Alexander Scriabin's theurgy in blue: Esotericism and the analysis of 'Prometheus: Poem of Fire' op. 60

In both performance practice and scholarship, Alexander Scriabin's Prometheus, op. 60 (1908-1910) is frequently presented as merely an orchestral tone poem. However, the music was only one component of the composer's more extensive conception of the piece. Like the Mysterium , the grandiose musical ritual Scriabin was planning at the time of his death, Prometheus was to be a work of theurgy, an experiment in the composer's lifelong quest to trigger universal apocalypse and human spiritual transcendence through his art. In Prometheus, the agent of this transfiguration was to be the mystical combination of sound and light. Scriabin scored the work for orchestra and tastiera per luce, a mysterious instrument intended to create a "symphony of light" to counterpoint the symphony of sound. However, Scriabin withdrew the luce from the 1911 premiere of Prometheus due to technical difficulties, inspiring many subsequent scholars to dismiss the light part as inessential to the work.;This dissertation argues that the luce is, in fact, critical to understanding the musical events of Prometheus, fulfilling important analytic and dramatic functions. The faster-moving line of color delineates the fundamental bass motion of the harmonies, while the slower- moving color changes segment the music into seven large-scale sections, providing insight into the work's problematic form. But the full import of the luce cannot be ascertained from the published score, which contains only a rudimentary notation for colored lights. In 1978, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris archived a first edition score of Prometheus containing Scriabin's handwritten annotations describing his vision for the luce. Scriabin called for not only blazes of color, but also spectacular effects such as lightning, fireworks, and tongues of flame. His final apocalyptic indication "inferno, the whole world engulfed---cataclysm, all in fire" made the theurgic purpose of the work explicit.;Just as the luce provides a key to understanding the musical events of Prometheus, the work's secret esoteric program and its larger intellectual context provide further insight into the relationship between music and lights. This dissertation relates Prometheus to three source texts known to have inspired the composer. Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and Viacheslav Ivanov's symbolist essays collected in By the Stars provide insight into the work's theurgic function, and Helena Blavatsky's Theosophical magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, supplies the work's esoteric narrative. The seven slow color stages in the luce correspond to Blavatsky's seven-stage conception of human evolution.;This dissertation not only reconstructs and reintegrates the rich spiritual, intellectual, and multimedia dimensions of Prometheus, but it also addresses the special analytical challenges presented by such a highly conceptual work. In an effort to more deeply involve Scriabin's philosophy with the process of analysis, this dissertation uses concepts drawn from Scriabin's metaphysical source texts to establish analytical values. In this way, the act of analysis becomes a mode of exegetical reception, and reference to Scriabin's metaphysics sheds light on long standing questions of a purely analytical nature.