# Touching, smelling and tasting music



## Ciel_Rouge (May 16, 2008)

We most naturally think of music as a purely auditory experience, yet according to research in neuroscience when we listen to it, other areas of the brain are also activated, for instance those responsible for visual processing! Also, there are lots of traces of other senses in the way we talk about it - we refer to: vision - "dark", taste - "sweet", smell - "fresh", touch - "sharp", temperature - "warm" etc. I was wondering - could it actually be, that music is more than just the auditory? Perhaps it is a much more complex experience after all... There are 2 specific things that I wish to ask you, fellow listeners:

1. synesthesia - there are people whose senses are not separated and rather meld, providing them with a cross-sensory perception, reflected in the way they speak in a much more extreme way than those mentioned above. I was wondering which composers were like that, how it affected their music and what you think of the phenomennon personally - do you ever experience more than just the auditory when you listen? Have you ever referred to specific non-acoustic stimuli when describing the music that you listen to?

2. non-auditory perception - we all know the story of Beethoven who did not stop composing even after he was completely deaf. I read that he used some kind of a stick that allowed him to sense vibrations through the bones of his chin. Are there any other details available? How did he manage to keep composing and was he able to fully imagine what his later works sound like? Also, we sometimes have visualisations of music - vibrating bars, oscillators etc. in our software and hardware-based players. Would you be able to imagine the sound of music in an accurate way just by watching its visual representation? Also, is it possible to imagine sound while you read a score of a musical piece?


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

Shostakovich tastes like dark chocolate to me!


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## R-F (Feb 12, 2008)

Very interesting topic! As far as the visual aspect is concerned, I often find it easier to listen to music with my eyes open, but only if the room is dark. When I'm at a concert, I occasionally get the urge to close my eyes.
As for other senses, many people feel each key has a certain 'warmth' to it. The composer Scriabin had synesthesia, but it is doubted whether that was associated with the fact that he saw different colours accosiated with different keys. This is an interesting passage from Wikipedia-

"In his autobiographical Recollections, Sergei Rachmaninoff recorded a conversation he had had with Scriabin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov about Scriabin's association of colour and music. Rachmaninoff was surprised to find that Rimsky-Korsakov agreed with Scriabin on associations of musical keys with colors; himself skeptical, Rachmaninoff made the obvious objection that the two composers did not always agree on the colours involved. Both maintained that the key of D major was golden-brown; but Scriabin linked E-flat major with red-purple, while Rimsky-Korsakov favored blue. However, Rimsky-Korsakov protested that a passage in Rachmaninoff's opera The Miserly Knight supported their view: the scene in which the Old Baron opens treasure chests to reveal gold and jewels glittering in torchlight is written in D major. Scriabin told Rachmaninoff that "your intuition has unconsciously followed the laws whose very existence you have tried to deny."

Interesting...


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## marie (May 20, 2008)

Interesting topic! Thank you for your insights!

I read here, "*Impressionist Influences in the Music of Claude Debussy*" that Debussy was inspired by Japanese prints, which led him to compose La Mer. This webpage was written and published on the Internet by Shengdar Tsai (http://icarus.reshall.umich.edu/ (this original website is already link-out)) and reproduced by the Department of Music, Trinity College, Dublin with permission.

Can you see the association between the Japanese print replicated in this page and his music, "La Mer"? As I have also metioned a bit elsewhere this forum, I personally hear a touch of Japanese music not necessarily in La Mer, but more in his small piano pieces. But I have no idea how he could get that without having access to actual Japanese music. Yet, because he would have been an artist with great senses, it might have been possible for him to naturally get the Japanese musical aestheticism by just studying the Japanese prints because of the association between all the forms of arts. I have been writing a lot about this issue in my blog lately (entry 1, 2, and 3) if anyone is interested. I would appreciate your insights.

I also read in a biography of violinist Midori's mother, Setsu (Mother and Prodigy, by A. Okuda, published by Shogakukan, 母と神童―五嶋節物語 (小学館文庫) 奥田 昭則), that when Midori received lessons from a famous violin teacher Miss Delay, she was told to create a story out of music. I wonder how common this teaching meothodology may be.

I myself often see visual images as I listen to music especially after I stopped practicing the piano and the musical vocabulary somewhat slipped away. I like colorful & transparent music.


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## R-F (Feb 12, 2008)

Late last night I looked up synesthesia on Wikipedia after being pulled into this fascinating discussion!  Apparently there are many different forms of synethesia, and that people are often very unaware they have it.

The first type mentioned was when certain words or letters are represented in colours. I know for a start I don't associate any vocabulary with colours, while many people either associate a colour with a letter, or actually _see_ colours on a page of black and white text. One girl said that she wasn't aware that nobody else saw words like this, but she said it really helped her spelling. The example she used was learning to spell 'priority'. She said that priority had all dark coloured letters, so she knew that it couldn't have an 'e' in it because she saw 'E's as yellow.
Another person explained that her teacher told her you could make an 'R' from a 'P', by drawing a line down from the 'R'. She was astonished to find she could make a red letter orange just by drawing a line.

Another type of synethesia mentioned was sound-> colour. I don't really see a colour whenever I play a passage of music, but I can easily associate colours with music when I think about it- something I can't do with letters and numbers. For example, certain pieces I've been playing I could catagorise into colours, Debussy's Claire de Lune would be white, Shostakovich's Polka from the Golden Age (which I havn't actually played, just heard) is definately red.

Many people also give certain objects personalities, like saying 'U' is layed back, while 'T' is harsh. An interesting thing to try out is the "Kiki/Bouba" test. Sounds strange, I know, but look it up if your interested.

Possibly the rarest form that people have is tasting things, when another sense is used, like tasting bananas when you see the colour yellow, or something.

Well, I've babbled on long enough!


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## confuoco (Feb 8, 2008)

Ciel_Rouge said:


> do you ever experience more than just the auditory when you listen? Have you ever referred to specific non-acoustic stimuli when describing the music that you listen to?


At the beggening it is important to distinguish between sensual associations and fantasies and real synesthesia. Synesthesia has racional neurogical base. From medical point of view it is a rare defect and object of pathological physiology.

When member Edward Elgar mention that Shostakovich tastes like dark chocolate for him, I think it is just a kind of comparison, or association and don't think he _really tastes_ chocolate. Some impression of colour or image can have everybody of us while listetning, but it is not real synesthesia (of course at somebody it really can be), which (I belive) had Scriabin and Messiaen.


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## confuoco (Feb 8, 2008)

Ciel_Rouge said:


> 2. non-auditory perception - we all know the story of Beethoven who did not stop composing even after he was completely deaf. I read that he used some kind of a stick that allowed him to sense vibrations through the bones of his chin. Are there any other details available? How did he manage to keep composing and was he able to fully imagine what his later works sound like? Also, we sometimes have visualisations of music - vibrating bars, oscillators etc. in our software and hardware-based players. Would you be able to imagine the sound of music in an accurate way just by watching its visual representation? Also, is it possible to imagine sound while you read a score of a musical piece?


I think Beethoven with oscilating stick is just a legend in part. We can not forget that Beethoven in that time had long years of composing and life with music behind him. He was deaf but his brain was working and I think it wasn't any problem for him to imagine some melody in his mind and then write it on the paper. I am sure that he was able to imagine also chord and harmonics. It was enough for him to compose symphony...of course he couldn´t hear the work in its integrity.

Finally, many composers were working without piano, for example Berlioz and Sibelius. They just imagined some music fragment in their minds and then wrote it.

And of course it is possible to imagine sound while man read score...it is necessary for conductors and opera singers. But this imagination never can be compact and thorough.


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## marie (May 20, 2008)

confuoco said:


> At the beggening it is important to distinguish between sensual associations and fantasies and real synesthesia. Synesthesia has racional neurogical base. From medical point of view it is a rare defect and object of pathological physiology.
> 
> When member Edward Elgar mention that Shostakovich tastes like dark chocolate for him, I think it is just a kind of comparison, or association and don't think he _really tastes_ chocolate. Some impression of colour or image can have everybody of us while listetning, but it is not real synesthesia (of course at somebody it really can be), which (I belive) had Scriabin and Messiaen.


Thank you for making the distinction. What I was referring to were actually associations between visual images and music, but not the synesthesia.


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## shsherm (Jan 24, 2008)

I guess I am a one note tune. I must again mention the musical composition "Colors" by Michael Torke. I mentioned this in a previous similar posting.


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