What's the Colour of Music? Messiaen and Colour

* Many composers over the years have claimed to experience synaesthesia, a condition where one sense is activated by experiencing another, and for music, this normally means that when someone hears sounds, they see colours. Scriabin, Liszt and Ligeti are some well-known examples of synesthetes, but among these composers, there is only one who truly dedicated his life to exploring the colours of music – the 20th century French composer, Oliver Messiaen. In this essay, I explore Messiaen’s music and sound-world through the lens of colour and shape, using an ambitious and wide-reaching project by Håkon Austbø as the basis for my discussion.

Thank you to Juan Brizuela for providing the Spanish subtitles.

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FURTHER WATCHING

FURTHER RESEARCH

Thank you to my all my amazing supporters on Patreon, but in particular to my Perfect Fifth supporters: David Ball, Pavel Makeenko, Max Braun, Hamish Madden, Andrew Wong, David Wiley

[ListeningIn]

What colours/shapes do you see when you hear music?

[animatechap]

Wow, the chords w/ inversions transposed with the bass note thing is such a cool idea

[segmentsAndCurves]

I like the synaesthesia composer. Scriabin, Messiaen, ... their composition are so... colourful.

[BestOperaMoments]

Messiaen... I have always had a deep respect for him. Undoubtedly one of the most impressive geniuses in music.

[fluffycloud]

I’ve always found synaesthesia so fascinating. What a great way to discover Messiaen through this subject. Thank you for the fantastic work!

[seongchaelee]

This is by far one of the most fascinating intellectual videos I’ve watched this month

[wormswithteeth]

An astonishing composer. His colour palette is out of this world.

[belgianvanbeethoven]

These videos are such quality content, they truly deserve more views.

[MrGlyra]

Man, I love finding out more about synaesthesia like this.
I've got the variant where you connect numbers and letters with colour, but only found out 2 years ago that that's not a normal thing in art class.
Then a month ago some of my friends found out and think it's really interesting.
So finding out more information and seeing videos like this where people try to express it really brings me joy :)

[JRSSchattenberg]

You chose the best recordings that I know of Messiaen's organ music by Olivier Latry in the Notre Dame. All of your video's that I have seen are simply phenomenal, I haven't found any videos in this genre with this superb quality, thank you for making these!

[richerDiLefto]

I have both the music kind of synesthesia and the kind that makes words and numbers colored as I read them. I always thought everyone’s brain worked this way.

[oscarjohnzen]

You are back! Always glad to see your Chanel in my notifications!

[deanjones]

This is such a great video on the topic, very well made.
It's nice to see the comments of other people with synaesthesia and how varied it is in how people perceive it.
I also see shapes and colours and find it helps me to write musical structures. I usually see these shapes and textures across landscapes, sometimes suspended and wrapped in different shades of colour. It also happens right to left as if passing my vision while the song progresses.

[donaldcramer]

For me, seeing the color “translation” along with the music produced a unique, multi-sense effect. Amazing. My favorite Messiaen piece is the “Quartet for the End of Time”, not only for the music itself (which I had the pleasure of performing the clarinet part when I was in music school) but for the incredible background story. A wonderfully presented video.

[SuperIgill]

You have to see and hear Messiaens opera "Saint Francois d'Assis", it's his opus summum and just incredible. I've been lucky to sing the opera with my choir pre covid and it's absolutely haunting what he can do with such harmonies. At some point during hearing or singing this kind of music something changes. You start to understand it, because it's so brutally different to "our" understanding of music nowadays even in contemporary classical music it's insane.

[amelia]

Thank you for such an interesting, well-researched video, I really appreciate the time you've put into this. I really enjoyed it.

[adrianmurillo]

I cant wait to see your channel blow up and get the proper recognition you deserve. Your work is amazing, thanks for bringing so much into my life.

[clemcc]

This channel is absolutely brilliant both terms of content and visual. Some are very advanced and made me push to dig more on some topics. Thank you!

[earthlightsmusic]

I met a synesthete once a couple years ago, who told me her response was to see "colorful moving shapes of different kinds of textures I feel against skin and inside my mouth, speckled with iridescent shimmery flecks and ribbons" -- back then a total GoT and Djawadi fanatic.

[zachheilman]

7:40 I gotta say I enjoy “Apparition de l’église éternelle” so much on its own, but I am also a huge fan of the arrangement by the US Navy Band, which can be found here on YouTube. I get the feeling that the precision of military bands is well suited to emulating the sound of an organ.