Becca Does Bach: The Sixth Sense

I recall a specific day as an undergraduate at the Cleveland Institute of Music sitting in theory class on a cold, snowy day. I was probably tired from working the graveyard shift at Presti’s Bakery, nervous about my upcoming cello lesson in which I had to play Popper 33 from memory, or dreading the inevitable humiliation of singing atonal melodies or improvising chord progressions in front of a classroom of super smart, talented students.

There was a substitute that day, and he opened my eyes to the sixth sense I didn’t know I had. He was lecturing on key signatures and recognizing modulations and tone color changes. The graduate assistant commented that many people see colors when they hear certain keys – yellow for D-Major, green for C-Major, blue for d-minor, etc.

Suddenly, I thought to myself, “There is an actual term for this? I thought I was just weird!” I came to find out that many people have chromesthesia on some level or another. I am an amateur visual artist as well as a professional musician, and I wonder if my chromesthesia has something to do with this.

Synesthesia is “the stimulation of one sense alongside another: the evocation of one kind of sense impression when another sense is stimulated, e.g. the sensation of color when a sound is heard”. Technically, synesthesia is an umbrella term for the ability to associate any one sense with another, and chromesthesia is the term for the ability to associate color with music.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently in my study of the Bach Cello Suites. Although colors, both tonally and visually, change throughout each movement, each suite has its own over-all color and is initially expressed through the Prelude.

I see green when I hear the G major suite. It is calm, simple, and organic, which to me implies nature. When I was working on the first suite, I was happy, calm and in that state of mind. Even my life seemed to coincide with the spirit of the suite – I was happy and at peace with many things in my life.

As I begin my in-depth study of the d minor suite, I see and feel a very different color. I see blue. The color blue that one sees at dusk when all orange has faded, but the sun continues to brighten the night sky. It is lonely and introspective. Strangely enough, my life coincides now with these sentiments as my heart is weary and my spirit is wandering.

The concept of applying colors and characteristics to keys is by no means a novel idea. Christian Schubart, an 18^th century poet, explicitly assigned certain affectations and emotional characteristics to different keys:

G Major

Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love - in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.

D Minor

Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood

If you are wondering what in the world “the spleen and humours brood” means, then check this out: