“The cast of performers includes an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation. The cathedral in which it will take place will not be of one single type of stone but will continually change with the atmosphere and motion of the Mysterium. This will be done with the aid of mists and lights, which will modify the architectural contours.”
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
This is one way that Russian composer Scriabin described Mysterium, his unwritten magnum opus. Thought by some to be both impossibly conceived and ultimately unperformable, Mysterium was to last for seven days and seven nights, and was to take place at the foot of the Himalayas. Within this piece he envisaged towers of fire and bells hung from clouds: and that it should transform humanity through a kind of blissful apocalypse. The ideas surrounding Mysterium fluctuated, becoming both more and less vague throughout the last part of Scriabin’s life. 53 pages of musical sketches remain of this work, alongside ambitious, nebulous stage directions and an epic poem.
Performance of A Mysterium is an articulation of the nature of this work. It embraces the idea of an inbuilt mechanism for utter unrealisability: as it appears in the original, and in this evocation. It will take into account the ghostliness of Scriabin’s ideas for Mysterium as they might haunt this performance, and, as tradition would indicate, Performance of A Mysterium will also incorporate the spectres of my own practise.
The show will incorporate a pianist who plays the pieces that Scriabin completed as ideas for Mysterium; and a spectacle to include large mountains, dramatic lighting, palms and confetti. Although the performance is conceived as a whole, the music is separated from the spectacle – which takes place in silence – so as not to indicate that one should be a soundtrack to the other. - This piece is currently being shown in its developmental stage.
Commissioned by Margate Rocks Festival '08, www.margaterocks.com And supported by the Arts Council of England
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
This is one way that Russian composer Scriabin described Mysterium, his unwritten magnum opus. Thought by some to be both impossibly conceived and ultimately unperformable, Mysterium was to last for seven days and seven nights, and was to take place at the foot of the Himalayas. Within this piece he envisaged towers of fire and bells hung from clouds: and that it should transform humanity through a kind of blissful apocalypse. The ideas surrounding Mysterium fluctuated, becoming both more and less vague throughout the last part of Scriabin’s life. 53 pages of musical sketches remain of this work, alongside ambitious, nebulous stage directions and an epic poem.
Performance of A Mysterium is an articulation of the nature of this work. It embraces the idea of an inbuilt mechanism for utter unrealisability: as it appears in the original, and in this evocation. It will take into account the ghostliness of Scriabin’s ideas for Mysterium as they might haunt this performance, and, as tradition would indicate, Performance of A Mysterium will also incorporate the spectres of my own practise.
The show will incorporate a pianist who plays the pieces that Scriabin completed as ideas for Mysterium; and a spectacle to include large mountains, dramatic lighting, palms and confetti. Although the performance is conceived as a whole, the music is separated from the spectacle – which takes place in silence – so as not to indicate that one should be a soundtrack to the other. - This piece is currently being shown in its developmental stage.
Commissioned by Margate Rocks Festival '08, www.margaterocks.com And supported by the Arts Council of England
