# seeing colour in music



## colour (Mar 18, 2014)

I attended a performance in Vancouver by Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott.
During the Olivier Messiasen,s Louange A Eternite de Jesus- ( I had no knowledge of Messiasens use of colour before hand)- and about 2/3 into the piece my vision with over taken with rectangles , blues and purples in very precise tones , moving one after the other , some slightly tilted , with corners rounded, and some in a jagged frame of gold, these frames of colour, swepted towards me following one after the other.with the music fading, the colour dominate My companion the next day mentioned Messiasens use of these colours and I as stunned. 
Is there anyone out there who can suggest a particular recording of this piece which I might listen to that could invoke this response.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Are you located in Denver?


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## Guest (Mar 18, 2014)

Psychedelic drugs + Shpongle = who needs classical music?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Sounds like a wonderful classic case of synesthesia. I've always wanted to experience this, but the closest I've come is with Yes' "Close to the Edge" which (for reasons obvious to some) makes me see bright green. That music is entirely green.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

That's pretty sweet, actually. I'd like to experience that without the need for drugs.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I once taught a student who only saw colours in music, no need for notes, he just saw everything in a colour. He played the guitar. He didn't play a G major chord, for him it was (Blue). 

I can't actually remember which colours he saw for which keys and chords, but it seemed all quite consistent. 

Weston called it first, it's referred to as synesthesia.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

senza sordino said:


> I once taught a student who only saw colours in music, no need for notes, he just saw everything in a colour. He played the guitar. He didn't play a G major chord, for him it was (Blue).
> 
> I can't actually remember which colours he saw for which keys and chords, but it seemed all quite consistent.
> 
> Weston called it first, it's referred to as synesthesia.


Was he any good?


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Was he any good?


I wasn't his music teacher, there's more to the story. He was in jail, and I taught kids in jail. (A much easier gig than it sounds).

He was good enough to sing songs, for pleasure, for friends, for busking etc.

He was one of the sad cases of young people who simply didn't fit into our world full of regulations, rules and standards. Nice kid, but "way way out there". He didn't sing songs in the key of G, but in the key of (Blue)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

From Wiki, a list of musicians who were / are *Synesthetes*:
_I've pared this down to mainly musicians. The complete article lists people in other disciplines, and *various forms of synasthesia, i.e. some see numbers as colors, letters, days of the week, etc.* I would mention that if you polled a group of 100 genuine musical synesthetes as to what color or particular key is, the answers would be varied, i.e. there is no universal agreement on what color is F#, or the key of F# _

The link to the complete article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia
1 Synesthetes

Tori Amos; Music → color.
Rollo Armstrong; Music → color.
Amy Beach; musical keys → color. 
Leonard Bernstein; Timbre → color.
Mary J. Blige; Music → color.
Marina Diamandis; Multiple synesthesiae. Music and days of the week → color.
Duke Ellington; Timbre → color.
Sam Endicott; Music → color.
Hélène Grimaud; colored numbers (graphemes) → color, and music → color.
Robyn Hitchcock; Multiple synesthiae.
Billy Joel; Sound → color and grapheme → color.
Elvin Jones; Music → color.
Brooks Kerr; Musical notes → color.
György Ligeti; Grapheme → color.
Franz Liszt; Music → color.
Marian McPartland; Musical keys → colors.
Trash McSweeney; Chordal structure → color.
Olivier Messiaen; Chordal structure → color.
Itzhak Perlman; Tone → color.
Joachim Raff; Timbre → color.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; Musical keys → color. 
Jean Sibelius; Sound → color.
Ida Maria Børli Sivertsen; Sound → color.
Patrick Stump; Grapheme → color.
Michael Torke; Multiple synesthesiae.
Eddie Van Halen; Sound → color.
Pharrell Williams; Music → color.
Stevie Wonder; Sound → color. (Blind not long after his birth!)
Kanye West; Music → color.

Pseudo-synesthetes

Alexander Scriabin (6 January 1872 - 27 April 1915) probably was not a synesthete, but, rather, was highly influenced by the French and Russian salon fashions. Most noticeably, Scriabin seems to have been strongly influenced by the writings and talks of the Russian mystic, Helena P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and author of such works as Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine.[51] The synesthetic motifs found in Scriabin's compositions - most noticeably in Prometheus, composed in 1911 - are developed from ideas from Isaac Newton, and follow a circle of fifths.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

What instrument does Kanye West play?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> What instrument does Kanye West play?


I think he is vocals and recording production.

The full list includes writers, painters, mathematicians, etc.

I learned it is not just a condition of unprovoked and involuntary immediate associations between music and color, but letters, numbers, words (days of the week!) and either key, single pitch specific, timbre specific, harmonic color specific, etc.

As much as it sounds like one kind of fun from the outside, I wonder just how annoying it could be to have it and never be able to turn it off


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

It's quite amazing how fragile our system can be. We think what we're seeing is reality, but it's just the brain's interpretation of energies. And I think we're becoming more and more aware of how limited and distorted these interpretations can be.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

As PetrB has mentioned, Messiaen himself had that synesthesia and wrote colors into his music. What would Be intriguing is whether of not the colors you experience are the same as the ones Messiaen evoked in his own mind.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Here is an allegedly true synesthesia story I read long ago (and am probably butchering now) in a biography of Rachmaninoff:

In the spring of 1907, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakoff walk into a bar in Paris and Scriabin launches into a spiel about musical synesthesia and his idea that each key evokes a particular color, citing the example of D major, to which he ascribes a beautiful golden shade. Rachmaninoff and R-K scoff, so Scriabin cites evidence from R-K's The Golden Cockerel, in which golden treasure(?) is prominently displayed: "Please tell me, Nickolai Andreyevich, what key did you use for that scene?" 
-"Why D major, as you well know." 
-"You see, it is true. I rest my case."
-"Ah, Alexander Nikolayevich, but I was simply thinking of the scene from Sergei Vasil'yevich's _The Miserly Knight_, when the hero is staring into his treasure chest. That scene too is in D major."


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The last time I told my eye doctor I saw a kaleidoscope of colors when listening to Ives' Concord Piano Sonata, he recommended some glaucoma eyedrops.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Vladimir Nabokov was also a synesthete, although in relation to linguistic sounds rather than music. Actually, he didn't enjoy music at all!


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Vladimir Nabokov was also a synesthete, although in relation to linguistic sounds rather than music. Actually, he didn't enjoy music at all!


Yeah, I know, how sad for the great litterateur. I read that in _Conversations With Nabokov _too.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Vladimir Nabokov was also a synesthete, although in relation to linguistic sounds rather than music. Actually, he didn't enjoy music at all!


I couldn't believe it when I first read about Nabokov's dislike for music. One would think that an artist of his caliber would appreciate such a sophisticated and influential art form. Joyce enjoyed music and was quite a fine singer. I do enjoy Nabokov's literature more, though.


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## colour (Mar 18, 2014)

The idea that the colours that Messiaen saw were the same as I saw is really the question.
When I read on wiki that he used blues , purple with gold high lights and that in my case these very exacting blues /violet rectangles would come out from the stage in union with the chords. 
Each chord having a very distinct shade, gold as a frame relating to small discords from the cello perhaps. Alas I expect I will never know.


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## csacks (Dec 5, 2013)

It sounds spectacular. It certainly might be synesthetic, but as a neurologist (and sorry about being that dull), I would recommend you to visit a neurologist and to rule out both migraine or epilepsy. Both of them are able to produce the same symptoms and are much more frequent. If your evaluation is normal, then consider yourself in the list of the synesthetes. 
Oliver Sacks (who is not my relative), has a very interesting book named Musicophilia where he describes patients having some of these conditions. Very recommendable.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

GGluek said:


> As PetrB has mentioned, Messiaen himself had that synesthesia and wrote colors into his music. What would Be intriguing is whether of not the colors you experience are the same as the ones Messiaen evoked in his own mind.


Those almost certainly will not be identical on a check-list.

The condition has people's brains receiving music and simultaneously actively triggering that second sense other than 'just' hearing. Groups of musical synasthetes have been interviewed, time and again: what each thought of a different pitch, key, or chord type as related to color did not come out the same -- the color 'seen' and so directly associated is idiosyncratic from one synasthete to the next.


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## lupinix (Jan 9, 2014)

I see colors to music, mostly vague but there are certain things that seem connected, like certain intervals or combinations of intervals


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> I couldn't believe it when I first read about Nabokov's dislike for music. One would think that an artist of his caliber would appreciate such a sophisticated and influential art form. Joyce enjoyed music and was quite a fine singer. I do enjoy Nabokov's literature more, though.


I've heard that Evelyn Waugh found any and all music irritating as all get out. Now seeing another profoundly good writer also did not care for music at all only adds to my empiric pet theory: I think they hear this stream of sound, recognize it makes some sort of sense, i.e. has a syntax, but being of such a literary bent, they can not make out "what it is saying." Well, that would be like someone going on and on in a language you didn't know at all, and that could be pretty irritating.


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