Hello good composers!
Before going into the topic, I think Messiaen describes the colours here very truthfully.
When I'm making music I usually use some sort of structure or use chords I know will sound nice. In my head I'm humming along different voices. I do all this with feeling and emotion. But not with colour. Now I've seen the video above, and I think I have to reconsider my way. Do you compose/play with colours? For my and your interest in colours, I would like if you tell me which colours you see/hear with the folowing peice. Preludes pour piano(1929), Olivier Messiaen. I'm only talking about the first peice, you can hear from 00:00 to 02:00.
My colourinterpretation.
m1-3: the melody B is very orange, it's the 5th of E major, open sound. the topping chordal melody seem very cool, bluey. using mode of limited transposition 2.
m4-6: The melody seems to get lost because it cant find an tonic, near the end it line out E major without the E. colour: magenta-grey.
m7-8: Now we know we can't hope for the E major anymore. the story continues on a different path. colour: white glissandoing to purple.
m9: the painful sound middle way up the measure would be a sharp, bright blood red, going back to the white-purple at the end of this measure.
m10-11: the pain is still visible, so this has red but more opaque, smeared down. building back to the orange from m12, we can see a transition color in m11 consisting of white, orange and a little green.
m12-19: the colours are the same as they repeat but this makes it also more easy to go through. I think the repetition factor makes this part less heavy.
m20: purple.
m21: I hear some greenery in this measure.
m22-23: Very warm chord, definetly an orange. the minor 14th melody sounds disattached, two colours who marry an contrasting colour: black-pink
Please share your colours, if you have any!