Of film music and colors

[Alexandre]

A movie had been made in the memory of the immense Nino Rota at the
beginning of the 80's (after his death): it is called "And The Ship Sails
On". It's to me one of the greatest movies ever made on Music. Federico
Fellini directed this film to pay tribute to his friend and colleague Nino
Rota and what he did is simply magnificent.

The music plays a very significant role in this motion picture; there are
lots of poetic scenes such as the scene when a conductor and two other
men succeed in creating melodies with some glasses of water. There is
also a scene where a blind woman can tell you "which color your voice
belongs to": for example, if you have a deep voice, she says that your
voice is rather "brown"!

I noticed several times that most film composers often talk about painting
in interviews and how colors and light can influence their choices in term
of orchestration. Would you guys manage to attribute colors to musical
instruments or notes of music? It's really not easy.

I heard John Williams' Dreamworks logo music before Amistad and Mouse
Hunt and I think that he perfectly manages to "recreate" the very beautiful
blue used for the Dreamworks clip, but it's difficult to explain with words
how he does that.

In any case, Beethoven was right: words are too weak to describe what
music can express even when you find melodic words, you only take a
sound to describe another: you paraphrase the music. What can be more
interesting maybe is to use the lexical field of light or colors so as to
describe the most invisible form of art: music...even if you don't have
the slighest idea of what a "brown voice" means!

Alexandre.

[Alan Andres]

On 11 Apr 1998 14:11:34 GMT, "Alexandre" <C...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

>I noticed several times that most film composers often talk about painting
>in interviews and how colors and light can influence their choices in term
>of orchestration. Would you guys manage to attribute colors to musical
>instruments or notes of music? It's really not easy.

If you are interested in exploring the psychology of color, music and
painting you might want to read a little about the early 20th century
experiments in this area by a number of abstract painters,
particularly the Americans Stanton McDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell
and their theories of synchromism. Their experiments paralleled some
of the work being done at the same time by and the better known
European painters Wassily Kandinsky, Robert Delaunay and Frantisek
Kupka. I recall that in some of their writing there were particular
correspondences being drawn between specific music and abstract color.

Another figure that might prove worth reading about is the even more
obscure Lithuanian mystic composer-painter Mikolajus Ciurlionis
(1875-1911). I don't know if he ever equated his semi-abstract
paintings to his music, but I suspect he did.

I should also mention the abstract color animated films by the German
artist Oskar Fischinger ("Composition in Blue") the Brit Len Lye
("Color Box"), and Norman McLaren ("Begone Dull Care") who did much
important work for The National Film Board of Canada. Each of these
film makers took an existing work of music and tried to visually
represent it with abstract color moving images. Fischinger used large
areas of color to animate classical music, while Lye and McLaren
animated jazz. They were not alone. There were many other
experimental animators who followed their lead.

Frankly I think all of these theories reveal more about the subjective
responses of the film makers and artists than reveal anything
universal. We each have our own individual 'visual' and chromatic
responses to music, and I remain suspicious of a common visual
language. But it is a constantly fascinating area of art, music and
film history.

>There is
>also a scene where a blind woman can tell you "which color your voice
>belongs to": for example, if you have a deep voice, she says that your
>voice is rather "brown"!

The great Russian neurologist A. L. Luria once wrote about a patient
who could remember everything. Yet, he remembered people by the color
and texture of their voices. There is a portion of that memoir where
he reports the patient said, "What a crumbly yellow voice you have."
Perhaps Fellini had been reading his Luria.

[sk...@lightlink.com]

> On 11 Apr 1998 14:11:34 GMT, "Alexandre" <C...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> >I noticed several times that most film composers often talk about painting
> >in interviews and how colors and light can influence their choices in term
> >of orchestration. Would you guys manage to attribute colors to musical
> >instruments or notes of music? It's really not easy.

Well, the parallel is that the actual notes are kind like the images or
shapes in painting, and that the instrumentation is like the colour.

Often composers refer to orchestration as what gives the music its "color."

An unorchestrated music sketch could be thought of as a "paint by number"
canvas, where the composer has furnished the "imagery" and indicated what
and where he wants the colours to be, but has not the time to "colour it
in" so the orchestrator does so, following the composer's instructions.

Paul

[Ray Tucker]

On 11 Apr 1998 14:11:34 GMT, "Alexandre" <C...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

>
>A movie had been made in the memory of the immense Nino Rota at the
>beginning of the 80's (after his death): it is called "And The Ship Sails
>On". It's to me one of the greatest movies ever made on Music. Federico
>Fellini directed this film to pay tribute to his friend and colleague Nino
>Rota and what he did is simply magnificent.
>
>The music plays a very significant role in this motion picture; there are
>lots of poetic scenes such as the scene when a conductor and two other

>men succeed in creating melodies with some glasses of water. There is

>also a scene where a blind woman can tell you "which color your voice
>belongs to": for example, if you have a deep voice, she says that your
>voice is rather "brown"!
>

I'll make a point of seeing that film once I can locate it for rental.
I've admired Rota very much since I first saw Fellini's "Amarcord" &
"8 1/2" in the early 80s. My personal favorite of his scores would
have to be "Juliet of the Sprits".
I wonder of any of this color/sound idea is related to synesthesia
(where one sense bleeds over into another; people taste colors or see
sounds) It's a really interesting phenomena. I've read that many
individuals with perfect pitch experience it without even realizing
it. A good book about this is called "The Man who Tasted Shapes", but
I forget the author.

[Peter Hipwell]

In article <352ef265...@news.ma.ultranet.com> aean...@ma.ultranet.com (Alan Andres) writes:
>On 11 Apr 1998 14:11:34 GMT, "Alexandre" <C...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>

>>I noticed several times that most film composers often talk about painting
>>in interviews and how colors and light can influence their choices in term
>>of orchestration. Would you guys manage to attribute colors to musical
>>instruments or notes of music? It's really not easy.

[snip]

>>There is
>>also a scene where a blind woman can tell you "which color your voice
>>belongs to": for example, if you have a deep voice, she says that your
>>voice is rather "brown"!
>

>The great Russian neurologist A. L. Luria once wrote about a patient
>who could remember everything. Yet, he remembered people by the color
>and texture of their voices. There is a portion of that memoir where
>he reports the patient said, "What a crumbly yellow voice you have."
>Perhaps Fellini had been reading his Luria.

Besides having a complete memory, the man had a condition known as
"synaesthesia", where stimuli in one sense modality are also perceived
in another modality. The most common form of this (and the mildest) is
that where people, when they read, see the words in different colours
(I think the mapping is stable for individuals, but not the same for
different individuals).

The condition is pretty rare, and there's not that much scientific work
on it. However, it is known that certain composers have had
synaesthesia, so that they perceive a direct relation between colours
and sounds, or colours and the notes in the score. The only example I
can cite is the 20th century French composer, Olivier Messiaen, who
used the colour of notes as one of the deciding factors in creating
his compositions (e.g. one of his pieces is called "Chronochromie" --
Time-Colour in English). I seem to recall he liked combining "blue" and
"orange" sounds. Don't think he ever did any soundtrack work, though.

--
Sa-ti muste vampirii curul!