
A Midcentury Composer’s Rainbow Wheels Representing Music Through Color - kawera
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/11/16/composer_ivan_wyschnegradsky_s_color_wheels_representing_his_microtonal.html
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mazelife
I'd somehow never heard of this guy. The piece of his they link to doesn't
contain any microtonality (at least not the parts I listened to) and sounds
_very_ much like mid-period Scriabin. I was a little disappointed at first,
but then dug a bit more and found a couple of the microtonal piano pieces:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCvSkmIMRMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCvSkmIMRMY)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOat_xsGUOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOat_xsGUOw)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EGriPbFmKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EGriPbFmKE)

These were more interesting, and had some good moments. You can kind of see
what he's getting at with the color wheels (particularly with #5 from his
Twenty-four Preludes in Quarter-tones -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCvSkmIMRMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCvSkmIMRMY)).
But ultimately I'm not sure how illuminating those wheels are from an
analytical perspective.

Also, the article's contention that "standard pianos cannot play this kind of
music," is incorrect. There are lots of microtonal works for piano, it's just
necessary to properly tune one to perform them.

On a somewhat tangential note, there seems to be a lot of synesthesia
(specifically Chromesthesia) among 20th century composers. This guy, and
Scriabin, and Olivier Messiaen, Amy Beach, Leonard Bernstein, György Ligeti,
Michael Torke. (And going further back, Liszt and Sibelius). I don't know what
the incidence is in the general population, but I wonder what the connection
is, if there is any connection.

~~~
seanhunter
Louis Andriessen is also synesthetic (?sp).

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TheOtherHobbes
Here's one of the quarter-tone preludes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9WPfkXQa_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9WPfkXQa_Y)

The idea that this music was going to take mankind to the next level of
spiritual evolution is... quite odd.

~~~
tunesmith
Odd, but not unprecedented. Scriabin had a whole musical language worked out
and plans for a masterwork that involved sounds, sights, smells, and a strange
language of sighs and grunts... but then he got a carbuncle on his lip and
died.

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JoshMnem
There is a discussion about Scriabin's color system over here with some links:
[http://mt.artofmemory.com/forums/alexander-scriabin-and-
arti...](http://mt.artofmemory.com/forums/alexander-scriabin-and-artificial-
synesthesia-1016.html)

