Carrie Edmundson s1

Carrie Edmundson December 14, 2009 Response paper

I found a few interesting parallels to my own presentation (at the time still in the works) throughout this presentation. The idea of playing with color and the visual nature of musical interpretation was very relevant to what I was reading on Synesthesia. Also, what a title brings to a piece of music is particularly interesting in regards to this piece.

I enjoyed seeing the color interpretations as were drawn out in the score. Seeing someone’s personal interpretation reminded me of the interviews with synesthetes that I was watching. Of course, the obvious and important difference is that for the synesthetes, the physicality of music is a very real thing. Those without that conception are still very capable of applying colors and shapes to what we hear. Though, as we talked about in class, it has a lot more to do with our own applied metaphors and a socially constructed idea as to what colors, shapes, or textures match with what timbres.

I wonder how much our socially constructed associations match up with trends for synesthetes. Could past synesthetes have greatly affected our cultural perception of color and texture in music or is our ability to apply those types of descriptions to music evidence that we all experience Synesthesia to some extent? That is, how much are these ideas and descriptions innate for the non-synesthete and how much are they cultural constructs? I don’t by any means have an answer to these questions; it was merely something which sparked my interest given the interviews I was watching regarding Synesthesia.

Further, I was interested in the title of the piece. The importance of our understanding of a piece as the listener is greatly affected by how a composer chooses (or doesn’t choose) to title a piece. In an interesting contrast, this piece relies heavily on the sounds created by the title and, perhaps more importantly, the source of the title. In the case of Torke’s color music, the title is an objective adjective. In both cases, the title as it relates to the composer is distinctly different from how a listener understands the title (especially if the listener does not speak the language of the title). This, of course, biases the listener in unlimited ways.