Colour-Music: The Art of Mobile Color/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
COLOUR-MUSIC AND PSYCHOLOGY
So far as men of science are concerned it is quite clear that it is to the psychologist that colour-music, or any form of mobile colour art, will be especially interesting; and it is chiefly to the psychologist that we must look for assistance in analysing the impressions which are produced by colour-music. To Dr. William Brown, of King's College, London, I am much indebted for assistance in exploring the psychological outlook, up to the present time, upon colour and its sensory and emotional influences; and in view of his valuable contributions to psychological science the note in this book to which his name is attached will, I am sure, be read with interest.
The physicist can tell us much that is valuable as to the constitution of light, the production of colour, the rate of vibration in the luminiferous ether which corresponds to a given colour, the points of resemblance and dissimilitude between colour and sound, and various other matters of the highest importance.
The biologist can take us a step further and help us to understand the action of light upon the nerve terminations of the retina behind the lenses of the eye, and he can follow the tremulous air waves of music for us up to the point of their impingement upon the basilar membrane of the ear, and perhaps even a little further. But the object of colour-music is to make an appeal to the mind and the emotions, to the mental sense of colour, and to its intellectual or emotional effects upon us; and when we come to these questions we have to part company with the physicist and the biologist and enter the domain of psychology.
As a matter of fact, up to within the last few years psychology has unfortunately investigated the subject but little. One may almost say that the emotional effects of colour are only just beginning to be studied, and it is one of my hopes that colour-music will give a new impulse to further investigations, and to obtaining additional records of experimental facts upon which we may be able to build in the future.
There are many questions which careful psychological experiment might be able to answer for us, such, for instance, as—
(1) How far similar colours affect the majority of people in a similar way? This investigation has been commenced in Germany by Professor Exner, but only with regard to single colours. As I have already mentioned, he experimented upon a large number of people, chiefly as to their choice of what they considered the most beautiful colours, and upon some points he obtained great unanimity of opinion. But he discovered, and quite frankly admits, that contrasts of adjacent colour at once upset most of his conclusions.
This brings us to another important question for psychologists, and one which I would venture to suggest for their further consideration, namely—
(2) What are the influences of contrast in colour, what are the normal or average limits of agreeableness in contrasts, what are those of discordancy, and what, on the other hand, are those of harmony?
On these points individual opinions are of little value. Experiments must be spread over a large number of persons of varying education, and perhaps also of race, and the hasty conclusions which have been arrived at by many writers upon colour theories should from the outset be re-examined and the whole question considered anew.
Some past theories with regard to colour, such, for instance, as Goethe's, and even those of great experimentalists like Young and Helmholtz, have had a cramping influence upon psychological investigation, valuable as have been many of their contentions or suggestions in other respects.
An entirely new set of questions for the psychologist are, in addition, opened up by the introduction of the elements of time and rhythm into colour, which it is now possible to study by means of colour-music instruments. Such questions, for instance, as—
(3) What counterpart does rhythm in music find in colour?
(4) Does education of the colour sense by means of the rhythm introduced by colour-music tend to evolve an increased demand for colour rhythm in the majority of persons?
(5) Can rhythm in colour be with advantage more complex than in music?
Other interesting points for consideration are:
(6) Upon what conditions do tragic, pathetic, and joyful emotions evoked by colour depend, and do they upon broad lines coincide in different people with similar colour effects?
Dr. W. Brown is of opinion that music creates a set of emotions different from and apart from our ordinary emotional experiences, and evolved, as it were, in a higher plane of our consciousness. He agrees with me in thinking that these, though different in character from what may be called normal emotions, nevertheless assist in stimulating the latter, and it seems probable to me that the same view holds good with regard to colour-music effects, and that indefinable emotions are produced as well as those to which we can put some sort of name. It is probable that if this is true, part of the stimulating, helpful, or restful effect of music is dependent upon these super-emotions as we might call them, and this opens up a most interesting field of inquiry.
There are many other points which might be suggested as suitable for psychological study and investigation, with the help of a mobile colour art. Meanwhile, it may be interesting to give a few short extracts from psychological writers who have dealt with colour.
In Music—its Laws and Evolution, by the eminent French scientific author, Monsieur Combarieu, the following passage occurs: "We will point this out by taking for a brief comparison two given realms—music and light. The two senses to which they correspond, the eye and the ear, alone receive impressions which systematize themselves into a work of art. Smell, taste, and feeling, though susceptible to the highest education, and in no way limited to a utilitarian part, have not given rise to creations of a truly æsthetic character. To show the analogy between sound and light, music and colours, will be to realize, on an essential point, the problem of harmony we have traced out."
This is a portion of an argument in favour of the unity or similarity of action of colour, and sound upon us, and the writer goes on to say: "Are the two senses of hearing and of sight formed by the same evolution and by a similar process? This is what the facts of history would seem to affirm."
So far as physiological investigations have been made upon points of analogy between the action of colour and sound upon us, they would seem to support very strongly the general contention of the analogy being a close one.
With regard to the question of the effect of rhythm in colour, some very valuable experiments have been made by Dr. B. Berliner, which he records in his work Der Ansteig der reinen Farbenerregung in Sehorgan. He there states that "a rhythmic movement or repetition of colours in varying intensities produces the maximum effect of sensation upon the optic nerve, and hence upon the mind." This I have found to be corroborated by experiments in colour-music.
The same writer considers that he has proved that various colours have similar degrees of power in exciting particular sensations even under varying conditions of lightness or darkness of the colours.
Other experiments upon this question have also been carried out by the psychologist Arthur Mitzscherling.[1]
Before accepting these conclusions as to the effect of degrees of lightness or darkness, we should have to understand exactly what the experimenter means by sensations. Results obtained from colour-music would seem to show that lightness or darkness has a great deal to do with the impressions obtained from given colours.
Elsewhere reference has been made to one great difficulty which at once presents itself in comparing a musical note with its corresponding colour upon the spectrum-band when similarly divided, in that the whole construction of the diatonic scale is very arbitrary, and that it is inevitable that any colour scale must also be so to some extent.
In reference to the diatonic scale and the use of musical precedents for mobile colour purposes, the following remarks by Dr. Max Meyer in a paper on Elements of a Psychological Theory of Melody are of interest as showing the dissatisfaction which many feel as to the non-scientific and unrepresentative character of the diatonic scale in music. After remarking that there are plenty of books on musical theories written by professional musicians, physicists, physiologists, and others—but that in his opinion the psychological laws upon which music is founded have not yet been determined—he goes on to say: "The wrong path, much frequented, which inevitably leads back to the starting-point, is the adoption of the theory that the basis of all music is the so- called diatonic scale, represented by the numbers 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40, 45, 48. . . . This so-called diatonic scale which is the basis of all discussions in Helmholtz's Tonempfindungen was introduced into the modern theory of music by Zarlino in 1558. It was accepted by Rameau in his Traité de l'Harmonie, 1721. According to Rameau (and Helmholtz) no numbers play any part in music except 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. This is certainly not a law derived inductively from observed facts, but a dogma, because one may, as Poole rightly states, very easily observe that the 7 acts psychologically in a way corresponding to the action of 2, 3, and 5; whereas, indeed, with other prime numbers, as 11, 13, etc., this is not the case. . . . There can be no doubt that the tempered scale cannot be made the basis of a theory of music, that theoretic conclusions drawn from considerations regarding the interval of the tempered scale have no scientific foundation. A scientific theory of music can only be a theory describing the laws of music performed in just intonation, but in just intonation that really is to be called 'just,' not in that seemingly just intonation of Helmholtz, which—as can be proved by experiment—does not deserve this name." This dissatisfaction with the diatonic scale and its inconclusive construction, as already said, complicates the whole question of similarity between the two scales.
Schopenhauer in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung fully recognizes the immensely important position which colour occupies, or ought to occupy, in relation to human life and civilization, and develops his views in many eloquent passages; but he naturally regards the whole question from the philosophic and not from the practical point of view.
Some interesting observations have been made by E. Bullough in The Perception Problem in the Æsthetic Appreciation of Single Colours, but they are mostly too abstruse to be of much assistance in attacking the questions to which a mobile colour art gives rise. As a matter of fact, many of these break entirely new ground, and special investigations are required to explore them.
To sum up. Psychology has only just begun to explore the emotional effects of colour, but in the main its conclusions, so far as they go, are highly favourable to the general theory of colour-music and tend to support the contentions that a mobile colour art has serious and important claims upon our attention.
- ↑ Die Farben-Kurven bei Reduktion auf gleichen Helligkeit.