THE SOUNDSCORE TO heartBEAT: A NARRATIVE-FORM MUSIC ...

Clavicin Oculaire
The first known color music system was put forth in 1734 by a Jesuit priest and
scholar, Louis Bertrand Castel.^ He constructed the clavicin oculaire. or "harpsichord
for the eyes," an instrument which featured an arrangement of colored tapes, attached to a
keyboard, through which light was passed. These tapes were arranged according to the
color spectrum, though Castel did not adopt Newton's details of pitch and color
equivalences. Rhythmic alternations of keys resulted in corresponding changes in the
colored tapes. Historical accounts of the clavicin oculaire suggest that its practical success
was limited, due largely to technological shortcomings of the period.
The Symbolists
The most intense period of artistic interest in synaesthesia occurred from 1880 to
1930, beginning with the Symbolist movement in 1880. The Symbolists, led by
Baudelaire, Rimbaud and others, held the notion that the primary differences among the
related arts were differences only in their physical nature. Art, literature, music and
drama were seen as signifiers of a single type of aesthetic experience. Charles Henry, a
Symbolist artist and philosopher, predicted that man ultimately would develop "one totally
dynamogeneous art."^ This was to be an integrated, synaesthetic experience designed to
affect the viewer not just aesthetically, but in a holistic, restorative sense. Henry
speculated that this experience would probably not even be regarded as aesthetic, but as
some super-mental environment
New synaesthetic combinations were actively explored during this period.
Literature, long an integral element in drama, was combined synaesthetically with color in
Rimbaud's sonnet Les vovelles. in which each vowel was typeset in the color in which it
appeared to him (A black, E white, I red, Q blue, Ii green).^ The Song of Solomon (text
by Paul Roinard, music by Flamen de Labrely), premiered in Paris in 1891, was designed
to engage the senses of sight, sound and smell.^ Described as "a symphony of spiritual
love in eight mystical devices and three paraphrases," the first section featured vocal
recitations of the vowels I and Q, music in the key of D major, bright orange stage
decorations, and the dispensing of the odor of white violet throughout the hall. Each
succeeding scene had its own particular tonality, vowel combination and odor.
Color Organs
By the end of the nineteenth century, scientific advances in the practical application
of electricity made possible the successful constniction of numerous color organs.'^