# Color and Music



## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Many composers have seen a great relation between color and music, to the point of timbre of often being called
Tone color. I've always felt a color always pops into my head when listening to or thinking about certain pieces. For example, I always thought of beethovens string quartet no 12 as white, hammerklavier as a very dark green, and the last haydn sonata as black. This are of course arbitrary, but I was wondering if any of you guys felt the same with any certain pieces, or more generally certain key signatures. Even more generally, do any of you think of very abstract almost metaphysical images when listening to certain works? The start of schumanns 4th symphony always brings to my mind a great overbearing dome of eternal white light, struggling to expand
It would be interesting to share some of these very unusual but incredibly beautiful testaments to the great abstractness of music.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Not all the time, but sometimes.

Eg. -

*Bruckner* - Golden sunset (_Sym.#6_, esp. first 2 movements)
*Vaughan Williams* - Autumnal, brown colours (_Sym.#8_, first movement)
*Dutilleux* - Colours of night, eg. shades of black, dark blue, dark green (_Cello Concerto "toute un monde lointaine_")
*Arthur Bliss* - Red (_Red_, second movt., of _A Colour Symphony_)
*Peter Sculthorpe* - Being in full sun, yellow and ochres, colours of Australian desert (_Sun Musics I-IV_). His _Piano Concerto_ gives me similar colours to Dutilluex's _Cello Concerto_.
*Debussy* - Greens and blues of the sea (_La Mer_, esp. final movement, _Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea_)


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## presto (Jun 17, 2011)

Sid James said:


> Not all the time, but sometimes.
> 
> Eg. -
> 
> ...


With regards to Arthur Bliss- Colour Symphony its all the movements that represents a particular colour, not just the second movement.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Ooh... synesthesia! No such luck for me, unless I really analyze the way a piece makes me feel and match it to a color that makes me feel similarly. But that's not really synesthesia.


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## Praeludium (Oct 9, 2011)

Not sure about the color but I do the abstract thing a lot - forms, colors, textures, that move, expand, explode, appear, disappear, etc. That's quite cool and works very well with some kind of music (Tristan Murail for instance).


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

More than colors, I feel sensations. Of course, everybody feels sensations when listening to music I suppose!. If you want an "atypical" sensation, I have that especially when listening to modern music. For example, when I listen to Ligeti's Atomspheres I have a sensation of "metaphysical mistery" (maybe because that famous movie! :lol.


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## mensch (Mar 5, 2012)

Alexander Scriabin is also a notable synesthesist, he wrote several works for orchestra incorporating a "clavier à lumières" (colour organ). I would love to see a performances of his "Prometheus: The Poem of Fire" or "Poem of Ecstasy" with a modern day interpretation of his Scriabins colour designs. A shame "Mysterium" wasn't completed, as it incorporated music, dance, smell, touch, light, and a performance in the Himalayas. Also, it would end the world, which would have been rather interesting.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

mensch said:


> Alexander Scriabin is also a notable synesthesist, he wrote several works for orchestra incorporating a "clavier à lumières" (colour organ). I would love to see a performances of his "Prometheus: The Poem of Fire" or "Poem of Ecstasy" with a modern day interpretation of his Scriabins colour designs. A shame "Mysterium" wasn't completed, as it incorporated music, dance, smell, touch, light, and a performance in the Himalayas. Also, it would end the world, which would have been rather interesting.


The composer Alexander Nemtin assembled what was available of Scriabin's notes and music for the projected Mysterium and attempted to reconstruct the Prefatory Action which was part one of Mysterium. It could not be what Scriabin actually meant but is based on Nemtin's life-long interest and the above mentioned fragments. It was premiered and recorded by the conductor Kiril Kondrashin in 1973.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Ive seen the poem of ecstasy with such a colour display.

An artist poured coloured paints into a thin layer of water and swirled them around in various combinations in step with the music. This was projected onto a screen above the orchestra. Quite fascinating.


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## mensch (Mar 5, 2012)

moody said:


> The composer Alexander Nemtin assembled what was available of Scriabin's notes and music for the projected Mysterium and attempted to reconstruct the Prefatory Action which was part one of Mysterium. It could not be what Scriabin actually meant but is based on Nemtin's life-long interest and the above mentioned fragments. It was premiered and recorded by the conductor Kiril Kondrashin in 1973.


I have a recording of Nemtim's version of "Mysterium", it features Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and has a rather weird album cover. At first it was a dance-remix of Scriabin (the horror), judging by that cover.








As with a lot of reconstructions and completions of incomplete works by other composers I think the end result is interesting, but not great.

Dutch artist Peter Struycken also created a computer generated representation of Scriabin's color composition in 1998.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Often I find myself thinking about shapes, spaces and architechture when listening to music, rather than color. Color fascinates me, but shapes come to me more easily.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

SottoVoce said:


> Even more generally, do any of you think of very abstract almost metaphysical images when listening to certain works?


All the time, baby! Bruckner's music fills my mind with these. Walls that are being built... walls that collapse... falling... raising... great spheres of light... spires... zooming into the stars... pushing my fingers into the texture of the welkin and tearing it apart, seeing what's beyond... great weights... slowness and inertia... gravity... vertigo... doors being opened and closed, sometimes closed FOREVER...

p.s. I don't do drugs, I just do music.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

presto said:


> With regards to Arthur Bliss- Colour Symphony its all the movements that represents a particular colour, not just the second movement.


I know, but the _Red_ movement is the one where the music makes me see Red so to speak, very strongly, more strongly than the colour associations of its other movements. But I like the work overall, it's an interesting piece & the concept baffled Elgar who was behind commissioning it. I don't think it's widely known, but Elgar did support new music of the younger crowd in his old age.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Skryabin experimented with multi-coloured lights and perfumes to accompany his music as he wanted to simultaneously stimulate as many of the senses as he could - perhaps he is the granddaddy of the music/psychedelic oil slide/joss stick-style 'happening' of the late 60s?


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Mahler's 7th symphony is one of the few works that really give me colors. There's purple, mauve, turquoise... all kinds of "unnatural" pastel colors. But the final movement explodes with golden light.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Re Scriabin I read that his_ colour organ_ thing was not very impressive in reality. Kind of like an organ with different coloured lightbulbs attached to the top of the pipes.

Anyway, another composer who saw colours in relation to music was I think Debussy, an obvious connection, but also Messiaen. HERE he is teaching his class at Paris Conservatoire about the colours in relation to the music of Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_.


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## mensch (Mar 5, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Re Scriabin I read that his_ colour organ_ thing was not very impressive in reality. Kind of like an organ with different coloured lightbulbs attached to the top of the pipes.


That is exactly what is was, I believe it is still on display somewhere.

Scriabin's vision clearly went further (he was attempting to end the world after all) then a few lightbulbs attached to a piece of wood, but lighting techniques weren't ready for large scale displays at the time. Then again such large scale displays existed considering the International Exposition of Electricity in Paris in 1881 and the various other world fairs of the 19th century, so it might also be a question of money of which Scriabin had relatively little.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Anyway, another composer who saw colours in relation to music was I think Debussy, an obvious connection, but also Messiaen. HERE he is teaching his class at Paris Conservatoire about the colours in relation to the music of Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_.


Interesting clip! I haven't delved that deeply in to Messiaen because I can't hear colors. I'm glad the students were honest enough to admit, at least for a few seconds, they didn't hear them, either, before giving a sympathetic nod. Grey-violet? I can't even think of the color, much less get it from sounds.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I'm often guided by the colors of the CD case when I name the color of a work. 

But concerning keys, I find D flat major is a warm, golden color. It seems to glow in my mind's eye. Hence, I recognize its tone color almost instantaneously nowadays, and it's one of my favorite keys.


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

I get this with instruments. Clarinets are either lavender or dark blue, sitar is light green, basically anything high pitched is lavender or white. oboe, bassoon, anything overly reedy is generally orange, usually darker shades. With stuff like that, it helps you to 'paint' your orchestrations.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Nope, I don't get this. I'm much more aurally than visually oriented.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I went to a performance of Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (among other pieces) in Brussels, after I became obsessed with Scriabin and this piece in particular. Coincidentally it was also composed when Scriabin stayed in Brussels. It was a great performance, but sadly they did nothing with color projections.
You can watch various performances on youtube where they do use colors. This one is particularly interesting, it has a short documentary before the start of the performance at 9:50:






The actual performance of the piece in this video is terrible. The piece is so much more powerful than what is performed here. Bad/weird timing in places, bad tuning, bad recording quality and the most important moments of the final part are awfully rushed. But the video is still worth a look for the visuals


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I have a kind of curious pseudo synesthesia which is influenced by the colors of any particular CD cover, and in the past LP ones and the CDs and LPs themselves. 
If the jewel box or LP cover has bright colors on it , the music sounds to me like the album colors !
The old Columbia/CBS lps had rather drab colors, and the center of the lps was usually colored gray, 
so the music always sounded drab ,dry and grayish to me .
DG lps and CDs are much more colorful , so the music literally sounded more colorful to me, and still does .
Also with many Decca LPs and CDs. 
Also, the engineering on those Columbia Cds was dry and grayish on the whole, unlike the DG Lps and CDs, which sound much more colorful . The recording location makes recordings sound more or less colorful .
Recordings made in Avery Fisher hall,previously called Philharmonic hall , sound cramped and drab;
but in places such as Amsterdam's Concertgebouw hall, Boston's symphony hall, Vienna's Musikverein, and the Church of Jesus Christ in Berlin, often used by DG for recordings in that city , evoke all kinds of bright,flashing colors to me;
red, yellow, gold, etc . It's very difficult to describe these sensations .


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## pierrot (Mar 26, 2012)

I have the exactly same relation with the covers.


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## humanbean (Mar 5, 2011)

Prokofiev's 4th Symphony and 3rd Piano Concerto sound purple to me.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

No I've been colorblind in music! 
I imagine any work has personality, a shape and a message that want to tell us in its wholeness. When I find a classic piece great in these 3 aspects, it is one of the perfect works.


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