Follow-up on the Quartet for the End of Time

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A local reader gave the Clarion Content's editorial staff some brilliant further insight into the performance we saw at Duke University the other night, "Akoka" and Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time." We noted in our review and reaction that the musical performance was accompanied by fascinating and evocative lighting changes that are rare for a classical music concert.

Our friend Lindsay P. says this was quite appropriate because composer Olivier Messiaen experienced synesthesia. Synthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Perceiving music as color is one manifestation of such a phenomenon. To quote her at length,

"Another figure central to the early documentation of clinical synesthesia employed in the compositional process is Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). A French composer, [and] organist... Reportedly, Messiaen experienced chordial color associations with written musical notation as well as auditory stimuli, and although his color-photisms seemed to manifest as inward, mental projections (rather than the external visuals described by many synesthetes), he was fully aware of the function of these mental colors as integral to his relationship with music. A number of his own writings as well as interviews describe the means by which chordial color affected his experience with music: “…when I hear a score or read it, hearing it in my mind, I see also in my mind’s eye corresponding colors which turn, mix and blend with each other just like the sounds which turn, mix and intermingle, and at the same time as them…” In a set of interviews published in 1967, Claude Samuel asked Olivier Messiaen if, as a result of this ‘synopsia’, he tries to translate colors into his music. Messiaen responds, “Actually I try to translate colors into music: for me certain complexes of sound and certain sonorities are linked to complexes of color, and I use them in full knowledge of this.” When asked if Messiaen has ever composed a work inspired by the contemplation of a painting, Messiaen answers, “No, never” and explains that when composing, rather than imitating a painting he essentially becomes the painter: “I use [musical sonorities] as colors, juxtaposing them and putting them in relief against each other, as a painter underlines one color with its complementary.”

How's about that for background? It fits perfectly with the execution of the show we watched at Duke's Page Auditorium. The colors were part of the becoming of the music, a fusion that heightened the mood, the tension, the despair. Studies report that there are parallels between the way synesthetes and non-synesthetes perceive color.

Thanks for the knowledge Lindsay!