Kandinsky in the ear
7 min read
On synesthesia, colour theory, and what Scriabin still has to teach us about the inner geometry of a chord.
Colour and sound share a common grammar that neither discipline owns alone. When Kandinsky described a yellow triangle as "piercing," he was trading in exactly the kind of sensory overflow that keyboard composers have been exploiting for centuries.
Scriabin's famous keyboard of light — a device he imagined more vividly than he ever built — was never the point. The point was that he already heard harmonies as hues, and he wanted the audience to see what he was hearing.
The next time you play the opening of his fifth sonata, listen for the heat in the F#. It is not a metaphor. It is a piece of information the score is trying very hard to hand you.
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