ART AND CHROMAETESIA

Traditionally, the arts have been separated into disciplines delimited by medium and other criterion. Painting and music for example are delimited by, amongst other things, the different senses by which they are perceived - we hear music and see painting. One of the great dreams of the romantic tradition has been that works particular to each artistic discipline might be meaningfully represented in another artistic discipline. One of the great challenges to the inter-disciplinary translation of artworks has been the development of a system of mapping perceptual attributes between each of the five human senses. By mid-nineteenth century chromaetesia had intrigued an art movement that sought sensory fusion, and a union of the senses appeared more and more frequently as an idea. Multimodal concerts of music and light (son et lumiere), sometimes including odor, were popular and often featured color organs, keyboards that controlled colored lights as well as musical notes. Whilst mapping between sculpture and painting may be achieved in a very literal way, mapping between music and painting has always presented itself as more of a challenge.

Chromaethesia may be considered as interactions in polysensory system. It should be emphasized that not only external exteroreceptive sensations, such as hearing, sight, etc., but internal interoreceptive sensations are at work. Interoreceptive sensations cause internal state changes in physical organs resulting in how one feels himself. In addition, relational proprioreceptive sensations impact the location of the body in space, as in the case of vestibular and weight perception.

In chromaethesia, higher cognitive processes participate, even if they may operate at a subconscious level. This is a form of non-verbal thinking, as is visual and musical thinking. Audio-visual synaesthesia forms relationships between visual and musical thinking.

Chromaethesia is an essential characteristic of artistic thinking promoting the realization of mediating compensation for the incompleteness of sensuality, itself. The relative indifference of an artistic image to specific limited nature of its form and the universality of artistic phenomenon can be explained through a chromaethesic analysis. Concurrently, all art operates in a chromaethesic complex, those inherent to its particular form and a chromaethesic fund of a common artistic space-time. Some of the most common relationships between the audible and visible worlds in art are:

Dynamics in music - Dynamics of gesture, both its movement in space and changing in brightness
Melodic development - Character and dynamics of drawing
Music tempo - Speed of movement and transformation of visual images
Music rhythm and meter - Spatial and temporal accents in the visual arts
Timbre development - Color development
Tonality change - Development of coloring of the whole picture or color plane
Mode changing (minor and major shifts) - Lightening or darkening

Analogies between melody and mechanical motion are tied to the audio -proprioceptive synesthesias. These analogies may be quite interesting - for instance, theories on the "kinetic energy" of sound, by E.Kurt; on "sound body" and "sounding matter," by B.Asafiev; and, especially, on "audio space," by G.Revesh, A.Weliek and E.Nazaikinsky. Audio space may even have its own coordinates: depth (texture), vertical (melodies), horizontal (architectonics of music pieces as a whole).

Hypothetical synesthetic analogy-between perception of terrestrial gravity and modal gravity in music (suggested as far back as the 1920s by B.L. Yavorsky) can help to deepen comprehension of the nature of the audio space in which the sound body moves. The analogy has remained a hypothesis until now because its proof has been impossible for traditional musicologists and psycho-physiologists, who have separately tried to determine its validity. It can be recalled that modal organization is the most specific characteristic of music, sharply distinguishing it from the other arts. Modal organization in music, along with humans' psychological ability to react to sound independently, is responsible for the phenomenon of melody - combining sequences of single sounds into integral sound configurations, which act in the perceived audio space. Let us compare such peculiarities of hearing with human vestibular apparatus functions that give information about a person's position and motion in space in response to Earth's gravitational field and acceleration.

Yavorsky believes that regular shifting between various forms of balance (stability) and imbalance (instability) in music is the key to understanding the psychophysiological bases of different constructions in art. It is well known that gravity shows its worth in all kinds of art - in painting and in architecture (compositional balance), in choreography (with its art-linguistic structures built by a continual fight against gravity in general).

In music, analogously, the propensity of imbalance to resolve into balance has basic significance in musical dynamics, namely for "mode building," where modes are thought by Yavorsky to be a sum total of gravitational pulls on the unbalanced sounds, resolving them into balanced ones. Modal rhythm characterizes the process of modal development unfolding in time. Timbre and dynamics emphasize and accentuate the bounds of gravity, and tempo emphasizes the rate of change of these bounds, according to Yavorsky.

Every musician has his own semantics of tonalities, his own emotion-notional and symbolic evaluation of them, that is being formed in the course of upbringing and creation. It can't be the same and single for all people, as it was supposed in 18 c. by the exponents of the so called "theory of affects" (or, more widely, " the normative aesthetics"). The tonality semantics depends on age, on art school, on style in which the musician works, in brief, on history and art context and also on his personal creative preferences. So, differences are inevitable, but it does not mean that there is a realm of absolute chaos. Composer R.Schumann noted it very expressly in his well-known work titled "The Characteristics of Tonalities": "We can't say that this or that feeling, if it has to be fully expressed, calls for translation into music by means of namely this and not any other tonality", - he wrote. But we also can't agree with those who "asserts that in every tonality everything can be expressed", - considers Schumann. And, correspondingly, particular semantics of colors can be formed in every cultured individual. And it is natural to expect that "similar to one another" (as Sabaneyev said) colors and tonalities can connect in conscience of an interested individual into association.

The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin(1872-1915) who was interested in the psychological effects of the simultaneous experience of color and sound started at a more complex level of synesthetic experiences. He started from a system of color-key correspondences instead of color-tone correspondences. He investigated the emotional aspects of synesthetic experiences of color during the change of one musical key to another.

He characterized the colors: his red is a "color of Abaddon", blue and violet - colors of "reason", "spiritual" colors. Therefore, their juxtapositions are quite matter-of-course: C-dur, F-dur - are red and Fis-dur - deep blue. For Scriabin just these associations were the most evident and vivid. In the Scriabin Museum's archives a list without date and title has remained, but it is filled by his own hand and there - several different versions of correlations between various notes and colors are written. We can see that the composer builds up a conception. It is hard to judge - to what, concretely, it applies, but the connection of this list with "colored hearing" or the "Luce" part is obvious. And the main point here is that also Sabaneyev specially records in his reminiscences about Scriabin - the mental, conscious character of his correlations. The composer did not want to believe that his associations were not compulsory for everyone. He believed that they were universal. "It can't be personal, - said Scriabin firmly. - There must be a principle, must be oneness. Game of chances - is ripple on the surface, and the essential must be common". In searching for the common Scriabin builds up a system of color-tonal analogies: "The three clear to me colors gave me three bearings",- said he, confessing that the rest colors are derived by him "theoretically". In his natural aim "to put in a system all associations" he juxtaposed the "allied colors" (arranged in spectrum) and the "allied tonalities" (as it is known, this alliance is obvious when they are arranged into the so-called "circle of fifths"). "Having taken cognizance of this consistency, - Sabaneyev writes, - Scriabin found the dropped out links of the scale of color-sound accordance and had to come to the inner agreement that he was right in his theoretical premise. In other words, he began to search in the depth of his apprehension those associations that derived from his theory, and made sure that it is not difficult to call them in".

According to Scriabin the presentation of the right color corresponding with music works as "a powerful psychological resonator for the listener". Invited by the experimental psychologist Myers, Scriabin presented his ideas in London. Scriabin explained to Myers that whenever the tonality of a musical piece changes, the color will change too: "color underlines the tonality; it makes the tonality more evident". Sometimes he perceived a change in color sooner than the change in key. The addition of color to music would intensify both the auditory and visual effect simultaneously, according to Scriabin.

ALEXSANDER Scriabin's system of colored musical keys:

Vasilly Kandinsky (1866-1944) had perhaps the deepest sympathy for sensory fusion, both synesthetic and as an artistic idea. He explored harmonious relationship between sound and color and used musical terms to describe his paintings, calling them "compositions" and "improvisations." His own 1912 opera, Der Gelbe Klang ("The Yellow Sound"), specified a compound mixture of color, light, dance, and sound typical of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Kandisky yearned to push aside analytic explanations and move himself and his audience closer to the quality of direct experience that syneshetesia typifies. There is an important clue in his famos dictum “stop thinking” that relates to one of synesthesia’s implications in reversing the roles of reason and emotion. Kandisky grasped that creativity is an experience, not an abstract idea, and that a mind that incessantly analyzes what is there impedes that experience.

Color Theory according to Wassily Kandinsky: "Concerning the Spiritual in Art”

Amy Beach (1867-1944). American pianist and composer. Amy's association of certain colors with certain keys. For instance, Amy might ask her mother to play the 'purple music' or the 'green music.' The most popular story, however, seems to be the one about Amy's going on a trip to California and notating on staff paper the exact pitches of bird calls she heard. Amy's mother encouraged her to relate melodies to the colors blue, pink, or purple, but before long Amy had a wider range of colors, which she associated with certain major keys. Thus C was white, F-sharp black, E yellow, G red, A green, A-flat blue, D-flat violet or purple, and E-flat pink. Until the end of her life she associated these colors with those keys.”

Day, Sean A fairly unknown composer, who has written few works in his spare, hobby time. Sean Day synesthetically "sees" colors corresponding to musical timbres; each instrument has its specific color . Click HERE to hear one of his compositions, Absence , a duet for flute and cello. For Sean Day, are synesthetically flashes, cellos are dark cherry wood with green flecks. Below is the painting that I painted by listening to this beautiful melody.

My painting by listening to ”Absence”

Drummer Elvin Jones said playing with Coltrane was like "a young boy going to the circus and stopping at the stand selling cotton candy and ice cream cones." He was still playing with scarcely diminished enthusiasm when he died Tuesday at the age of 76. Jones played with dynamic power, often setting rhythm upon rhythm, pushing and pulling the music along in an interaction with other musicians that some have called a circle of sound. His drumming was constantly active, a sort of continuous solo without losing rhythmic clarity, adding punctuations and annotations and a flow of inspiration to both solos and ensemble playing. "I can see forms and shapes in my mind when I solo, just as a painter can see forms and shapes when he starts a painting," he told Whitney Balliett, the New Yorker writer. "And I can see different colors. My cymbals will be one color and my snare another color and my tom-toms each a different color. I mix these colors up, making constant movement. "Drums suggest movement," he said, "a conscious, constant shifting of sounds and levels of sound. My drumming can shade from a whisper to a thunder. I'm not conscious of the length of my solos, which I've been told have run up to half an hour. When you develop a certain pattern, you stay with it until it's finished."

"Musical graphics," method which involves methods of painting and drawing music (generally resulting in abstract visual compositions) was first used for educational and psychological purposes by 0. Rainer who published the results of his experiments in his book "Musikalische Graphik". After he died in 1941, his work was continued by G. Zunderman and B.Ernst. In 1962, musical graphics was introduced into the curriculum of the Vienna Academy of Music and Fine Art, out of which developed the Musical Graphics Institute, where a special museum dedicated to the best works was established. The experience of the institute proves the effectiveness of drawing music in pedagogical and psychological research involving audio-visual associations.

The methods of musical graphics have followers all over the world. The experiments by I.Vanechkina, I.Trofimova in Soviet Union pursued two types of objectives: scientific (studying the psychological regularities of color-hearing synesthesia) and pedagogical (testing the efficiency of the method in education). The scientific objective necessitated investigating the way music is reflected in drawings - from distinct musical aspects such as melody, harmony, mode, timbre, tempo, texture and dynamics to a more general impression of program music and non-program music in different styles and characters.

The music drawing itself was done by experimental and control groups of pupils. In the control group, traditional music classes, without drawing, were held. In the experimental group, the same musical works were studied but with the application of the method of musical graphics. The children had a preliminary acquaintance with the general aspects of music such as melody, harmony, tempo, etc. and aspects of painting such as drawing, coloring, composition, etc. The children were asked to listen intently to a piece of music, then they participated actively in an analysis of its structure and content. Only after that did the children begin to draw.

Musical graphics by a 17-year-old schoolgirl; music by A.Scriabin: Dark Flame. The student was asked to listen to the music without knowing the name of the piece. However, she was able to show the essence of this piano piece through both lines and colors.

W.A.Mozart. Symph. N 40, part 1. (L.Sheveleva, 12 years old, school N 116, 1977)

Olivier Messiaen was a composer who wrote several compositions over the period from 1929 to 1974.  He was most interested in using his synesthesia to present a pictorial story to his audience.  He tried to write his music in such a way that the colors he visualized would paint a scene that the audience would be able to understand and appreciate.  For example, in one piece of music, Messiaen wove together the chords in such a way that to him, he saw a sunrise and a sunset.  He used different instrumentation and dynamics to attempt to convey this imagery to the audience.  Messiaen used his synesthesia in such a way that he gave his audience a better perspective of the piece of music being performed (Bernard).  Psychologists have studied individuals like Messiaen in an effort to figure out what actually occurs in the brain during synesthetic experiences and have tried to relate this to those individuals who do not have synesthesia.