Prometheus Scale

The Prometheus scale comes from Alexander Scriabin's 1910 orchestral work Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, where it serves as the harmonic foundation. Scriabin spent his late career building a new harmonic language independent of traditional major/minor tonality, and the Prometheus scale was central to his mature style. Voiced as a stack of intervals, it creates his "mystic chord." The scale has a floating, ambiguous quality that anticipates both impressionism and jazz modal harmony — particularly Lydian dominant.

Construction

C Prometheus scale:
C  D  E  F#  A  B♭  C

Formula:      1  2  3  #4  6  ♭7
Step pattern: W  W  W  m3  H  A2

Six notes (hexatonic) — the 5th degree is omitted entirely.

Compare to C Lydian dominant (7 notes):
C Lydian dominant: C D E F# G A B♭
C Prometheus:      C D E F#   A B♭
                             ↑ G (5th) is absent

The Mystic Chord

Scriabin's "mystic chord" stacks the Prometheus scale notes in fourths rather than thirds — the interval used in quartal harmony:

Stacked in fourths from C:
C — F# — B♭ — E — A — D

(Read as: C up augmented 4th = F#, up perfect 4th = B♭,
           up major 3rd = E, up perfect 4th = A, up perfect 4th = D)

These six pitches = C D E F# A B♭ = the C Prometheus scale.

Voiced on piano (left hand to right):
  C — F# — B♭ — E — A — D
  Creates a dense, shimmering cluster of superimposed intervals.
  Not a conventional chord, not a conventional scale — Scriabin's own language.

Relation to Lydian Dominant

C Lydian dominant: C D E F# G A B♭   (all 7 notes)
C Prometheus:      C D E F#   A B♭   (5th = G is absent)

The Prometheus scale is Lydian dominant without the 5th.
The absence of G:
  - Removes the anchoring perfect fifth above the root
  - Makes the scale harmonically floating — no grounding interval
  - Allows both G♭ (enharmonic F#) and G to be implied

This floating quality is Scriabin's goal: a chord/scale that doesn't
resolve in any conventional way, existing in harmonic suspension.

Sound and Character

Floating, luminous, harmonically ambiguous. The #4 (F#) creates the Lydian lift; the ♭7 (B♭) creates the dominant quality; the absent 5th removes the harmonic anchor. The scale neither resolves like a dominant nor rests like a tonic. Scriabin described it in terms of colours and light — he had synesthesia and associated each harmony with a colour. C Prometheus was associated with red.

Jazz Connections

The Prometheus scale anticipates several jazz developments:

Jazz concept	Connection to Prometheus
Lydian dominant (Levine)	Prometheus is Lydian dominant minus the 5th
Quartal harmony (McCoy Tyner)	The mystic chord stacks fourths — same interval as quartal voicings
Modal jazz (Miles Davis)	Both suspend resolution by avoiding strong V-I progressions
Impressionism (Bill Evans)	Evans cited Scriabin and Debussy as influences; floating dominant sound is shared

In Practice

The Prometheus scale is not a common improvisation vehicle, but it has application over unresolved dominant seventh chords with a #11 sound — particularly when you want an even more open, less grounded quality than Lydian dominant. Over a C7#11 chord (or D♭7 as a tritone sub), playing C Prometheus gives every note a clean chord tone or coloured extension status, while the absent 5th keeps the sound floating. Try it over a vamp on C9#11 and listen for the impressionistic, Scriabin-like quality.

References

• Baker — The Prometheus Chord (analysis of Scriabin's harmonic language)
• Levine — The Jazz Theory Book
• musictheory.net ↗