UC Riverside

This study investigates the affective relationship between music and visual media including projection, color (staging and lighting) and sound (instrumental and electronic). Concerns about color as it relates to music are thousands of years old. There could be many reasons why humans emotionally connect color with music. Color and sound share similarities in the form of audio and visual spectrum and affect humans’ primal reactions. Sound is an ingredient of music in a manner similar to the way color is an ingredient of visual art. Sometimes, in a work designed with music and color together, these elements work toward the same goal. When one element takes a different approach than that suggested by the other, the emotions they evoke are still poetically connected.

As lighting designers manipulate the visual stage by applying different colors, composers manipulate music by applying musical language. Although pop and commercial music frequently incorporate colored light to visualize music, it is rarer to find this in classical music settings.

“What We See is What We Desire to See for Color and Instruments: Color as Inspiration for Musical Composition” includes two parts. One is a new five movement musical composition (ca. 37 minutes) for fourteen performers including eleven musicians, projections, lighting, and electronics (Max for Live and Ableton Live) inspired by the abstract qualities of color. The second is a reflection of the composition concentrating on its inspirational relationship between color and music.