Vasily Kandinsky, Schoenberg's Colors

2022年11月19日

ヴァシリー・カンディンスキー（1866～1944）は、抽象絵画の先駆者として知られ、20世紀前半に、主にドイツやフランスで活躍したロシア出身の画家です。彼は、シェーンベルグの音楽を聴いて、この絵を描きました。そこには調性がなく、未来の音楽がありました。人の心は、いつも調子よく整頓されているのではなく、時に予測不能な行動をしたり、空虚な状態に陥ったりします。彼はその音楽を絵画で表現しようとしたのです。また、音や音楽を聞くと色を感じる脳の現象を「共感覚」といいます。私たちは音楽を聴くと風景を連想し、体を動かしたくなります。これは、音楽が音のカテゴリーに限定されない多感覚体験を誘発できるためです。共感覚はその極端な例です。共感覚の解明は、私たちの脳がどのように音楽によって動かされるのか考えるきっかけになります。2つ目のグラフの補足ですが、音の基本周波数が 2 倍になると、1 オクターブ高い同じ音と見なされます。言い換えれば、ピッチは、低音から高音への単純な直線ではなく、螺旋と見なすことができます。これは、ピッチ知覚のスパイラルモデルと呼ばれます。水平ピッチクラスと垂直ピッチ高さの 2 つの要素があります。(English) Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944), the pioneer of abstract painting, was a Russian-born painter active in the first half of the 20th century, primarily in Germany and France. He painted this picture after listening to Schoenberg's music. There was no tonality in it, but future music. The human mind is not always tonal and tidy but sometimes behaves unpredictably or goes into a state of emptiness. He tried to express that music in his paintings. Also, synesthesia is a brain phenomenon in which we perceive colors when we hear sound or music. We associate it with landscapes and want to move our bodies when we hear music. This is because music can induce multisensory experiences that are not confined to the category of sound. Synesthesia is an extreme example of this. The clarification of synaesthesia allows us to consider how our brains are driven by music. As for the second graph explanation, when the fundamental frequency of a sound is doubled, it is regarded as the same sound one octave higher. In other words, the pitch can be considered a spiral rather than a simple straight line of low to high notes. This is called the spiral model of pitch perception. It has two elements: horizontal pitch class and vertical pitch height.

Vasily Kandinsky, Schoenberg's Colors

Went to the "Kandinsky and the Blue Knight" exhibition at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art.

Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) is a pioneer of abstract painting.

He was a Russian-born painter active mainly in Germany and France in the first half of the 20th century.

He studied law and economics at Moscow State University.

He left that career at 30 and came to Munich to pursue a career as a painter.

He trained at art schools and academies.

However, he did not fit in with the conservative art world of the time and eventually began to pursue his path.

He traveled around Europe, painting many landscapes and motifs of scenes from his native Russia.

His encounter with Schoenberg's music led to a significant shift in his style toward abstraction.

On January 2, 1911, Kandinsky went to a concert with friends.

There he was greatly impressed by Schoenberg's music that was played.

He immediately painted a work titled Impression III (Concert).

* Ref) First picture.

In that painting, a grand piano is painted black at the top center.

There is also a sizeable yellow color painted on the right half.

They are an expression of his unique energy that covered the concert hall that day.

It can be said that they are the colors of Schoenberg, as Kandinsky felt them.

He had never met Schoenberg before.

However, he immediately sent an enthusiastic letter to Schoenberg.

Their friendship began from there.

His style of painting changed, becoming more abstract and colorful than before.

At that time, Schoenberg mastered the late Romantic expression in his symphonic poems "Pelleas et Melisande" and "Pure Night."

He was about to move beyond the boundaries of tonality toward atonal music.

Schönberg - Pelleas and Melisande, Op. 5 (Claudio Abbado & Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ChHR8tT8cQ

Schönberg　Verklarte Nacht　Op.4　Seiji Ozawa / Saito Kinen Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x4MwxRds2Q&t=14s

This may have been an inevitable trend in the history of music.

For Kandinsky personally, however, there was a sense of mission, as if he was going down a road without a path.

Kandinsky sensed Schoenberg's determination through his music.

It seems that Kandinsky found the path he and Schoenberg should have taken in painting.

10)

He said the following:

Schoenberg's music guides us.

Musical experience is not a matter of the ear but purely an experience of the soul.

He is entering a new world.

From this point on, "the music of the future begins."

11)

Kandinsky would further develop his unique style through his "Composition" series.

12)

In addition, there was a concert by Schoenberg that Kandinsky heard.

The pieces were "Three Piano Pieces (Op. 11)" and "String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor (Op. 10)"

13)

What renewed my awareness this time was "String Quartet No. 2."

This work has a peculiar form, consisting of four movements, with the addition of a soprano in the last two movements and the final movement being atonal.

However, in the performance I heard this time, there was no discrepancy between the first three movements and the final movement, and it even seemed more sensual.

The performance is different, but you can find it on youtube, so please listen.

Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2 Op. 10 (1908)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AnZc3SKdKc&t=1164s

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): Quartetto per archi n.2 op.10 (1908) --- Bethany Beardslee, soprano --- The Sequoia String Quartet ----

I. Mässig

II. Sehr rasch

III. Litanei: Langsam

IV. Entrückung, Sehr langsam

Schoenberg: Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11 (Pollini)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeTFxbsVGrI

14)

I believe that "tonality" in music is an "indispensable existence" just as emotions reside in the heart.

On the other hand, just as the human mind sometimes shows unpredictable movements or falls into a state of emptiness, some emotions can only be expressed in atonal music.

15)

I do not believe that this is necessarily opposed to tonal music.

Schoenberg's use of the human voice to sing atonal melodies in the last movement of his "String Quartet No. 2" is proof of this.

16)

Is "Do Re Mi Fa So Ra Si" the seven rainbow colors?
We are approaching the phenomenon of feeling colors when we hear sounds.

Synesthesia of Sound and Color

Synesthesia is a brain phenomenon in which people feel colors when they hear sounds and music.

17)

There may be few people around you who have synaesthesia.

For example, it is relatively common among ancient and modern musicians such as F. Liszt, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, J. Sibelius, and Yutaka Sado.

One of the characteristics of synaesthesia is that there are known to be significant individual differences in the sense of color.

In other words, Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov disagreed about the color of the key of D major.

18)

The correspondence between sound and color does not seem to have a fixed law but is determined irregularly.

This means that the perceptual experience with synaesthesia is specific to the individual and not universal.

19)

O. Messiaen based his compositions on his synesthesia.

This means that the impression that other synaesthetes, or people without synaesthesia, would get from viewing the piece would probably be different from what Messiaen intended.

20)

But really, are there any rules for the correspondence between sound and color?

In the type of synesthesia in which people perceive colors in the alphabet, the correspondence between letters and colors was previously thought to be bullshit.

However, we gathered a large number of subjects and examined statistical trends.

It turned out that there were some rules, such as A being more likely to be perceived as red and B as blue.

21)

Sound and color synaesthesia has not yet been thoroughly investigated, with only a few sporadic studies of several synaesthetes.

Therefore, we gathered an unprecedentedly large number of synaesthetes, 15, to examine the relationship between sound and color in a new and detailed way.

22)

Spiral Model of Pitch

There are many different types of synaesthesia in music.

For example, some people perceive color in a particular piece of music, a specific key, or a particular chord.

Here, we investigated color sensation concerning the perception of the pitch of single notes (pitch), an essential element of music.

23)

In music, when the fundamental frequency of a sound is doubled, it is considered the same sound one octave higher.

In other words, the pitch can be considered a spiral rather than a simple straight line of low to high notes.

This is called the spiral model of pitch perception.

* Ref) second picture.

*Spiral model of the pitch. The perception of pitch is considered to have two components: pitch class and pitch height. Pitch class is also called pitch chroma. Tones of the same pitch class have an octave relationship and are perceived similarly.

24)

The types of Do Re Mi notes that line up in a circle is called "pitch classes.

It is a concept that groups together sounds in octave relationship with each other in a vertical spit.

And the perception corresponding to this vertical dimension is called "pitch height." This concept corresponds to the height of a sound in the ordinary sense.

25)

We will now consider synaesthesia for pitch, divided into two components: pitch height and pitch class.

First, it has long been well known that higher notes are perceived as brighter in pitch height and color synaesthesia and lower as darker.

This is a universal phenomenon across cultures, and chimpanzees also seem to have this synesthesia.

26)

On the other hand, Pitch class and color synaesthesia have been investigated little.

To begin with, the idea of dividing pitch synaesthesia into two components is unique to our research.

In other words, until now, we have tried to capture the relationship between pitch and color by arranging angles in a straight line instead of a spiral.

27)

Color for Pitch Class

However, when we play a sound to study the color of a pitch class, it always includes information on pitch height.

Therefore, we decided to use words like "Please tell me the color that you feel is "So."

This allows us to examine the color for the concept of "So" (i.e., pitch class) stripped of pitch-height information.

28)

Subjects used the color selection tool on the computer.

They were asked to move freely with the mouse to create their perceived color.

29)

This was done in random order for all notes from Do to Si.

The colors created were then recorded as RGB (the three primary paint colors) values.

This test was performed twice a day and again about three months later for four RGB values, averaged for each subject.

The results are shown in the figure below.

* Ref) Third picture.

*The colors chosen by the 15 synaesthetes are shown as circles, and the average of all the colors is shown as squares (processes are omitted for notes for which no color was perceived). Although there are individual differences, the overall trend is that the marks are colored like a rainbow, from the red of Do to the purple of Si.

30)

There were individual differences in the colors chosen.

However, we calculated the average color values across subjects and looked for common patterns.

Then, the seven notes of Do for red, Re for yellow, and so on, and the seven colors of the rainbow corresponded almost in that order to the seven notes of Do Re Mi Fa So La Si.

In other words, a hidden law was revealed.

31)

Furthermore, if we look closely at this diagram, we notice something interesting.

Do# and Le♭ are heterophonic, meaning they have different names but are the same sound.

In such cases, the colors are not the same.

Do# is reddish like Do, and Le♭ is yellowish like Le.

32)

In other words, the color perception of pitch class is influenced by the perfect name.

When examined in detail in psychological experiments, it was found that the response was faster to hear the proper name and respond to the color than to the sound and the paint.

Color is more strongly associated with the name of the sound than with the sound itself.

If this is the case, it would seem that this phenomenon is better understood as synaesthesia for sound names rather than for sounds.

33)

Why the seven colors of the rainbow?

The cause of why this association occurs is unknown.

The "Do Re Mi Song" that everyone sings when they are little, such as "Re may be for lemon" or "So is for blue sky," has an influence.

However, this is inconclusive since some parts still cannot be explained, such as the red of the "Do" and the purple of the "Si."

34)

In children's piano classes, colored stickers are sometimes put on the keyboard, such as red for Do.

Also, many toy instrument keys have a rainbow color scheme.

In other words, the experience of seeing these things when they were young may have influenced them.

35)

However, the question arises as to why music teachers and toy manufacturers chose this color scheme in the first place.

To answer these questions, it is necessary to investigate whether the same results can be obtained in other countries with different cultures and languages.

36)

Music is the art of sound.

However, when we listen to music, we associate it with landscapes, making us want to move our bodies.

This is because music can induce multisensory experiences that are not confined to the category of sound.

Synesthesia is an extreme example of this.

The elucidation of synaesthesia may provide clues to the unanswered question of why and how our brains are moved by music.