At first, for
somebody who would think he does not know anything about synesthesia and would
like to read a quick presentation, an article rather than a book, I would like
to recomand an article by Citowic. (1995). "Synesthesia: Phenomenology and
Neuropsychology". PSYCHE, 2(10) the clearest presentation I ever read on
line.
But
it is more an article dedicated to synesthesia and our theme is more about relations
between arts and synesthesia and about these relations the article is far from
being sufficient. Furthermore, his ideas about Kandinsky as somebody who
practiced experiments of art fusion without being a real synesthete have been
rejected by specialists like Crétien
van Campen in the same PSYCHE, 2(10)., with an article entitled: " Synesthesia and experimentation" , and like
Amy Ione in an article entitled "Neuroscience, History and the arts,
Synesthesia: is F-Sharp Colored Violet?" Journal of the History of the Neuroscience, 2004.
About relations between arts and synesthesia, since the last year, a new
point was the publication of the latest
book of Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia ,
Tales of Music and the Brain ( 2008). One chapter « The Key of Clear
Green » is dedicated to synesthesia by musical artists.
Oliver
Sacks had not actually written about synesthesia before this book. He had done
it just once, in "The case of the color blind painter" in An anthropologist on Mars but marginally, synesthesia was not the theme
of this tale.
The
scientific writer has an explanation for not having written on synesthesia
before Musicophilia : he was not, as a neurologist, accustomed to meet patients
with synesthesia, for, as he says, people with synesthesia do not go to see a
neurologist. He met even patients for some specific neurological problems who
were synesthet, without mentioning it and just by chance, he discovered the
fact.
The
chapter of the book, dedicated to relations between music and synesthesia, is divided in three parts. In the second one,
Oliver Sacks presents five cases of contemporary synesthete people he met who
are musicians or muscial people. That is the most original part of the chapter.
Oliver Sacks just reminds that in the history of music at least three known
composers , Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Messiaen
made explicit use of their synesthesia in musical compositions. The cases he
speaks of are not the result of treatment as in his other books, but of an
personal enquiry. Let's share the second part, actually on the subject, and the
first and third ones.
He starts the chapter by a first part about history of
synesthesia where he gives his conception of synesthesia. The third part of the
chapter keeps on developing history of conceptions about synesthesia, history
of its invention as a scientifical object and at the end, Sacks describes some
of the new knowledge about synesthesia, which may compose also a kind of general
introduction to synesthesia.
In the
first part, he reminds the difference between synesthesia as a metaphor and
synesthesia as a physiological phenomenon. As a metaphor, synesthesia has
become an important theme in literature in the XIXe century. Oliver
Sacks considers ETA Hoffmann as one of the first writer, -and indeed he was a
writer and a composer-, to introduce the synesthetic metaphor in literature. He
just mentions as literary uses of synesthesia, Keats, Shelley, Rimbaud, the
French Symbolists and even Huysmans. Huysmans is interesting for his theme,
because he invented a complicated corespondence system between liqueurs and a
musical instrument " l'orgue à bouche".
The third
part of the chapter continues the first one, developping what he had just
introduced, the history of scientific interest in synesthesia which for him
starts with Galton, and his Inquiries
into Human Faculty and its Development in 1883. Galton gave synesthesia a
scientific reality but according to Sacks, we had to wait the last third of the
XXe century to get scientific investigation, with two currents, the
english one with Simon Baron-Cohen and John Harrison and the north-american one
with Cytowic. Cytowic's popular book the Man
Who Tasted Shapes ( 1993) uses some literary recipe similar to those of
Sack's books. Nothing new in what he says, it is something like a pedagogic
presentation.
He
mentions the pionnner work of Ramachandran and Hubbard for inventing objective
psychological tests for synesthesia, and he refers to the test described in
their 2001 paper in Journal of
Consciousness Studies.
About the
new hypothesis about synesthesia, Sacks is especially interested by Baron-Cohen'
s idea, i.e that synesthesia corresponds to a normal development of the human
being during the first time of life. How much time last the synesthetic
connections remains open. According to Baron-Cohen, the human being is
synesthete during only the first three months of his life, but more recent
studies would conclude to much more time. The synesthete is a person in whom "a
genetic abnormality prevents complete
deletion of his early hyperconnectivity" (Sacks, 2008: 181) . This abnormality
has an important hereditary factor. Sacks repeats again in a kind of
pedagogical presentation known facts : Synesthesia is considered now as a
normal phenomenon at the beginning of life, an help to survive by recognizing
more rapidly the mother by all the senses. Synesthesia may also return for some
transient times during adult life, during epileptic seizures and under
hallucinogen effects. Sacks reminds also more known facts, at first that
synesthete proportion remains especially uncertain, oscillating according to
different studies between one person in two thousand until one person in
twenty-three. Uncertain also remains the gender difference, although in the
first studies , women looked to be much more afected by synesthesia than men.
Sacks is
especially interested by the relation between synesthesia and blindness. The
loss of vision may lead to increase visual imagery and intersensory
connections. Synesthesia seems to follow blindness so easily, so quickly that
it "suggests instead of release phenomenon, the removal of an inhibition
normally imposed by a fully functionning system" ( 182). The musical synesthesia
provoked by a recent blindness can be so strongly perceived that it is felt
like intrusive, as Sacks described it in "The Mind's Eye" and Ramachandran in A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.
Let's say that
the real originality of the chapter lies in the presentation of contemporary
musicians or musical persons with synesthesia.
The first
case of synesthesia in musicians is the example of the contemporary composer
Michael Torke whose experienced with coloured music had a strong influence on
his music and life. The sort of synesthesia he has consists in "key
synesthesia" : fixed coulours are associated with the different keys. The
colours which appear spontaneously never changed since his childhood and are
specific: "G minor is 'ochre' or 'gamboge'. D minor is 'like flint, graphite'.
F minor is 'earthy, ashy' (169) . " He
sees no color when he hears isolated notes. He took advantage of his
synesthetic experience just in his first orchestral music, called Color Music, in which he makes an
explicit use of his key synesthesia.
The second
case is David Caldwell's, another composer who has a more extent musical
synesthesia. Synesthesia with the keys but with other correspondences than
Michael Torke. As Olivers Sacks notes: " Every synesthete has his own color
correspondences." (172) His synesthesia which transform music in color includes
musical themes, patterns, moods. And even particular instruments have synesthetic
colors.
In fact
Sacks'inquiry on David Caldwell is extremly limited, just a page and a half.
There is a second moment in David Caldwell's study which incorporate a study
done by Swiss researchers, which described a professional musician with both
music color and music-taste synesthesia in a article published in Nature in 2005.
Sacks quickly
flits to a third case, Christine Leahy's case, a writer, a visual artist and
guitar player. Her synesthesia is especially for letters, numbers, days, and
her musical synestesia is included in this. If she knows or recognizes that a
letter of the musical scale is a D, it will provoke the presence of the color
usually associated with the color of the letter D. It is more a linguistic than
a musical synesthesia.
Forth case,
Patrick Ehlen, a psychologist and songwriter. He has a synesthesia not only
with music but with sounds of all sorts, " from musical instruments to car
horns, voices, animal voices, thunder". And he has classic synesthesia to
letters, numbers, days. He discovered that he was a synesthet at the age of
eighteen and his own experiment of synesthesia moved him to become a
psychologist. The presentation of the last case is limited to a large quotation
of Sue B. who see images when hearing music.
So the interest of the chapter is that it
gives information about the current field of the relations between musicians
and synesthesia. It can be considered as an interesting introduction, no much
more. I found also interesting
the site of www.ThereminVOX, A Brief
History of Synaesthesia and Music by Sean A. Day February 21,
2001
HP Lambert
Mein GlückSeit ich des Suchens müde ward,Erlernte ich das Finden.Seit mir ein Wind hielt Widerpart,Segl' ich mit allen Winden.Ashita wa ashita no kazé ga fuku
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