(The research presented here in the following timeline is consistently undergoing revision and editing, and we greatly appreciate any additions and, or corrections to our ongoing efforts.)

So who is part of our family tree timeline?

The Sumerians, Egyptians & East Indians

These ancient B.C. civilizations of the world were crowned with almost all the known “firsts” in human understanding of the natural and man made worlds. They all had some type of synesthetic correlation system and or knowledge of the connection between MUSIC and COLOR. Being that as it may, this knowledge is mostly fragmented and rather elusive, do to the nature of these very ancient records, most of which are on clay tablets.

The Chinese

In ancient China B.C., one of the many schemes relating matters such as the seasons, body parts, facial features and planets, contained the following relationships between musical tones and colors:

The Greeks

Around the year 550 B.C., Pythagoras presented mathematical equations for musical scales, showing that musical notes could be seen as relationships between numbers.  A musical scale, for example, would be divided into eight notes, or an "Octave" scale, which would repeat its sequence as notes proceeded up and down the scale.  To use the simplest example, this could be the C Major scale, which consist of the seven so-called “natural” notes: C, D, E, F, G, A, B & C.

Around 370 B.C., Plato wrote Timaeus, in which he described the “Soul of the World” as having these same musical ratios. A cosmology soon evolved in which the known planets' radii were given a ratio sequence of 1:2:3:4:8:9. This sequence came close to the Greek diatonic musical scale's ratios and so the known planets were linked to music. Plato pondered the idea of eight concentric circles, each with its own color and tone. The eighth note was a repetition of the first note and all the notes sounding together produced what he called the "Music of the Spheres".

Around 350 B.C., Aristotle wrote to support that the harmony of colors were like the harmony of sounds.  As Aristotle's works began to be translated and incorporated into the European sciences, this led to the eventual relating of specific sound and light frequencies. He suggested one of the first MUSIC/COLOR formulas. He had no concept of the natural color spectrum so he arbitrarily chose Black (which is actually not a color but theoretically the absence of color) and White (which is actually not a color either but theoretically the presence of all colors) at the ends and several known colors in the middle. Aristotle also assigned colors to musical tones according to how these tones and colors mixed together:

The three notes that correspond to the primary colors can be seen as C, E & G (a Major triad), which is the most important chord in music and the groundwork for the major scale occurring within the natural phenomena known as the “Harmonic Series”. It is important to realize that these correspondences, between the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale (being based on the same principals of nature), have been adapted in some form or another by most cultures worldwide and can be seen as being coded with any type of color configuration.

The scientific knowledge of this time was given to understanding the nature of the five remaining half tones, which lay between C and D, D and E, F and G, G and A and A and B, as wavelength nodes, or half way marks, in a twelve tone system of equal proportions. Relating the natural notes to the known colors was of coarse, a natural thing to do; and as stated earlier, the five half notes were understood to contain elements of both natural notes directly above and below each half note. This later became known as “enharmonic spelling”, such as the half note between notes C and D having the two names of C sharp or D flat; and in this case, also a double color relationship which we, here at MUSICAL COLORS, have termed “enharmonic coloring” (EC).

Rudolph

Sometime around 1075 A.D., Rudolph of Saint Trond introduced a colored note system which represented the Greek modes of plainsong:

Newton

In 1704 Sir Isaac Newton's treatise Optics was first published, which partially dealt with the correlation between colors of the spectrum and notes of the musical scale.  Newton mathematically, but quite arbitrarily, divided the visible light spectrum into seven colors (six known colors and one new color, which he named “Indigo”): Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. One should understand that Newton’s Blue is really the intermediate shade between Green and the “true” Blue (i.e. Green-Blue), and his Indigo is really just a shade slightly off this Blue towards the color Violet (i.e. Blue-Violet). Never the less, Newton saw that the mathematical relationships of these six known colors, including his new color, were similar to those of the natural notes in music. He consequently assigned the acronym “ROYGBIV” to these seven colors, as he split the rainbow seven ways intentionally to mirror the seven notes of a musical scale; although he suspected that the delineation between each was perhaps somewhat undefined, as further scientific proof was needed:

Fourier

In 1846, Charles Fourier wrote in his Theorie de l'Unite Universelle, that the connection between colors and musical notes was based on the following:

Sudre

In 1862, François Sudre’s death occurred, however he left behind him the invention of “Solresol”, a universal language based upon the seven musical pitches (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si - with "middle C" set as "do”). Sudre suggested the system for encoding Solresol could use lanterns using the following color sequence:

Seemann

In 1881, the German painter, T. Seemann, devised a concept of pictorial coloring based on colored musical notes. Notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of the half notes C#, F# and G#:

Bishop

In 1893, Bainbridge Bishop, an American composer, published an article entitled A souvenir of the color organ, with some suggestions in regard to the soul of the rainbow and the harmony of light with marginal notes and illuminations, regarding his system of correspondences for colored notes, which he showed as being correct with respect to the natural color of rainbows. By this time, Bishop had already constructed at least three color organs capable of playing sound and displaying its corresponding light together or separately as seen in the following correlations. Notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of the half notes C# and D#:

Kandinsky

Around 1895, the famous artist Wassily Kandinsky, considered how the characteristic timbre of musical instruments might relate to colors: Yellow was like “an ever louder trumpet blast or a fanfare elevated to a high pitch”, Orange was like “a church bell of medium pitch ringing the angelus, or like a rich contralto voice, or a viola playing largo”, Red was like “fanfares with contributions from the tuba - a persistent, intrusive, powerful tone”, Vermilion was “sounds like the tuba and parallels...with powerful drumbeats”, Purple was like “high, clear, singing tones of the violin...successive tones of little bells (including horse bells)...called 'raspberry-colored sounds' in Russian”, Violet was like a “cor anglais or shawm, and in its depths the deep tones of the woodwind instruments (for example, bassoon)”, Blue was like “a flute” clear and cool, Dark Blue was like “the cello, and going deeper, the wonderful sonority of the contrabass; in its deep solemn form, the sound of blue is comparable to the bass organ” and Green was like “quiet, drawn-out, meditative tones of the violin”.

Blavatsky

Around the year 1900, Helena P. Blavatsky, founder of The Theosophical Society, published two works called Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. Her own musical tone to color correspondence was as follows:

Berlioz, Debussy & Wagner

Around the year 1905, the three famous composers, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy and Richard Wagner, who were all contemporaries of eachother, were also interested in the connection between music and color. They were all members of the Rosicrucian Order, which based its musical theories of “just intonation” on the following sound frequencies and colors as they correlated to musical notes. Notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of the half note F#:

Rimsky-Korsakov

Based on an article in 1908 with the Russian press, the famous composer Rimsky-Korsakov had synesthetically colored the “Circle of Fifths” musical keys in the following way:

Helmholtz

In 1910, Herman von Helmholtz transposed musical frequencies in order to mathematically find direct scientific relationships between musical notes and visual colors using the “Law of Octaves”. For example, one can take the concert pitch A at 440 Hz. and get another audible A at 880 Hz. exactly one octave above. If one were to mathematically double that octave thirty-nine more times, the frequency of the original pitch A would be 483,785,116,221,440 Hz., a visual light frequency seen in the natural color spectrum as Red. Notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of the half notes A#, C# and D# in the following rough estimates:

Beach

Around 1910, the American pianist and composer, Amy Beach, had a synesthetic color coding system for the following musical keys: C-White, F Sharp-Black, E-Yellow, G-Red, A-Green, A Flat-Blue, D Flat-Violet and E Flat-Pink.

Scriabin

The Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin, was highly influenced by the French and Russian salon fashions and he seems to have been strongly influenced by the theosophical ideas of Madame Blavatsky.  The synesthetic motifs found in Scriabin's compositions like Prometheus, composed in 1911, are developed off of color coding ideas from Newton. These ideas follow a basic mathematical musical algorithm called the “Circle of Fifths”, which corresponded to his concept of the following colors, as he modulated from one musical key to another:

De Maistre

In 1919, Roy De Maistre, a young Australian musician turned painter, showed how specific musical notes corresponded to different hues to form a colored musical note code. Notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of all the five half notes (i.e. A#, C#, D#, F# and G#):

Theremin

In the year 1922, Leon Theremin invented the "Illumovox" to accompany his "Etherphone" (the instrument now known as a Theremin). When connected to the Etherphone, the Illumovox projected an evolution of hues of the natural color spectrum in direct correspondence to the pitch changes on the Theremin instrument. These correspondences were straightforward, with the lowest pitches as almost Infrared to Red and then with successively higher pitches moving through the colors Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Violet, up to the highest pitches bordering on Ultraviolet.

Klein

In the early 20th century, the British non-figurationist painter, Adrian B. Klein, realized the possibilities of light and became a leading specialist in music kinetic art. In 1926 he published his Colour Music: The Art of Light, where he presented his note to color correlations:

Heaney

In 1942 a music teacher named Gertrude M. Heaney created an educational apparatus for teaching music through the use of color and consequently was granted a U.S. patent for her invention. It consisted of a practice piano pad, that was colored, and also an instruction manual. As with Bishop’s and Maistre’s system, notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of the half notes C#, D#, F# and G#:

Vyshnegradsky

The composer Ivan Vyshnegradsky is most famous for his ground breaking work with alternate tuning systems and compositions using quarter tones during the early 20th century. Around 1970, he disclosed his own correlation of musical notes to colors shortly before his death nine years later. Notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of the half note C#:

Wiley

In 1991, Michael John Wiley publicly displayed colored stickers on his classical guitar’s fret board. He used the six simple named colors in English (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet). He did not include Indigo in his list of colors as it was purely an historic artifact, it was too close in shade to the colors Blue and Violet for practical application on musical instruments and it was not part of the hexagonal theoretical models of the six natural colors. Rather, he used White (Gray when displayed on white backgrounds) as the center (C) and resolution of all the other notes. His color assignment was closely resembling that of Euler’s, though like De Maistre and Heaney, he extended the idea of “enharmonic spelling” to the five half notes, using color; what Wiley termed “enharmonic coloring”. Notice the enharmonic coloring (EC) of the five half notes C#, D#, F#, G# and A#. As with the prior existence of several other similar color coded musical systems, these ideas were really nothing new at all:

This brings us to the end of our MUSICAL COLORS family tree timeline.

The idea of using color to represent musical whole tones in tandem with the idea of combining these same colors to represent the musical half tones between them is practically as old as the science of music itself. Whether these half note color combinations are represented as actual mixtures of two colors (i.e. one resulting mixed color), or whether these half notes are represented by two separate colors (i.e. not mixed into one color but never the less shown in tandem with one another), does not really matter, for the two colors chosen are still present in referencing half notes. Therefore, the theory behind such an idea remains consistent.

The randomness of assigning colors to notes demonstrates how these MUSIC/COLOR schemes are arbitrary to somewhat scientific at best. It is fairly easy to coordinate seven colors to seven notes and a scientific relationship is not necessarily established just because there can be equal numbers of each. The concept of tone to color calibration has been, for the most part, an arbitrary but necessary starting point for these systems. Like many other people throughout the world, here at MUSICAL COLORS we understand these systems and we participate by bringing this ancient knowledge to full application potential. After all, the knowledge has always been there in some form or another.

However, the one specific and fairly recent example that validates these principals quite poignantly is the U.S. Patent No. 2,284,868, which clearly states that "...seven elements representing the natural notes of an octave in the musical scale are preferably colored...” (and remember this is an arbitrary selection of colors); while the “...five elements representing the half notes of the octave are preferably colored as a mixture of the colors applied to the natural note-representing elements at opposite sides thereof...", also being arbitrary, although enharmonically theoretical in nature based on previous musical knowledge. This patent was granted on June 2nd, 1942 to Gertrude M. Heaney, an elementary school teacher, and it provides that this knowledge is now and forever legally in the public domain.

Even though there are many current systems and methods for teaching music, for the most part, music theory, music composition and musical instrumental appreciation have been taught the old fashion way; as cerebral and physical disciplines in scholarly institutions. Within the elusive past though, there is still much more to be rediscovered, just as now there is something showing us the future.

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