I get academic articles in my email from various lists that I’m on, and this was an interesting one: “The Pedagogy of Early, Twentieth-Century Music: Ideas for a Classroom Discussion based on a Multi-Faceted Analysis of Scriabin’s Op. 31, No. 4.” by Michael Chikinda. Here’s the piece he’s talking about:
I don’t know Scriabin’s music very well, and I liked this immediately, so I wanted to know more. Journey on with me!
First, I entered the score into Noteflight, and added my own chord symbols.
I also did my customary remix.
Before I get into how I hear this, I’ll summarize Michael Chikinda’s analysis, which is the correct way to understand the piece. Chikinda is informed both by knowledge of the way that a composer of Scriabin’s era would have been thinking in general, and by specific knowledge of Scriabin’s influences. The main idea is that Scriabin combines elements of traditional European tonality with more modernist atonal elements. Chikinda suggests we think of the atonal parts more accurately as “pan-tonal”, as Arnold Schoenberg put it – “this music is not devoid of a prevailing tonality but is infused with competing tonalities.”
The specific modernist idea that Scriabin uses in this piece is the whole tone scale. There are only two possible whole tone scales, which I have nicknamed the yin and the yang. The yang scale is comprised of all the notes that are outside the yin scale and vice versa. Whenever there’s a weird and inexplicable chord in Scriabin’s prelude, it’s built from the notes in the yang scale.
Michael Chikinda says the piece starts with the tonic C with its third in the bass. The downbeat of measure one is the V chord G. In between is the strange Eb7#5 chord, which resists analysis in functional terms. It uses four of the six notes in the yang whole tone scale: E-flat, G, B, and C-sharp. Chikinda suggests we think of this as a decoration and ignore it while we think about the underlying structural harmonies. The downbeat of measure two is D, an applied chord (what we in jazz call a secondary dominant) in the temporary key of G. However, D never resolves to G. Chikinda says that this is a time-reversed V-I cadence, a “back-relating dominant.”
Conceptually, a back-relating dominant is understood as prolonging a harmony that precedes it rather than providing impetus to a harmony that follows it.
So rather than resolving to G, the D chord moves to F in measure 3, via Bb/D and Db7#5. Chikinda sees Bb as its own temporary tonic, a parallel to the C/E tonic that starts the piece. Db7#5 is another collection of pitches from the whole tone scale. F is the V chord in Bb, and also the IV chord in the underlying key of C.
Measure 9 has one of the weirdest and coolest harmonic events in the piece: B9 resolving to Ab/C. Chikinda sees the B9 as a surrogate G7, and Ab/C as a surrogate C. The B9 is yet another four-note collection from the yang scale: B, C-sharp, D-sharp and A. If you fill in the other two notes, F and G, then you get G9(b5 #5). And Ab/C shares its root with the “real” tonic of C.
Measure 15 is a mystery: an entire bar of silence. Chikinda sees it as having extramusical symbolic significance.
Why place a grand pause right before the arrival of the final cadence? To answer this question, it is necessary to review Scriabin’s spiritual inclinations. The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, and its well-known guru Helena Blavatsky experienced a period of growth in popularity during the 1890s and early 1900s. Scriabin was influenced by this movement from the days of writing the Divine Poem onwards. Furthermore, the number seven has a very important meaning in Theosophy (e.g., the Theosophical emblem has seven elements, Blavatsky taught that there were seven planes of existence, a sevenfold nature of man, etc.) Scriabin’s final and unfinished composition, the Mysterium (which he began composing in 1903, the same year as the present prelude), is a spiritual manifesto of sorts, and the number seven is prominent. Scriabin explains that the “Mysterium is a living act for all, all mankind, universal in concept, and not just a fancy in my head.” The piece was to be performed over a period of seven days after which reality would dissolve and mankind would be transformed to a plane of unity. Intriguingly, the grand pause in the prelude occurs exactly in the seventh measure of the second sentence. Thus, the completion or fulfillment of the prelude occurs after the seventh measure, a measure of silence; as a result, this work may be seen as a microcosm of the Mysterium.
Structurally, the prelude is a modified 16-measure period. The first sentence, mm. 1–8, is the antecedent phrase, ending with a half cadence (Gsus4 to G). The second sentence, mm. 9–18, is the consequent phrase, ending with a perfect authentic cadence (G7 to C). Chikinda doesn’t have much to say about the rhythm, but does point out that the dotted eighth figure evokes a “French overture“, like this one by Bach.
Okay. Now here’s my (mostly wrong) analysis. I did it by listening through many times, looking at the chart, and playing the piece on guitar (it’s not very difficult.) I hear the first G chord as being the tonic because of its metrical emphasis. The initial C/E feels like a IV chord, and the Eb7#5 chord in between C and G feels like a chromatic connector between the two. The descending chromatic movement from G to Gmaj7 to G7 is a familiar sound over a tonic chord from uncountably many blues, jazz and rock songs. Then I hear D as another tonic, and the G retroactively feels like a IV chord.
Measures 3-4 are mostly the same as measures 1-2 except transposed down a whole step. So now F to Fmaj7 to F7#11 feels like a tonic because of metrical emphasis. C feels like a tonic too, retroactively making F feel like IV. But then C resolves via Ab/C to Db. The Db also feels like a tonic! The tempo is so slow that each new chord can easily reset my sense of what key we’re in. Then with the Eb I guess we’re hearing IV and V in A-flat, except we get faked out and land on Gsus4 instead. Gsus4 has the C that we were expecting in Ab. Then the suspension resolves to G, and G resolves to C, starting the whole cycle over.
The second half starts like the first. However, Gmaj7 leads not to G7, but Db7, which shares the same B-F tritone as G7. Then there’s a descent from Db7 to Db13 to Db7(#5). This all lands on F as in the first half. The F makes Db7 sound like the blues bVI7 chord, kind of a subdominant sound. Just as Gmaj7 moves to Db7 instead of G7, so does Fmaj7 go to B9 rather than F7. Hip!
Then we have B9 mysteriously resolving to Ab/C. Remember that Chikinda squints his eyes and sees an approximation for G7 resolving to C. But I prefer to take B9 and Ab seriously as the “real” chords. The root is implicitly moving down a minor third, with a bluesy feeling. However, since Ab has C in the bass, the B in B9 just resolves up a half step. The C-sharp resolves down to another C, the D-sharp stays enharmonically the same (becoming E-flat), and the A resolves down to A-flat. Voice leading!
Measures 13-14 mirror measures 5-6 identically. But then where measure 7 goes to Gsus4 and G, measure 15 is the mysterious silence. Finally, there’s the simple G7 to C to conclude.
To reiterate: I am hearing this wrong! Scriabin was almost certainly intending what Chikinda is hearing. But if you are looking for ideas in the kinds of music that I like, my hearing has some good ones.