Clavier à lumières

The clavier à lumières ("keyboard with lights"), or tastiera per luce, as it appears in the score, was a musical instrument invented by Alexander Scriabin for use in his work Prometheus: Poem of Fire.

Only one version of this instrument was constructed, for the performance of Prometheus: Poem of Fire in New York City in 1915.

[1] The instrument was supposed to be a keyboard, with notes corresponding to colors as given by Scriabin's synesthetic system, specified in the score.

[clarification needed] Scriabin assigned the following colors to the following key areas:[citation needed] When the notes are ordered by the circle of fifths, the colours are in order of a spectrum, which leads numerous synesthesia researchers to argue that he did not experience the physiological condition of synesthesia.

Scriabin was also heavily influenced by Theosophy, which had its own different system of associating colors and pitches (in essence going up the visible spectrum from C to B chromatically, rather than by fifths).