The composer Alexander Scriabin (1872 – 1915) used a six note scale, known as the Prometheus scale, in his music, and when arranged into a chord, the six notes made a hexatonic chord, which has been christened with the name of the Mystic chord.
This Prometheus scale on C gives the notes of: C D E F# A Bb with the degrees marked as follows: 1 2 3 #4 6 b7. So we can observe that this is a Lydian Dominant mode with the fifth omitted, but placing the fifth back into its formula, we can see that there are two possible scales as its origin, either:
C Lydian Dominant = C D E F# G A Bb (mode IV of G Melodic)
or:
C Lydian Dominant+ = C D E F# G# A Bb (mode III of A Neapolitan Major)
He felt so strongly about the Lydian Dominant sound (minus the fifth of course) that he wrote symphonies, piano concertos, sonatas, preludes and tone poems that use the scale and various hexatonic chordal inversions of it, to a degree bordering on the obsessed. But why? What was he trying to communicate through the use of this enigmatic selection of notes?
The fact that the fifth is omitted makes the seven note scale uncertain, and the mode in use is either of the two mentioned above, but either way, the Lydian Dominant sound is still the result that he was after. If we reduce the chord and scale down their fundamental characteristics, we get this:
C E F# Bb = 1 3 #4 b7 = C7#11
Reducing it down to intervals:
C – F# = Augmented 4th
Bb – E = Augmented 4th
So, the fundamental charcateristics of the Prometheus tetrad is also two augmented fourths a tone apart. Now, to understand why Scriabin omits the fifth, we need to move back a step and look at the numbers that are behind the scale, in paticular the ratios between pairs of numbers and prime numbers. Yes, prime numbers are fundamental in understanding Scriabin, and I will elaborate more when the Harmonic Prime Matrix book is released at the end of the year.
Thanks for reading.
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