# colors



## linceed87 (Oct 21, 2008)

colors 

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hi everyone i got a question, a weird one maybe, do you imagine or feel colors when you hear Mozart??, i do and i talked with my mom (also mozart lover) about it and she doesnt, so maybe its just me , if you do, what colors do you feel/see/imagine and in which pieces?
For example when i hear the jupiter symphony i clearly feel/imagine a dark blue and basicaly the blue tonality
The 25 symphony i see it red, the first movement
the 39 is clearly orange and also the 26 piano concerto
the 29 is also blue but more like a celestial blue, it also has yellow
the figaro overture has a lot of colors! lol
green sleeves is red and so on 
what do you think?
also , not only mozart it happens to me with a lot of composers
the 6th of beethoven , the beggining is clearly orange with yellow
debussy etc


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## Ciel_Rouge (May 16, 2008)

What you described here is called synesthesia. It is more or less present in all people as our senses are not entirely separated. If present in a larger amount, it is a true gift and adds another dimension to the enjoyment of music. Some composers were synesthetic - e.g. Scriabin who even used "colour organs" for one of his pieces.


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## linceed87 (Oct 21, 2008)

i saw a documentary on discovery channel about synesthesia but i dont "see" the colors i only imagine them but i cant help it i feel them, if you have synesthesia you see them right? or am i mistaken, i thought about having synesthesia but i saw the documentary and those people actually see (allucinate) the colors right? or maybe there are different degrees in which you can have that?


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## Mark Harwood (Mar 5, 2007)

See the "Synaesthesia" thread.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

[Edit: Greensleeves is red? That seems odd to me in so many ways. If I think of colors at all, it would be cool colors for minor keys and warm colors for major keys]

I tend to "see" shapes more than colors. No, that's not exactly right - it's more abstract than that even. I might think of the phrases as up and down lines or squiggles, not really music notation, that come together and intertwine.

Unless it's music with an intentional program, like The Planets where I see images of the actual planets, though this isn't quite what Holst intended. Funny, Mozart's Jupiter doesn't make me see the planet, though. It makes me see a room full of powdered wigs.

Unfortunately some movies have indelibly burned their images into our brains when classical music is used. I cannot now hear Siegfried's Death And Funeral or O Fortuna without seeing scenes from Excaliber in my head. And it's impossible to hear much Ligeti without visualizing scenes from 2001: a space odyssey.


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## Isola (Mar 26, 2008)

Weston said:


> Unfortunately some movies have indelibly burned their images into our brains when classical music is used. I cannot now hear Siegfried's Death And Funeral or O Fortuna without seeing scenes from Excaliber in my head. And it's impossible to hear much Ligeti without visualizing scenes from 2001: a space odyssey.




Glenn Gould's Bach concerto No.5 had been always fine to me, though I know the film _Slaughterhouse-Five_ used it for soundtrack but I've only read the book so that's okay. Until one day I came across some video clips on YouTube, since then every time I hear the Largo I see the naive lost soldier Billy wandering in the woods. Tried to get rid of it but cannot. 

I also don't see single colours but shapes, moving shapes sometimes. Like, some Beethoven's furious passages remind me of Kandinsky or Shostakovich's of Picasso, only the colours and shapes in the paintings move about with the melody.

The mystery of art, the magic of art.


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## linceed87 (Oct 21, 2008)

hahha thats cool!!! i also see shapes!!!, specialy with the fantastic symphony the last movement of hector berlios when the clarinet starts like juming around i see like a bunch a mushrooms just jumpin, with the fiigaro overture i see like a line movin up and down and other lines join with diferent colors.
with liszt and his piano concerto's 1 and 2 i see a lot of purple and golden or silver


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

linceed87 said:


> hahha thats cool!!! i also see shapes!!!, specialy with the fantastic symphony the last movement of hector berlios when the clarinet starts like juming around i see like a bunch a mushrooms just jumpin, with the fiigaro overture i see like a line movin up and down and other lines join with diferent colors.
> with liszt and his piano concerto's 1 and 2 i see a lot of purple and golden or silver


This is a great thread. I've always admired synaesthesiacs. But if I wasn't aware of it as a genuine condition I'd suspect you'd taken a _massive _dose of magic mushooms.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

purple99 said:


> This is a great thread. I've always admired synaesthesiacs. But if I wasn't aware of it as a genuine condition I'd suspect you'd taken a _massive _dose of magic mushooms.


I did that once - but I didn't inhale.


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