Synthetic chord

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Composer and theosophist Alexander Scriabin's so called mystic chord, actually called the synthetic chord by Scriabin, sometimes also referred to as the Promethean chord after its extensive use in his work Prometheus: Poem of Fire. It consists of the pitch classes: C, F#, Bb, E, A, D. An augmented fourth, diminished fourth, augmented fourth, and two perfect fourths. It is a quartal hexachord.

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

One interesting quality of the chord is that it contains all four possible triads: major (D, F#, A), minor (A, C, E), augmented (D, F#, Bb), and diminished (F#, A, C).

Nicolas Slonimsky compares the synthetic chord to a "typical terminal" chord of jazz, rag-time, and rock, the major tonic chord with an added sixth and ninth (if the root is C: C, G, E, A, D), and to Debussy's post-Wagnerian "enhanced" dominant seventh chords. If one moves the F# up to G and the A up to Bb, one is left with a familiar dominant seventh (added ninth).

Jim Samson (1977, p.156-7) points out that it fits in well with Scriabin's predominantly 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 (C, E, F#, Bb with an additional D, A).