed of alternating whole and half steps, as shown at right. In classical theory, this symmetrical scale is commonly called the octatonic scale, although there are a total of 43 enharmonically non-equivalent, transpositionally non-equivalent eight-note sets.
A jazz scale is any musical scale used in jazz. Many "jazz scales" are common scales drawn from Western European classical music, including the diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and the modes of the ascending melodic minor. All of these scales were commonly used by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, often in ways that directly anticipate jazz practice. Some jazz scales, such as the bebop scales, add additional chromatic passing tones to the familiar diatonic scales.
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In music theory, complement refers to either traditional interval complementation, or the aggregate complementation of twelve-tone and serialism.
Modes of limited transposition are musical modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups. These scales may be transposed to all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, but at least two of these transpositions must result in the same pitch classes, thus their transpositions are "limited". They were compiled by the French composer Olivier Messiaen, and published in his book La technique de mon langage musical.
A heptatonic scale is a musical scale that has seven pitches, or tones, per octave. Examples include:
In music and music theory, a hexatonic scale is a scale with six pitches or notes per octave. Famous examples include the whole-tone scale, C D E F♯ G♯ A♯ C; the augmented scale, C D♯ E G A♭ B C; the Prometheus scale, C D E F♯ A B♭ C; and the blues scale, C E♭ F G♭ G B♭ C. A hexatonic scale can also be formed by stacking perfect fifths. This results in a diatonic scale with one note removed.
In music theory, the harmonic major scale is a musical scale found in some music from the common practice era and now used occasionally, most often in jazz. In George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept it is the fifth mode (V) of the Lydian Diminished scale. It corresponds to the Raga Sarasangi in Indian Carnatic music, or Raag Nat Bhairav in Hindustani music.
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Musicology commonly classifies scales as either hemitonic or anhemitonic. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones, while anhemitonic scales do not contain semitones. For example, in traditional Japanese music, the anhemitonic yo scale is contrasted with the hemitonic in scale. The simplest and most commonly used scale in the world is the atritonic anhemitonic "major" pentatonic scale. The whole tone scale is also anhemitonic.
References
1 2 3 "Skryabin and the Impossible", p.314. Simon Morrison. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 51, No. 2. (Summer, 1998), pp. 283–330.
↑ "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).
↑ Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920. W.W. Norton & Company. pp.156–7. ISBN0-393-02193-9.
↑ "Orthography in Scriabin's Late Works", p.60. Cheong Wai-Ling. Music Analysis, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Mar., 1993), pp. 47–69.
↑ "The Evolution of Twelve-Note Music", p.56. Oliver Neighbour. Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 81st Sess. (1954–1955), pp. 49–61.
↑ Sabbagh, Peter (2003). The Development of Harmony in Scriabin's Works, p.12. Universal. ISBN9781581125955. Cites: Dahlhaus, Carl (1972). "Struktur und Expression bei Alexander Skrjabin", Mu sik des Ostens, Vol.6, p.229.
↑ "Late Skriabin: Some Principles behind the Style", p.221. Jay Reise. 19th-Century Music, Vol. 6, No. 3. (Spring, 1983), pp. 220–231.
↑ "Principles of Pitch Organization in Scriabin's Early Post-tonal Period: The Piano Miniatures". Vasilis Kallis, Music Theory Online, Vol. 14.3 (Sep 2008)
↑ Perle, George (1996). The Listening Composer, p.178. University of California. ISBN9780520205185. Cites Perle's article "Scriabin's Self-Analyses", p.119ff.
↑ Perle, George (1991). Serial Composition and Atonality, p.41. University of California. ISBN9780520074309.
Further reading
Hewitt, Michael. Musical Scales of the World. The Note Tree. 2013. ISBN978-0957547001.
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