Musical synaesthesia

>From: Daniel Seriff <microtonal@...>
>Musical synaesthesia doesn't really work that way. Scriabin and
>Rimsky-Korsakov, the two most famous musical synaesthetics (both
>Russian...makes you wonder), disagreed on which colors were associated
>with which pitches. They both thought Wagner was an idiot, tho, for
>using the wrong key in the Magic Fire music in Gotterdammerung (he
>should have used G). Here's Scriabin's color wheel (all major keys):
>
>C: Intense red
>G: Orange
>D: Yellow
>A: Green
>E: Sky blue (moonshine or frost)
>B/Cb: Blue (or pearly blue)
>F#/Gb: Bright blue or violet
>C#/Db: Violet or purple
>Ab: Violet or lilac
>Eb: Flesh (glint of steel)
>Bb: Rose (or steel)
>F: Deep red
Obviously using the color wheel, which does indeed have twelve colors,
mapping them to the twelve key signatures.  Relative minors are the same
color, I assume...

To me, I associate certain keys with various moods:

C major: triumph
D minor: courage
G minor: alarm
G major: joy
(or am I just thinking of Bach's "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring")
A minor: sadness
E minor: hope
B minor: melancholy
D major: reverence (a lot of hymns are in D)
Bb major: military
(I was in marching band in school; Bb is a very common key)
Eb major: patriotic (the key of many national anthems)
C minor: anger
Ab major: love
F minor: fear

That's all I can think of for now.  By the way, I use a twelve-color system
to describe personality types, so perhaps I could use it for the circle of
fifths in Western (12-tone) music.

Daniel A. Wier  ¶¦¬þ
Lufkin, Texas USA
http://communities.msn.com/DannysDoubleWideontheWeb
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