The Colors of Sound

[max]

Is the mood of a piece of music determined mostly by it's key or by it's content? What are the 'flavors' of the various keys and which is the heaviest, the most 'gravitational' perhaps even the most philosophical? Are certain keys, D minor for example, more catalytic to great music than others.

Keys and their modulations reflect a canvass in sound. Which are the most potent in your experience?

[Renfield]

Speaking from a synaesthete's perspective, I'd much appreciate it if I knew the various keys (by name, rather than by sound) so well as to be able to make a list of what each one looks like, because that might be interesting...

Perhaps at a later point.

[hornteacher]

Here's a list:

http://www.wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html

[max]

Here's a list:

http://www.wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html

...a good lead-in! But I have to admit, I find some descriptions somewhat silly especially referring to the minor keys.

[FideLeo]

Anyone who has Keith Jarrett's recording of Shostakovitch 24 Preludes and Fugues (Op. 47) can refer to the extensive essay in the booklet written by Wilfrid Mellers, which offers a most lucid and succint account of key symbolisms as known to composers and theorists in the Baroque period.

[Cato]

See this page for the color organ used for Scriabin's Symphony #5 Prometheus:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~musima/visualmusic/visualmusic.htm

It also contains links to Rimsky-Korsakov's and Scriabin's color wheels:

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/jameswierzbicki/synaesthesia.htm

[hornteacher]

...a good lead-in! But I have to admit, I find some descriptions somewhat silly especially referring to the minor keys.

I agree.  The list was written by someone in 1806.  I don't know how extensive the research was.

[c#minor]

I have only had one work of music ever make me think of a color.

I kept being suprised when i picked up my recording of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony b/c the case was not BROWN, it was white. But without fail every time i look for the CD i am suprised to see it's white, not brown.

Then i started to think why i thought the CD case was brown. It began to dawn on me that the music sounded brown.

Weird but thats how it seems to me.

[jochanaan]

Not being a synaesthete, I do not see colors in any but a metaphorical sense.  However, two factors tend to determine the music's "mood color": musical content, and instrumentation.  A full orchestra always has the potential for more "color" than a single instrument (unless that instrument is a synthesizer ) or a small group (although it's possible to assemble small groups that have almost the full range of orchestral colors); but the final determinant is the music itself.  However you would transpose and transcribe the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique, it would almost always end in complete darkness (as long as the instruments you wrote for could play softly enough in the appropriate range).

[Renfield]

I have only had one work of music ever make me think of a color.

I kept being suprised when i picked up my recording of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony b/c the case was not BROWN, it was white. But without fail every time i look for the CD i am suprised to see it's white, not brown.

Then i started to think why i thought the CD case was brown. It began to dawn on me that the music sounded brown.

Weird but thats how it seems to me.

Though I won't dare be anything but speculative, as I do value the scientific method, that is generally one of the trademark ways of realising you're a synaesthete (of that "type"): when the colour in your head doesn't match the colour in the music, it instinctively feels wrong.


Like when I see a red number four (versus green, its "proper" colour), or indeed if someone exposed me to a lot of, say, blue in the opening chords of Bruckner's 8th symphony!

Which would feel horrible, and entirely wrong: the "proper" colour for it apparently ranges from a deep "misty" scarlet (for versions like the Karajan/WPO), to a slightly less fuzzy red-tinted brown for less "airy" versions, like Jochum's. Certainly not blue, though the Adagio has some (or a lot) of that.

[Cato]

I will always remember the cover for the Mercury recording of Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra had a painting by Charles Demuth entitled:

I Saw the Number 5 in Gold.

http://blogs.macaw.nl/photos/antoni/images/10488/original.aspx

An appropriate color for the work!

[Saul]

Color is very much determind by the mood,rythem and interpetation of the work and not just by the instruments.

As for Keys,

I always liked C sharp minor.
G minor.
E minor.
D minor.
A major.
G major.
F major.
F sharp Major.

[max]

Color is very much determind by the mood,rythem and interpetation of the work and not just by the instruments.

As for Keys,

I always liked C sharp minor.
G minor.
E minor.
D minor.
A major.
G major.
F major.
F sharp Major.

I guess any key will strike a 'chord' if the music itself becomes a 'metaphor' for that key meaning that the music itself is great enough to become a 'signature' for THAT KEY!

What you say is true. In the Baroque for instance, the minor keys were never inherently regarded as dark, profound or tragic unlike the late Classical or Romantic. But I stand to be corrected!

[Saul]

I guess any key will strike a 'chord' if the music itself becomes a 'metaphor' for that key meaning that the music itself is great enough to become a 'signature' for THAT KEY!

What you say is true. In the Baroque for instance, the minor keys were never inherently regarded as dark, profound or tragic unlike the late Classical or Romantic. But I stand to be corrected!

Thanks and you make a good point yourself.