Every composer has his dominant color tone and upon that he builds the various compositions which manifest in a harmony of color as well as sound.
Every musician and every musical composition has its own fundamental color tone. That of Bach is the blue-gold of a gas flame; Beethoven's is royal purple; Tschaikowsky's is amber gold; Debussey's, clear jade; Greig's, delicate orchid; Mendelssohn's, rose pink; Schubert's, rose-lavender. Referring to his own compo sitions Schubert writes: "My musical productions came into exis tence through understanding and pain. Those which pain has brought forth seem to please the world most."
Robert Schumann's color-note is deep pink with a golden hue; Richard Wagner's pale mauve interspersed with delicate green-gold lights. The Grail music in both Lohengrin and Parsifal shimmers in tones of pure white which take the form of multitudinous miniature crosses and glow with a luminosity borrowed from heaven. Chopin's note is a mystic blue. This color-tone of Chopin's inspiration is identical with that of Lafcadio Hearn, a writer whose exquisite and magical power of tonal beauty in the use of the English langauge is unsurpassed. Hearn writes of the luminous blue tone in which he takes his inspirational flights in these words:
Even as though the jewel-radiance of the tropic stream pass undulation from the vaster deep, with their sobbings and whisper ings, their fugitive drift and foam, so through emotions evolved by the vision of luminous blue there may somehow quiver back to us out of the infinite (multitudinous like the billion ether shiverings that make the blue sensation of a moment) something of all the aspirations of the ancient faiths, and the power of the vanished gods, and the passion and the beauty of all the prayers ever uttered by the lips of man.
This "infinite blue," the inspirational color ray in which Chopin composed and Lafcadio Hearn wrote, is the source upon which Maxfield Parrish has drawn for his painting. It is his visualizations in magic blue which have made him one of the most popular of con temporary artists. He can speak personally of the inspiration which this particular color ray bestows.
The same divine or Uranium blue is the chief source of inspiration for Nicholas Roerich, the great Russian-American painter who is, perhaps, the supreme artistic genius of our day. His "infinite vistas" ofttimes hold the indescribable magic of this ethereal color whose spell attunes earth with heaven.
Another familiar and beloved composer of our day is Charles Wakefield Cadman. His color note is soft woodland-green, this color being predominant in all his works.
The distinguished Russian composer, Scriabin, was experiment ing most interestingly with tone and its attendant color at the time of his demise in 1915. In that which he aspired to make his greatest work, Prometheus, he proposed to depict in music the seven days of creation with their corresponding color tones. For this perform ance he wished to use "a great white hall with a bare interior dome having no architectural decorations.From this dome the shimmering colors would rush downwards in torrents of light." His death prevented the fulfillment of this dream. His ideals belong to the New Age and will later be realized in a glorious consummation of the alchemical union of two great arts, color and tone.
The item which follows is quoted from the World Theosophist, having been written at the time of the Prometheus presentation by the Chicago Symphony.
Prometheus was begun at the time Scriabin was living at Brussels in 1909, but was completed in Moscow after his return to Russia.
We shall have a better understanding of Scriabin's aims in the composition of Prometheus if we remember that the work was largely the result of the Russian master's belief in and enthusiasm for Theosophy. This is a system that sets out to include all branches of religion, philosophy and science; which makes for a more intimate relation of the human soul with God, and believes that, as the essential divinity is in man, the gradual approach to God is made by successive reembodiments or reincarnations. This ultimate consummation is what the Buddhists term "Nirvana."Dr. Eaglefield Hull wrote thus of Scriabin's Theosophical attitude to music:
His first symphony is a Hymn to Art and joins hands with Beet hoven's Ninth. His third, the Divine Poem, expresses the spirit's liberation from its earthly trammels and the consequent free expression of purified personality; while his Poem of Ecstacy voices the highest of all joys — that of creative work. He held that in the artists' incessant creative activity, his constant progression towards the ideal, the spirit alone truly lives. In Prometheus he reaches the furthest point of his ecstasy in creative energy, a point which was to have been carried astoundingly further by his proposed Mystery, in which sounds, colors, odors, and movement were to be united in expressing one fundamental idea.
It should be said, too, that the Prometheus whose name was associated by Scriabin with his work is not the Prometheus, who, according to the Greek myth, stole fire from heaven, and, as a punishment, was chained to a rock, where daily an eagle devoured his liver — a myth made familiar by the tragedy of Aeschylus. Mrs. Rosa Newmarch, a close friend of the composer, stated that Scria bin's hero was one of that class of adepts symbolized at a much later date by the Greeks under the name of Prometheus. These 'Sons of the Flame of Wisdom,' who were closely allied with the purely spiritual side of man, were alone able to impart to human[ty that sacred spark which expands into the blossom of human intel ligence and self-consciousness.
This work of harmonizing tone and color has been interest ingly furthered in some conferences on color and music held in Hamburg, Germany, some years ago under the supervision of a scientist named Dr. Anschutz. Among other things he investigated many cases of color-hearing. We quote:
Dr. Anschutz has issued numerous pamphlets and books on his researches. He has shown that a large number of persons connect each musical tone with a tint, more or less precisely. More rarely, they perceive a world of color when they hear music. He reports as a specially interesting case of 'color-hearing' that of an organist, Dorken, blind from the age of thirteen years.
This man, despite his blindness, has retained a vivid memory of colors. Each note of the scale means for him a very definite tint. Each human voice produces a luminous vision — pleasant or other wise; each odor has its 'photism'; every vivid sensation such as muscular fatigue, toothache, even a hot bath, produces one. Sneezing brings it on. This sensitiveness would not seem to be a manifestation of disease.
Several professors of philosophy have aided him by making inquiries in their classes. The material thus gathered proves that 'synesthesia' of 'color-hearing' is not so rare as has been thought, and not necessarily abnormal. He divides color — audition into 'analytic synopsy' — where a color is seen for each separate tone and 'synthetic synopsy' in which colors are seen only in moving patterns, in connection with a piece of music.
Among these latter he distinguishes three types, those that while hearing such, perceive bright, shimmering colors on unstable surfaces or in moving serpentine lines; those who hearing music, and also when they hear violent sounds, see surfaces or masses slightly colored, moving slowly, detach themselves from a somber back ground. A third type perceives images, colorless or colored, but generally after audition, when at rest, often just before going to sleep. The same images appear after hearing the same piece, which differentiates these 'photisms' from other kinds.
The work of Dr. Anschutz is but a forerunner of many groups which will be organized to study the mysteries of color and music and to learn to use a synthesis of color and tone for healing the physical ills of man, and also to accentuate and accelerate his moral consciousness and spiritual development.
— Corinne Heline
