On Demand
Moving Colors
By David Garland
April 18, 2008
I just got back from a visit to The Museum of Modern Art, where, as a museum member, I got to see a preview of a roomful of changing color by Olafur Eliasson (you may coincidentally see an ad for the show on the right-hand side of this page).
As beautiful as the colors are in the still photos I’m including here, a really important aspect of the exhibit is that it changes in time. Colors continuously revolve and overlap and are projected on the viewer’s body.
It seemed to me that adding the dimension of time to the visual art experience made Eliasson’s piece much closer to music than it is to the paintings, drawings and sculptures in the rest of MoMA.
Some musicians associate certain colors with certain musical pitches or chords. Olivier Messiaen described his compositions in terms of vivid, detailed color juxtapositions. Scriabin wanted to build a “color organ” for his music.
Some other interesting efforts toward Color Music (the Ocular Harpsichord!) are detailed here.
Have you had a synaesthetic experience? What color is the sound of a clarinet? What does purple and green sound like?
As it happens I was at MoMA last night, too, to see the movie “Mickey One,” the first showing in the MoMA’s Jazz Score film series.
I love Eddie Sauter’s music for “Mickey One,” and have played it several times on WNYC. I’ll play some of Sauter’s score on this Friday night’s film music feature at 10 pm. Also some of Fred Katz’s jazz score for the original “Little Shop of Horrors,” and more.
Comments
Comment from Dan Schwartzman
Date: April 18, 2008, 7:58 pm
Hey, David. These colors remind me of those produced by the first “colorizing” video synthesizer wielded by Carol Goss for IAI records (founded by your (and my) old friend and employer, Paul Bley, whom you no doubt agree was/is a colorful pianist, and was/is a coloful character (have you kept in touch?). Remember that cover for the Jaco Pastorius album with Bley? Am I stirring up old memories (you and I worked in the same office for IAI on Horatio Street)?
Look for a more detailed email I have sent to listenerservices to forward to you.
Still listening to you after all these years.
Best, Dan Zam
Comment from george Stadnik
Date: April 18, 2008, 8:09 pm
Hello David,
Wonderful that you’re asking about color and music. I am a Lumia artist. That is I compose visual music in the tradition of Thomas Wilfred, Earl Reibeck, Rudi stern and others.
The relationship of color and music is a long standing one. There were many attempts to correlate pitch to color directly, since the late 1800’s. Lumia makes no attempt to do that. I use color, shadow, reflection, refraction, diffraction and motion to compose with light. The work is silent, the sounds and textures come from the visual images. You can find other artists who work in light at teh Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles.
Best Regards,
Enjoy your show every week
George O. Stadnik
Comment from Tom Lento
Date: April 20, 2008, 10:58 pm
Hi, David. I’m always glad to listen to your show.
I confess to having no synaesthetic capabilities. Recently, though, I came close to hearing color in music at a NJ Symphony Orchestra concert where they premiered 3-2-1, a piece they commissioned for acoustic and electric violin and orchestra by Darryl Kubian. He’s a composer, thereminist, and a first violinist with the NJSO. Some extraordinarily colorful sounds from that electric fiddle.
One performer you didn’t mention, the pianist Hélène Grimaud, claims to see music as colors, and I think she plays that way too.
Keep up the good work.
Tom
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