James Hunsley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I naively asked Messian about this once at a seminar in Boston, in student
>French of course, asking if his concept of the relationship of music and
>color was fixed, a la Scriabin, or relative, like Rimsky-Korsakov.  He went
>on for ca.  15-20 minutes (or it seemed like such) and all the time I was
>struggling to understand the intracacies of his explanation.  He related a
>particular tone with a particular color.  ...

Oh yes, actually this was a constant obsession throughout his life.  I seem
to remember that he started having "coloured visions" when he was starving
in a German stalag as a war prisoner (that's the time when he composed the
Quartet for the end of time).  He later used to say that most composers
wrote music in various shades of grey, and very few were able to compose in
colours!  But of course, this was not naively descriptive.  Messiaen was
very sharp in his appreciations.  Among the very few orchestral composers
whom he admired were Villa-Lobos (so much for people who pretend that
Villa-Lobos is an amateur) and also Ciurlionis, I think.  Among his
students, he once said that his favorite was Dao.

A composer born the same year as Scriabin, but vastly different, is Alfven.
Like some other Swedish composers, he hesitated between becoming a composer
or a painter.  He said that he always regarded music as coloured, and his
"Prodigal Son", for instance, includes a festive march in pink, gold,...

Thanh-Tam Le
(himself a coloured musician?...)
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