Music, Colour and Eurythmy

Preamble
This article arose as a result of work that the eurythmist Jonathan Reid and I carried out over a
period of more than a year, where we were attempting to ‘triangulate’ music, colour and
eurythmy. One result of this was two workshops for eurythmists held during the AGM of the
Eurythmy Association of Great Britain and Ireland. This article is in response to those who
requested something in writing about my introductions to each session. It is mainly concerned
with music and colour but, as the workshops showed, there can be much value in bringing this
into eurythmy.

What is sound, what is colour?

“If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Such a question can be related to the philosophical stand of Bishop Berkeley: "sensible things
are those only which are immediately perceived by sense." It certainly raises the question as to
what we mean by ‘sound’. A scientist may de ne sound as the pressure variations in the air that
cause us to hear it, but that is simply not good enough, because there really is no sound unless
it is heard. The hearer is an intimate and essential associate if there is to be sound.
Now what about colour? Some years ago New Scientist included a set of articles including one
entitled “How Red is my Tomato?”. Same again – colour exists because we see it.
What we make of sound, what we make of colour, in both cases we are talking about a soul
activity. Yes, we sense/perceive something: but it is how we ‘go out’ to meet it, which is our
activity, that determines what we hear or see.
None of this con icts with the fact that there is a physical source for sound and colour.

Music and Colour

There has long been an association between music and colour, going back to the time of
Aristotle who, around 350 B.C. maintained that the harmony of colours was like the harmony of
sounds:
“… we may regard these colours (viz. all those colours based on numerical ratios) as analogous
to the sounds that enter into music, and suppose that those involving simple numerical ratios,
like the concords [the harmonious blends] in music, may be those generally regarded as most
agreeable ….” (from The Senses and the Sensible)
This set the scene for making parallels between light and sound frequencies in later times,
including Isaac Newton, who arbitrarily divided the visible light spectrum into seven colours and
applied this to the notes C-D-E-F etc. from red through to violet.
From Medieval times colour has also been used as an aid for reading music, being applied to
notes, rhythms and modes. Is it possible, though, that the colours chosen might also re ect
something about the qualities of these?
A different approach arose from the desire to widen experience of performing and listening to a
piece of music by adding colour in some way. Thus from the 18th Century onwards there were
many different designs for so-called ‘Colour Organs’ – machines creating different colours by
playing on a keyboard. Generally these machines, impressive and innovative as they were, did
not themselves combine music and colour. A later exception (1870) was Frederick Kastner’s
‘pyrophone’ (‘Orchestral Fire Organ and its appliances, The Electric Candelabra’) with ignited
gas jets making sounds like voice, piano, orchestra.

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 More followed, including the ‘luxatone’, invented by Harvey Spencer Lewis in 1916; this converted
audio signals, which were inputted by a microphone, into colours. Spencer Lewis was a noted
Rosicrucian and the founder and rst Imperator of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis
(AMORC):
“The Luxatone, a color-organ invented by H. Spencer Lewis and rst demonstrated in New York
City in February 1916, is described in his article bearing the same name [“The Story of Luxatone
the master Colour Organ”] Although the Luxatone was dismantled long ago, it may be studied and
understood today through records of its construction and operation. As indicated by the
Rosicrucian concept of the Cosmic Keyboard and its accompanying musical keyboard, there is a
direct relationship between sound and color, in which the latter is an arithmetic multiple of the
former. Musical notes have special relationships with their factors and multiples. Everything on the
keyboard is based on its scienti cally demonstrable vibratory levels.” (Rose+Cross Journal 2009
Vol.6)
From the invention of ‘Colour Organs’ onwards we can see the beginnings of Gesamtkunstwerk –
total art work as exempli ed by Richard Wagner in his approach to opera, with the synthesis of
different elements. But we are also beginning to explore a more fundamental relationship between
music and colour. Thus, of Russian composers for
example, both Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin relate
speci c colours to tones, though they differ in details.

Scriabin’s Prometheus
In Prometheus, a gigantic orchestral work by
Alexander Scriabin, we nd a work of art that
combines music and colour in a fully mutual
relationship, a ne example of Gesamkunstwerk. At
the top of the full score for an enormous orchestra is
a stave with the part for Tastiera per luce (Keyboard
for light) (see g.1). The colours corresponding with
the notes are shown in the Keyboard of the Luce (see
g.2). These colours go through Goethe’s colour
wheel (see g.3) corresponding to the cycle of fths
(see g.4).
As you can see, the correspondence of colours is
virtually identical to that indicated by Rudolf Steiner
from Theosophy, where they are also associated with
the Zodiac (see g.5, which also shows the
comparison of colours assigned to tones by Rimsky-
Korsakov). The colours accompany the performance
through the playing of the keyboard.

g.1. Prometheus ( rst page)

fig.2. Scriabin’s colour keyboard

g.3. Goethe’s colour wheel

fig.4. Scriabin’s cycle of fths colours

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 The music is based almost completely on inversions and transpositions of one chord created by
Scriabin and subsequently used in a number of compositions. Known variously as the
‘Promethean’ or ‘mystic’ chord, it does not relate to normal major/minor tonality (see g.6).

Tone Steiner Zodiac Scriabin Rimsky-Korsakov Newton

C Red Aries Red White Red
G Orange Taurus Orange Brownish gold Deep Blue
D Yellow Gemini Yellow Yellow Orange
A Green Cancer Green Rosy Indigo
E Blue Leo Sky blue Sapphire blue Yellow
B Indigo Virgo Blue Dark blue/steely Violet
F# Violet Scales Violet Greyish green g.6. Scriabin’s ‘mystic chord’
Db Lilac Scorpio Lilac Dusky, warm
Ab Lilac-Rose Sagittarius Lilac-rose Greyish violet
Eb Peach Capricorn Peach Bluish-grey/Steely
Bb Rose Aquarius Rose Darkish
F Pink Pisces Deep pink Green Green

g.5. Music/Colour associations

The score for the Luce has two parts – a more rapidly moving part and a slower moving part. The
more rapidly moving part indicates the root note of the mystic chord at that moment, producing
the colour indicated in g.2. For Scriabin the colours produced indicate different moods.
There is also a much slower moving part, principally following the notes of a rising whole-tone
scale based on F#, and with notes held in some cases for up to 100 bars or more. Fig. 7, which
shows the rst 50 bars of the Luce part, gives some idea. The more rapidly moving part is ‘stems
up’, the slower part ‘stems down’. The initial tempo is Lento, but there is much variation around
that.

g.7 Prometheus Luce part (bars 1-50)

The F# of the slower part is actually held for 86 bars.

See Synesthetic Perception: Alexander Scriabin’s Color Hearing* by Kenneth Peacock for further
details and analysis of Prometheus.
Now we have met the word ‘synesthetic‘ (the adjective from ‘synaesthesia’) for the rst time in
this article . . .
Synaesthesia is the word used to describe when one kind of sensory perception leads to a
different kind. So, for example, a person hearing a piece of music can ‘see’ colour. The word ’see’
is in inverted commas for reasons which will become apparent later. Someone who experiences
this is known as a synaesthete.

* In Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol.2, No.4 (Summer 1985),

Published by University of California Press

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 Olivier Messiaen
I believe that the description of Messiaen as a synaesthete is universally accepted. He says as
much about this himself, though using the word ‘synopsia’:
“I am . . . affected by a kind of synopsia (coloured-hearing synaesthesia), found more in my mind
than in my body, which allows me, when I hear music, and equally when I read it, to see inwardly,
in the mind’s eye, colours which move with the music, and I sense these colours in an extremely
vivid manner. . . . For me certain complexes of sound and certain sonorities are linked to
complexes of colour, and I use them in full knowledge of this.”
Technique de mon langage musical (originally published 1944)
And further . . .
“When I hear music, I see in my mind complexes of colours corresponding to complexes of
sounds…
In answer to the question ‘Is Debussy’s music colourful?’: “Marvellously colourful!”
Other composers who are colourful: “Wagner, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Monteverdi, Chopin.”
“(Mozart)…is different from the other classical composers. Mozart is not always tonal. He’s often
chromatic. He is always coloured.”
“There is only music that is coloured and music that isn’t.”
(these quotes are from the book Conversations with Claude Samuel )
Messiaen was very clear in his perception of colours attributed to music, notably with his own
scales and chords, derived from his Modes of Limited Transposition. These modes, or scales,
were created by him, not at all following the normal intervals between the notes associated with
major and minor scales. Of the six such modes, four have colour associations. Thus colour, for
Messiaen, is a key element in the compositional process. Yet he fully recognises what is
generally known to be the case – that the actual colours seen or felt vary with different individuals
– they are subjective.
Messiaen’s La Colombe was one of the pieces Jonathan and I worked with, and the rst two bars
of the piece illustrate the
point (see g.8).

Fig.8. La Colombe opening bars

Looking rst at the top stave we see that although the key signature is that of E major, there are
f-naturals, not f-sharps. This is actually in one of his ‘Modes of Limited Transposition’ – Mode 2.
Messiaen described this piece as being “orange, veined with violet”, and in this passage the top
stave has the “veins of violet”. The other two staves which provide the peaceful background at
this point are in Mode 3, which is the ‘orange’, being the general colour for this mode. In a
number of other works Messiaen is more explicit, writing the colours of chords in the actual
score.*

* See Messiaen’s Synaesthesia: The Correspondence between Color and Sound Structure in His Music
by Jonathan W. Bernard, in Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol.4, No.1 (Fall, 1986),
Published by University of California Press
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Working with colour
My own experience of colour in music began with feeling that Bluebeard’s Castle, a one-act
symbolist opera by Bela Bartók was ‘dark chocolate’, and I then found other pieces that I felt had
that colour. That was about 50 years ago.
Much later came a request from a Eurythmy student that I would compose a set of short pieces
following the indications given by Rudolf Steiner for the colours and tones of the Zodiac, to
accompany the presentation of her project. At the point where I had written all but one of these I
then tackled the last one, which seemed to elude me. I wrote something which I felt at the time
was not right and, sure enough, when we came to try it out one of the eurythmists immediately
said it was just not right for the colour of that Zodiac sign. (My second attempt did work!).
And then, just over two years ago, Jonathan Reid and I were working together on one of my own
compositions – a short piano piece dedicated to a close local friend entitled In Memoriam.
Jonathan had been working on some of the standard aspects for eurythmy – pitch, intervals etc
– but then one day he said he was stopping this approach and would turn to working through
‘colour’, which became a basis for the performance.
With this very much in my mind I suggested to the Council of the Eurythmy Association, of which
I was a member, that we might run a workshop on ‘colour in music’ for the next AGM. The
Council picked this up with enthusiasm, and there were two sessions at the following (much
delayed by Covid) AGM.
In recent years I had become increasingly in love with the music of Olivier Messiaen, and colour
in music is a reality to him. This very much entered into what happened next.
Jonathan Reid and I began a long period of working on music, colour and eurythmy, the result of
which was then used in two workshops at the delayed AGM held in October 2021. We had many
a conversation about synaesthesia, and worked on three pieces: Canope from Claude
Debussy’s second book of Preludes, In Memoriam (my short piece) and La Colombe from the
book of preludes by Olivier Messiaen. The rst two pieces were subsequently used in the
workshops at the AGM, which involved around 30 eurythmists.
The sessions that Jonathan and I had were most stimulating – a real working together on a
voyage of discovery. It is worth mentioning that at one point we each chose colours for sections
of Canope and In Memoriam, then compared them. Although there were a few differences there
was a remarkable level of agreement.

What do we mean by Synaesthesia?

It is time to consider what can be said to constitute synaesthesia, who are the people who
experience it, and what its full meaning may be. You will not be surprised to know that there is
no single answer to these questions.
The overall picture of synaesthesia is complicated, showing itself in different forms and with
different results. With music, synaesthetic experiences are in response to different aspects of the
music.
Thus, for example, Duke Ellington sees colour according to particular instruments and players:
”I hear a note by one of the fellows in the band and it’s one color. I hear the same note played by
someone else and it’s a different color. When I hear sustained musical tones, I see just about the
same colors that you do, but I see them in textures. If Harry Carney is playing, D is dark blue
burlap. If Johnny Hodges is playing, G becomes light blue satin.”

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The following quote relating to Franz Liszt indicates a colour response to the way the tones in a
piece of music are being played:
"When Liszt rst began as Kapellmeister in Weimar (1842), it astonished the orchestra that he
said: 'O please, gentlemen, a little bluer, if you please! This tone type requires it!' Or: 'That is a
deep violet, please, depend on it! Not so rose!' First the orchestra believed Liszt just joked; later on
they got accustomed to the fact that the great musician seemed to see colors there, where there
were only tones." (Anonymous, as quoted in a book by Friedrich Mahling*)
From these examples it is clear that colour experiences in music can be responses to different
aspects of music. Psychologists who have conducted experiments have come up with different
aspects of music as the initiators of colour responses. Kenneth Peacock puts these into four broad
groups: compositional styles, timbre, pitch and tonalities (keys).
There are undoubtedly people who ‘see’ colours in the same sense of reality as one sees colours
in an ordinary object, but stimulated by sound. Others will say that they ‘see’ colours in the sense
more akin to the following description from Rudolf Steiner’s Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
regarding colours as seen by an initiate in the ame seen in meditation of a seed:
"It must be explicitly emphasised that these 'colours' are not colours as seen by physical eyes. To
apprehend 'blue' spiritually means to be aware of or to feel something similar to what is
experienced when the physical eye rests upon the colour blue."
Then there are those who might ‘see’ colours through some word association. Just think of the
number of words and phrases that go along with particular colours – ‘feeling blue’, ‘seeing red’ etc.
And others who make associations of colours with other experiences of the senses – pastoral
music linked to green elds/rolling hills for example.
Still others who simply want to expand listeners experience of a piece of music by adding the
colour element.
And those who hold to a ‘scheme’.
Sometimes it is more a matter of feeling colours that ‘ t’ with the music.
More than one of the above can come into play. Many people will not permit some of them to
qualify as synaesthesia and thus will, for example, describe Scriabin as a ‘pseudo
synaesthete’ (the phrase ‘loose synaesthesia’ is also used to cover this).

How does synaesthesia happen?

The existence of synaesthesia is beyond doubt, both in terms of the responses people give and in
the act that the ‘cross-over’ can be detected in the different sensory areas of the brain. In the case
of the latter, despite the fact that the responses seem to be almost simultaneous in the two areas,
the question remains as to whether that is due to a neurological link, or whether the brain is acting
as the depository recording the responses, which are themselves taking place in the soul.
The former approach, the neurological one, sees the neurological links as primary. One form of this
approach is to regard synaesthesia as the lingering of neural connections from early childhood –
ones which are ‘normally’ broken during the modi cation of neural connections during the process
of life.
But there is also a completely different way of looking at synaesthesia that leads to colour
perception (chromaesthesia) . . .

* Presumably in his book Die deutsche klassische Sinfonie : Kurze Einführung

Klangbilder aus der deutschen Musikgeschichte. (The German classical symphony:
a brief introduction to sound images from German music history).

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 The sensorimotor approach to chromaesthesia
This is the approach that is explored in a research article by Caroline Curwen of Shef eld
University, entitled Music-Colour Synaesthesia: A Sensorimotor Account. (SAGE journals)
Key to this is the idea that “musical experience . . . is not something that is done to us” [but
instead is] “something we do” (Krueger, 2011, p. 2).
And that “music-colour synaesthesia should be examined not as a separate and distinct
condition, but as a continuation of typical perception and cognition.” It is, therefore, surely
something that is experienced in the soul.
From this perspective, whereas someone who does not have chromaesthesia may wonder
what it is like to have it, someone who does have chromaesthesia will be wondering what it is
like not to have it. It is experiential, rather than cognitive.
Piaget speaks of the sensorimotor period of early childhood development – remarkably close
to Rudolf Steiner’s description of the early child being wholly sense organ.
An extract from Caroline Curwen’s paper gives some idea of how this relates to music:

“Sensorimotor Theory and Music

How can we relate this to music? If an act of listening to music is an interaction with the sonic
environment (Krueger, 2009), relevant sensorimotor contingencies may be obtained in the
following ways: bodiliness: turning towards the sound we hear; grabbiness: being alerted at a
key or instrumentation change; insubordinateness (relating to aspects of the sonic world
beyond our control): music stopping unexpectedly, equipment failure, instrument failure.
. . . our perception roams around different aspects of the material, exploring melodies,
instruments, chords, structure, and style; and we are aware of that exploration through
bodiliness . . . we will know that we are experiencing a crescendo because of increasing
tension in the muscles; and we will experience rhythm because of the way that it allows us to
synchronize our movements (virtual or actual) with the beat; This constitutes bodiliness.
Grabbiness, by contrast, captures the idea that the environment guides the subject in
perception . . . In an orchestral piece, a listener might be more likely to be “grabbed” by
timbre . . . Or we may be “grabbed” by the unexpected change from minor to major in a tierce
de Picardie.”

And nally . . .
This article has concentrated on tones, whether single or as keys or chords. But there are
many factors involved in what actually makes a piece of music:-
Structural features phrasing
forms (ternary form, sonata form, rondo, variations, dance forms etc.)

Elements of music pitch and melody

duration and rhythm
harmony – tonality – modality
dynamics
articulation (staccato, accents etc.)
tone colour (timbre) – instrumentation Klangfarbenmelodie?
texture (polyphonic / homophonic)

Any or all of these play into how music affects us, and some of these we have considered.
Some we have not – but could they too lead to a colour response?

Andrew Dyer
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