Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Color with music

<<From: "Ed & Alita Morrison" <ESSAIM@T...>
Date: Wed Oct 10, 2001 4:06 am
Subject: Color with music

Aaron and anyone else interested, Aaron, you sent a long list of
references about color with music. You said that out of about 40
references 10 had really worthwhile information. Which are the 10
worthwhile references? Alita Morrison>>

Hi. The remark wasn't specifically about those sources I posted. While some
are much less interesting than others, I think all of the sources I listed
are worthwhile (I tried not to list useless ones.) Still, the least
interesting from the previous list are in my opinion:

Musicolour, by Ronald Senator, Musicolor Ltd., 1977.

Musical Colour, by Danton Adams, Douglas & Gilson (1922) LTD., first edition,
1960.

Rainbow-Music; or The Philosophy of Harmony in Colour-Grouping, by Lady
Archibald Campbell, Bernard Quaritch, London, 1886.

There are many German sources on the subject. One which I listed is very
enjoyable to read is also short and handsomely published in full color:

Farb-Musik: Leitfaden für eine kombinierte Farben- und Musiklehre, by Fritz
Dobretzberger and Johannes Paul, 1993, Simon and Leutner Verlag, Berlin.

And again, I think the best general introduction is probably:

Coloured Light: An Art Medium, being the third edition enlarged of
“Colour-Music,” by Adrian Bernard Klen, M.B.E., A.R.P.S., Technical Press
Ltd., 1937.

I first read the second edition of this book and then skimmed the third,
which I obtained later, and I think either one will do as an introduction.
(I very much disagree with Klein's conclusions, however)

A big problem I found with most sources is that the authors rarely showed a
grasp of both music theory and color theory. Usually music theory was most
lacking. Klein (above) was not a competent music theorist by any stretch of
the imagination, but he was admittedly better than most. As one might
expect, the level of musical discussion usually revolves around an assumed 12
equal tempered tones, and where tuning theory was involved, it was almost
always erroneous or completely misunderstood by the author(s), who many times
invoke numbers and ratios as a smokescreen for lack of insight.

Again, the list I posted is by no means complete, but is a product of my own
particular interests. For instance, there was apparently an active Soviet
institute of research on the topic of color in music, but I was only able to
get one source from Russia and it was in extremely poor condition - pages
missing and falling out - and the photos were in black and white.

Here are a few interesting passages from Newton's Opticks, which is in my
opinion the earliest substantial source on the topic.

Aaron

P.S. Please send me email directly since I don't often catch up on the list.
Thanks
----

from OPTICKS, or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and
Colors of Light, by Sir Isaac Newton, fourth edition 1730, available from
Dover Publications, New York, 1952. (first edition, 1704)

preface, p. 110: “Qu. 13. Different colours produce vibrations of different
sizes and hence different sensations, as in sound- the most refrangible rays
produce the shortest vibrations ... p. 345-346."

p. 345-346 “Do not several sorts of Rays make Vibrations of several
bignesses, which according to their bignesses excite Sensations of several
Colours, much after the manner that the Vibrations of the Air, according to
their several bignesses excite Sensations of several Sounds? And
particularly do not the most refrangible Rays excite the shortest Vibrations
for making a Sensation of deep violet, the least refrangible the largest for
making a Sensation of deep red, and the several intermediate sorts of Rays,
Vibrations of several intermediate bignesses to make Sensations of the
several intermediate Colours?”

preface p. 110: “Qu. 14. Harmony and discord of colours related to the ratio
of vibrations, as in sound ... p. 346."

p. 346 “May not the harmony and discord of Colours arise from the proportions
of the Vibrations propagated through the Fibres of the optick Nerves into the
Brain, as the harmony and discord of Sounds arise from the proportions of the
Vibrations of the Air? For some Colours, if they be view’d together, are
agreeable to one another, as those of Gold and Indigo, and others disagree.”

p. 200 Newton found that the squares of the distances between rings of colors
produced through lenses to be equal to the progressions of odd and even
integers, 1 through 12, the odd numbers being colors and the even numbers
being spaces between them.

p. 210 Newton found that a ratio 14/9 (between 3/2 and 13/8) seemed to govern
the relation between the sizes of red rings in proportion to the sizes of
violet rings made by a prism as it was moved about by an assistant.

p. 212 “The thicknesses of the Air between the Glasses there, where the Rings
are succesively made by the limits of the seven Colours, red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo, violet, in order, are to one another as the Cube Roots
of the Squares of the eight lengths of a Chord, which found the Notes in an
eighth, sol, la fa, sol, la, mi, fa, sol; that is, as the Cube Roots of the
Squares of the Numbers 1, 8/9, 5/6, 3/4, 2/3, 3/5, 9/16, 1/2.” cf. p. 225,
280, 284, 305

p. 292-295 other interesting whole number series of squares of distances 0,
1, 2, 3, 4.

p. 325 experiments using a hair placed between 2 lenses, and observations of
fringes produced around shadows cast by the hair as well as scratches and
bubbles in the lenses: “The breadths of the Fringes seem’d to be in the
progression of the Numbers 1, √1/3, √1/5, and their Intervals to be in the
same progression with them; that is, the Fringes and their Intervals together
to be in the continual progression of the Numbers 1, √1/2, √1/3, √1/4,
√1/5, or thereabouts.”

Newton established ROYGBIV and an analogy between a minor diatonic scale -
1/1, 9/8, 6/5, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 9/16, 2/1 - and 7 colors of the visible
spectrum or the rainbow, later dismissed as a tautology by Helmholtz among
others who pointed out that the spectrum is continuous and appears to have
imprecise boundaries.

Color with music

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