Let there be Light!
A Colored-Light Scriabin Recital
nuno cernadas
Alexander Scriabin
(1872-1915)
Piano Sonata No. 2 in G-sharp minor, op. 19, “Sonate-Fantaisie”
• Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp major, op. 30
• Deux Morceaux, op. 57
• ◦ Désir
• ◦ Caresse dansée
(10m break)
• Feuillet d’album, op. 58 • Piano Sonata No. 7 op. 64 “White Mass” • Piano Sonata No. 9 op. 68 “Black Mass” • Piano Sonata No. 10 op. 70
Between the years 1908-1910, a period during which the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin lived in Brussels, he composed his final symphonic work, Prometheus: The Poem of Fire op. 60. Prometheus is a very significant milestone in Scriabin’s oeuvre and, one could even go so far as to affirm, an important event in the history of art. In Prometheus, Scriabin implements innovations he had tested in the contemporary miniature Feuillet d’Album op. 58, namely the establishment of a fully autonomous non-functional harmonic system capable of simultaneously containing the totality of both harmonic and melodic content. Thus, in the 606 bars that make up Prometheus, and despite two small exceptions, there is only one fundamental musical structure — what came to be known as the ‘Mystic chord’. It is from the various transpositions of this hexachord, that all melodies and harmonies in Prometheus emanate.
These important musical developments notwithstanding, Prometheus is significant in many other ways. In fact, Prometheus is the first true and complete expression of Scriabin’s desire to create a theurgic artwork, that is, art intending to transform the world through a collective, ecstatic ceremony. Thus, Prometheus constitutes the first step toward the Mysterium, Scriabin’s intended final opus, an unrealized (and
unrealizable), all-encompassing mystic liturgy, through which Humanity would attain its final dematerialization and dissolution into the ‘Eternal One.’
A feature that reveals Prometheus’s theurgic intentions is the inclusion of a Tastiera per Luce, a color organ. The Luce, written as a two-voiced part, serves two functions: on the one hand, it highlights in real time the root note of the mystic chord being played; on the other hand, it sets a sevenfold ascending progression in whole tones, from F# to F#, in the course of the piece’s duration. The revolutionary element, however, is that these layers should be played not with sound, but with colored light. Accordingly, Scriabin assigns to each of the Luce’s notes—and subsequently to each of the mystic chord’s transpositions—an individual color, thus revealing visually the musical structures of the work.
Scriabin’s Sound-Color Associations (not individual notes, but harmonic centers):
C – red, simple
G – orange (red-yellow) fiery
D – yellow sunny
A – green herbal
E – blue-greenish (sky-blue)
B – light blue
F-sharp – deep blue with a tendency to purple
D-flat – purple pure
A-flat– lilac (reddish)
E-flat – bluish steel metallic
B-flat – metallic gray lead
F – red scarlet
The inclusion of the Luce in Prometheus, and the association of twelve colors to the twelve possible transpositions of the mystic chord, is not, as is often claimed, a result of synaesthesia, the neurological condition whereby the stimulation of a sense modality causes an involuntary stimulus in another (single or multiple) sense modality. Rather, the fusion of the audible and visible is the result of a mystical impulse animating the composer toward the revelation of higher, spiritual truths hidden beyond the superficial illusion of material reality. It is this mystical synthesis of all-possible Dyonisian impulses, paralleling a musical language which is itself synthetic and self-contained, that is central to Scriabin’s late, post-Promethean period. The late piano sonatas, those between numbers 6 through 10, are a condensed expression of these same ideals.
The creation of a visual dimension for these pieces is, therefore, not only valid and justified, but a valuable contribution to making the mystical, ceremonial nature of these pieces truly tangible. To this end, and following meticulous analytical work in accordance with the principles presented in Prometheus, I have arrived at the creation of original Luce scores that endow each of the late sonatas with a colored-light dimension. Whether or not one adheres to the mystical notions that underline these works is of lesser relevance; what is intended is the creation of a performance that is infused by the extra-musical ideas that are central to Scriabin’s late art, and which allow the interpreter and the public to come closer to the “spirit of the music”, that is, its ceremonial, ecstatic nature.
Nuno Cernadas
Born in Porto in 1988, pianist Nuno Cernadas was trained at the music universities of Porto, Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest), Freiburg im Breisgau, and Karlsruhe, having studied with Fátima Travanca, Constantin Sandu, Gilead Mishory and Michael Uhde. Important influences in his trajectory include such prominent pianists as Vitaly Margulis, Anna Zassimova, Ralf Gothóni, Maria Lettberg, Boris Berman, and, most notably, Dina Yoffe and Håkon Austbø, with whom he kept close contact throughout the years. Cernadas is the winner of several national Portuguese piano competitions as well as the 1st prize of the International Piano Competition “ProPiano”, in Bucharest, Romania.‐ He has appeared as soloist alongside the BadenBaden Philharmoniker, Orquestra do Norte, Harmos ‐Festival Orchestra, Remix Ensemble, and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, under the baton of Nuno Coelho, Tobias Drewelius, José Ferreira Lobo and Dirk Vermeulen. Several of his recitals and concerts with orchestra were live recorded for the Portuguese Television and Radio—Antena 2, also a video recording of a piano recital was realized by Euroclassical. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Arts at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, under the supervision of Maarten Stragier and worldrenowned pianists Jan Michiels and Håkon ‐Austbø. Cernadas recorded Alexander Scriabin’s complete piano sonatas for the Belgian label Etcetera Records, a double CD released in 2024 that has been met with international praise (BBC Radio 3, Pizzicato, Público). Nuno Cernadas is Assistant Piano Professor at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel since 2018.
Born in Porto in 1988, pianist Nuno Cernadas was trained at the music universities of Porto, Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest), Freiburg im Breisgau, and Karlsruhe, having studied with Fátima Travanca, Constantin Sandu, Gilead Mishory and Michael Uhde. Important influences in his trajectory include such prominent pianists as Vitaly Margulis, Anna Zassimova, Ralf Gothóni, Maria Lettberg, Boris Berman, and, most notably, Dina Yoffe and Håkon Austbø, with whom he kept close contact throughout the years. Cernadas is the winner of several national Portuguese piano competitions as well as the 1st prize of the International Piano Competition “ProPiano”, in Bucharest, Romania.‐ He has appeared as soloist alongside the BadenBaden Philharmoniker, Orquestra do Norte, Harmos ‐Festival Orchestra, Remix Ensemble, and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, under the baton of Nuno Coelho, Tobias Drewelius, José Ferreira Lobo and Dirk Vermeulen. Several of his recitals and concerts with orchestra were live recorded for the Portuguese Television and Radio—Antena 2, also a video recording of a piano recital was realized by Euroclassical. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Arts at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, under the supervision of Maarten Stragier and worldrenowned pianists Jan Michiels and Håkon ‐Austbø. Cernadas recorded Alexander Scriabin’s complete piano sonatas for the Belgian label Etcetera Records, a double CD released in 2024 that has been met with international praise (BBC Radio 3, Pizzicato, Público). Nuno Cernadas is Assistant Piano Professor at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel since 2018.
