The Poem of Ecstasy

Scriabin sometimes referred to The Poem of Ecstasy as his "fourth symphony", although it was never officially called such and avoids the traditional division into separate movements.

There are traces of the classical sonata key-scheme that Scriabin had employed previously, but it is no longer structurally important.

As described by Bernard Jacobson, "The form depends instead on the constant interpenetration and cross-fertilization of a multiplicity of tiny thematic units, most of them so sinuously chromatic as to subvert tonal feeling almost entirely beneath the vertiginous onslaught of shifting harmonic colors.

"[1] Much of the work has a feeling of timelessness and suspense, because of its rhythmic ambiguity and whole-tone-based dominant harmonies derived from Scriabin's "mystic chord" (since the whole-tone scale has no leading-tones, any harmony based on it will not lean toward any key in particular, allowing Scriabin to write pages of music with little to no tonal resolution).

The poem tracks the ascent of a spirit into consciousness, catalyzed by the recurring appearance of "trembling presentiments of dark rhythms" that later transform into "bright presentiments of shining rhythms" as the spirit realizes the excitement of the struggle against them, contrasted with the "boredom, melancholy, and emptiness" felt after victory over them.

[3] He approved the following text for the program notes at the premiere of the symphony: The Poem of Ecstasy is the Joy of Liberated Action.

The stronger the pulse beat of life and the more rapid the precipitation of rhythms, the more clearly the awareness comes to the Spirit that it is consubstantial with creativity itself.

[4] Modest Altschuler, who helped Scriabin revise the score in Switzerland in 1907, and who conducted the premiere with the Russian Symphony Orchestra of New York on 10 December 1908,[5][6][7] reported that Scriabin's implied program (which does not appear in the score) is based on three main ideas: his soul in the orgy of love, the realization of a fantastical dream, and the glory of his own art.

[9] Henry Miller made reference to this symphony in Nexus, the third volume of The Rosy Crucifixion: That Poème de l'extase?