“I built on the sand

And it tumbled down,

I built on a rockAnd it tumbled down.

Now when I build, I shall begin

With the smoke from the chimney”.[1]

 

Seemingly this line of Leopold Staff might seem to have no greater justification for the topic, I would like to take. But is it really so? What today is that smoke from the chimney? In times of product worship. The worship of conformism. The dictatorships of the media kingdom of images without content. Our contemporary culture, science and politics seems to do well with the company built on the foundations of profitability, earnings and economic fundamentals. And worse, on the opportunistic corporatism. But I observe the collapse of systems based on the "reliable" foundations, learning the hard way, as a pedagogue, the paths of the countless reforms and programs. I want to build my own project beginning "with smoke from the chimney." And what in the today’s world disinterested art is? What is the love of the humanities? Now it is the smoke from the chimney. Because the smoke is more like what human associates with the house as the place and the house as a "state". And what do the erected dehumanized buildings of politics, economics and media appearances of omniwisdom and omniscience have in common with it?

 

Absolutely, I do not mean to categorize or to make the hierarchy for the different fields of art and science, but I was meant to feel myself a humanist. From the childhood I oscillated among and within the painting, music and architecture thanks to my dad and older brothers, so I completed the architect engineering studies. I have already completed the Master studies as a teacher of music education, singing and playing musical instrument. With the architecture in my heart and painting around. However, a theme and willingness to try to face it was decided by another, additional incentive.

 

From early childhood, it was natural for me to percept the world through the well known for all of us senses and stimuli. However, with the years I noticed that the world of sound and color for me is much more extensive, fascinating and mysterious area than for others. An example of this may be the fact that each day, month or season of the year has always had for me its special and very specific color. For example, Monday is red, Tuesday is black, Wednesday is white, etc. Also the various states of mind or sounds are able to induce in me the specific sensation of "color". Therefore, I see the Impressionist artists in a special way. This kind of duet of music and painting. But contrary to appearances, this brotherhood of color and sound was noticed much earlier.

 

Louis Bertrand Castel was a French Jesuit, mathematician and philosopher on turn of the XVII and XVIII centuries, who saw that brotherhood so far that "dreamed of creation of the colored harpsichord, with the help of which the painter could learn a harmonious compilation of sounds and vice versa: the musician would learn how to compile colors".[2] He continued his research claiming that "As the triad do, mi, sol are the basic sounds and chords in music, so with blue, red and yellow we can build all the other colors".[3] This could attest to the fact that color and sound have not only mutual influence on each other, but they also have a beneficial effect on the artist and his sensitivity and perception of the world. Having thus the working experience with young people as a teacher of music, piano and singing, I decided to focus on the phenomenon of synesthesia, looking for the tangent point between color and sound. The issue that color and sound are the phenomena related to each other was fascinating the artists for years. Just to mention only the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethee, the great poet, fascinated by tint and color so much that he wrote the work "Farbenlehre," in which he got into a dispute with the Newton. But Goethe was not the only poet fascinated by the world of color and its impact on other arts. One of the famous synesthetes was Rimbaud, who in his sonnet "The Vowels" assigned letters with colors. In turn, the great composers such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Scriabin assigned the specific colors to the specific musical tones. It is difficult, therefore, for me not to put the question whether the multiplicity of the terms such as "color gamut", "vividness of color", "dark or bright voice timbre", "music of image", "touch of singing" is merely a figment and the elaborate poetic metaphor or the result of the actually perceived in this manner world of senses. The additional light has already shed contemporary publishing houses. I will mention here at least the book of Daniel Tammet - "Born on a blue day" and Nicola Morgan’s "Mondays are Red".

 

Continuing on my journey of thought, I come across more points of contact and amazing image-musical connections. What's more, the time, place or era do not matter. Because when we think of the Middle Ages and look at the stained glass windows of cathedrals, such as Notre Dame in Paris and Chartres, would we not "hear" the Gregorian chant? Conversely, listening to the chant, we “see” the stained glass, the scenes built by an extraordinary light and color flowing from thousands of stained slides.

 

As a spectacular example of convergent phenomenon of art correspondence we can recall formed in the eighties of the XX century remarkable music arising in the period around the 4AD label. The music so thrilling, dark, beautiful, spirited and, nearly even through its specially designed album covers, mentally and thematically linked with the image. With its deeper listening, or rather intent listening, it easily absorbs us by the very vocative, almost visual projections. This type of music that can be found in the works of bands like Dead Can Dance or Mortal Coil is a sort of séance of planned as though for everyone potential synaesthesia. The music composed so that its visualization or the poetry was written into its character, somehow resulting from it.

 

To conclude the presentation of these few examples, I will stop on the silhouette of the brilliant composer and jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. The man, who for the second half of the XX century was the driving force of the mental changes in the development of jazz as a genre of music with masterly and boundless possibilities, Davis who was perfect in technique and brilliant in his musical achievements decides to surprise the fans with his album of his last years, entitled “Aura”. Aura is an album recorded in 1985 with extended composition of Danish Radio Big Band and released only in 1989. Aura is a concept album and contains a suite of compositions of Palle Mikkelborg. Each of the nine parts of the suite is titled with a different color. The nature of the music is relatively little jazz; closer to fusion with strong influences of the contemporary classical music, especially of the composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Charles Ives. The music itself is characterized by coldness, but also a distinctive coloring or, you can say, light that characterizes every color. And here are the colors presented by the master Miles Davis: White, Yellow, Orange, Red, Green, Blue, Electric Red, Indigo and Violet. Keep in mind that Davis himself practiced the abstract painting.

 

I have to ask if that's an accident? Is it random musical experiment, or it is further evidence of the way of my synesthetic topics? Perhaps, however, Miles Davis also felt an unusual relationship and contact of color and sound? I think that these few superficial topics entitles me to try to explore the issues raised in the dissertation topic.

 

Of course, before any task we ask ourselves, why do we want to do something? What value can arise from the work – in this case, scientific, what measurable benefit can bring the posed investigations and finally how conclusions can be formulated to implement in the processes of today’s education or teaching? Obviously, the problem of my work is close to artistic activity. The first answer, therefore, whether such action should be appreciated, is given us by Cesare Pavese:

 

"For modern man, the artist plays a similar role to that of medieval monk in current opinion – he contacts with eternity. Busy with the daily affairs human soberly agrees to have someone else on his behalf who permanently maintains close contacts with eternity. Ready to show him a great respect for that. Similarly he agrees willingly to have someone else to deal with such important but dangerous things like revealing personality, the transformation of suffering into beauty. Ready to recognize his difference, to worship it."[4]

 

Disclosure of personality! The work of the artist truly reveals his personality. It transforms suffering into beauty. It approximates to eternity. Receiving the artist's personality through his work we perceive sensually. I wonder how sensitive must be the personality, when the work can be received by the several senses simultaneously. And above all, if it’s possible, and if so in what way, to learn the sensitivity and such deep perception? If so, it is probably worth it! Of course, I do not have the proper exact knowledge to approach such researches from physics and acoustics point of view. More interesting seems to me the spiritual thread of this issue. Then, the above mentioned feeling is for sure the result of a particular sensitivity - musical, auditory or optical, but it is probably more the result of a specific spiritual perception. Some particularly sensitive empathy in the reception of the work. This applies, of course, especially to the works of art in the field of music, visual arts and poetry. Perhaps, this ability to empathize Einfulung (German term) in the reception of artworks we watch or listen to is the key to its fuller, enriched reception. Gary Zukav in “The Seat of the Soul” wrote: “Open yourself to your fellow humans. Allow yourself to experience what you feel toward them, and to hear what they feel. Your interactions with them form the basis of your growth. When you fear what you will find in yourself, or what you will find in others, if you allow yourself to hear what others have to say, you turn your back on the opportunities that the Universe is giving you to find the power of your heart.”[5] These words, in my opinion, could perfectly sound if in place of a person, in this case the artist, we can put our willingness to open up for the contact with the artwork. To listen to the spiritual, emotional massage of, e.g. the music track.

 

It is worth, therefore, to take a more detailed look at the phenomenon in the perspective of some synaesthetic "utility". A very important factor in this study would be also to draw the conclusions, whether the synaesthetic point of view can assist in artistic science? In the study to play the instruments, singing, but also painting? Teaching children to play the piano and to sing, I noticed that alerting them to some variegation of music, assigning associations of color, for example, with certain types of chords and tones facilitates for them development of a greater sensitivity and better interpretational understanding. It enriches in them the ability to think independently, but also develops their sensitivity to the perception of music and art as such. Of course, especially in the field of art education. I am curious of the scope of occurrence of the phenomenon: how much at last the phenomenon of synaesthesia is universal, whether it is an area very rare and occasional, or simply most people, especially children, are unaware of having this ability (through lack of the association with the right term), as they consider it normal and common.

 

Many questions remain, many possibilities, but also ambiguities. That is why in my research project I would like to take them thorough examination and explanation. Vasilij Kandinsky said “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the seat of harmony, and the spirit is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key and other again, causing the vibrations in our souls.”[6] I am fascinated by the extremely attractive, with its complex and sophistically simple poetics, world of Vasilij Kandinsky. His complete conviction, intuition and confidence about the contact of music and color. Tint and sound. I really want to follow the world of his sensations and to give just a little bit of this world to people I meet on my way. Of course, without losing sensitivity I should remember to meet stringent requirements of the critical analysis on the way.

I hope that this my way will be through color. Through the life-giving color, as Kandinsky said “Black is like the silence of the body after the death, as the closure of life.”[7]

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Leopold Staff, "The Foundations" from "The last one of my generation", Warsaw 1987, p 126 (translated by Czeslaw Milosz)

[2] M. Rzepińska, The History of Color in the history of European painting, Krakow 1983, p.577

[3] M. Rzepińska, Op. cit, s.487

[4] Andrzej Osęka Mitologie artysty, PIW Warsaw 1978 p.193

[5] http://ebookbrowsee.net/zukav-gary-the-seat-of-the-soul-doc-d424974547

[6] http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/

[7] http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/he memory of the BTX.