Prelude in E major, Op. 11, No. 9 (Scriabin)

Alexander Scriabin's Prelude in E major, Op. 11, No. 9, is 36 bars long and takes almost a minute and a half to perform, being played at an Andantino pace. Despite its key, the left hand voice often plays C♯ minor passages, while the right hand plays relatively consistently within the bounds of E major, giving the piece a unique tone colour.

Structural analysis

The piece begins with a gentle left hand melody in C♯ minor accompanied by distinctly major right hand block chords. The frequent major ninths and major sevenths contribute luxurious tone colour of the piece. In the eighth bar, a chromatic scale rises back up to the C♯ to repeat the first four bars of the initial melody. This time, a triplet with a dotted rhythm is employed as an additional counterpoint in the right hand.

In the thirteenth bar, we see further development of the melody, using sweeping but short crescendos and decrescendos. The next four bars act as a bridge to the second section at bar 17, where a soaring tenor melody is accompanied by luscious harmonies in the right hand. This section continues until the 30th bar, when an A-major chord is played but then, when the pedal lifts, only the third C♯ is heard, and the initial melody is repeated, using the right hand harmony from the ninth bar. The piece ends with three block chords, in a very powerful dominant cadence, with the concluding E-major chord, arpeggiated.

Recordings

One of the critically acclaimed performances of this piece is that of Mikhail Pletnev on his disc Scriabin: 24 Preludes/Sonatas 4 & 10.

gollark: Can dale build cpython?
gollark: C has more low-level stuff you probably don't want to bother with if doing a build script; Python has useful high level features like "working strings".
gollark: I disagree with that, actually.
gollark: It also took something like 10% of the time to write, which is good.
gollark: - unbee python- the osmarkspythonbuildsystem™ functions/variables, to the extent that they exist, constitute an "embedded domain specific language"- Python is more featureful than Dale syntax, however- well, mine does it seminonawfully, if you don't mind its complete lack of job throttling
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.