Prometheus: The Poem of Fire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prometheus: Poem of Fire, Opus 60 (1910), is a symphonic work by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin for piano, orchestra, voice, and clavier à lumières, entitled "Chromola", a Color organ invented by Preston Millar. However, the clavier à lumières is rarely featured in the performance of the piece, including performances during Scriabin's lifetime.

The part for color organ is notated on a staff of its own, in treble clef at the top of the score, and consists of two parts: one changes with the harmony, and always goes to the root note of the prevailing harmony, and thus produces the color Scriabin associated with each key; the other consists of much longer notes sustained through many bars, and does not appear to be related to the harmony (or therefore to the first part), but for the most part slowly rises up the scale a whole-tone at a time, the changes being several pages of score apart, or a minute or two apart. It is not clear what relationship this part has to the first part, or to the music as a whole. The score does not explain how two different colors are to be presented at the same time during a performance. This color organ part also contains three parts briefly at one point in the score.

Sources differ on what Scriabin's intentions were for the realization of the color organ part: many state that the colors were meant to be shown on a screen in front of the audience; but others say that the colors were intended to flood the entire concert hall and that showing them on a screen was merely the compromise was adopted after flooding the concert hall was found impossible or impracticable. The score itself contains no indications about how this is meant to be handled.

The music is highly dissonant, based almost entirely around various inversions and permutations of Scriabin's mystic chord (the chord in the original form often cited in articles about Scriabin, spaced entirely in the fourths, does not occur very often, however). But after all this unresolved dissonance, the piece ends on a more traditional F-sharp major chord (Scriabin's favorite chord) - it is the only tonal triad in the entire composition.

Prometheus is only loosely based on the myth of Prometheus. A typical performance is about 20 minutes.

The premiere was conducted by Serge Koussevitzky in Moscow on March 2, 1911.

Alexander Sabaneev produced a piano transcription for two hands in 1911. When he proposed this at first, Scriabin was of the opinion that at least eight hands would be necessary, and was reportedly even slightly discontent when he realized that his piece could be reduced this way.^[1]