"Harmony becomes melody and melody becomes harmony. For me there is no difference between melody and harmony." - Alexander Scriabin

Performed by: USSR State Symphony Orchestra live at the Royal Albert Hall on August 30th 1968 (Prom 38), conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov.

DESCRIPTION

I decided to revisit my orchestral reduction of Scriabin's "Poem of Ecstasy" which I worked on in the summer of 2015 (and was my first ever "reduction").

The single biggest change is the addition of instrument annotations. When I made the first version of this reduction 8 years ago, I was mainly concerned with reducing the score in a very strict sense, squeezing the music into as few staffs as possible, and instrumental annotations were not a concern. However, after condensing various other scores in the years since, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to the Poem of Ecstasy and "update" it with things I've gained more experience in. This includes instrument annotations, but also being a bit less aggressive with trying to "squeeze" all the voices together.

Hopefully the result is satisfactory!

v1.0 is here:    • "Poem of Ecstasy (Le Poème de l'extas...  

MINI BIOGRAPHY

Mini bio of Scriabin:

Alexander Scriabin (1872 - 1915) was born on Christmas Day (6th January 1872) and raised in Moscow. His very early compositions were deeply influenced by the music of Chopin, but he soon began to develop his own unique style and extended harmony "to the limits of tonality".

Scriabin is probably best known for his piano works, especially his earlier works, which include his 24 Preludes (Op.11), 12 Etudes (Op.8) and 10 Mazurkas (Op.3). His piano concerto, Op.20, is perhaps his most popular work, and is regularly performed in concert halls around the world.

The Poem of Ecstasy (Op.54) was written between 1907-1908, and was Scriabin's penultimate orchestral work. It's a never-ending maze of melodies and harmonies and orchestral colours interweaving with each other (you can think of it as "Tristan und Isolde" squared). Most of the harmonies consist of 7th and 9th chords (and 11th and 13th chords), which is what gives the music that "Debussy-an" flavour, and the sense that it's always going somewhere. The work itself had a mixed reception from critics, and it won 2nd place in the annual Glinka Prize (1st place went to Rachmaninoff's 2nd Symphony).