Klarinet Archive - Posting 000536.txt from 2002/11

From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Is my taste in clarinet tone getting "darker" in my
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 23:56:04 -0500

Not necessarily if you're a synesthete. But it might show that the rest of
us have bumped up against an evolutionary dead-end. 8-) There's an
outside chance that the use of the words for colors and shades to describe
the sound of music got started by synesthetes who thought everyone had the
same ability. Others then picked up on it because they wanted to be a part
of the musical fraternity (and because of the appeal of poetic
allusion). I would suggest, particularly among you teachers, that instead
of giving students a "tut-tut-tut" response to their use of such terms that
you check out their claims for internal consistency. If you then are
convinced that your student perceives something you will never enjoy then
you can extoll your student's good fortune and go off to weep in
private. If not you can wax eloquently about the meaninglessness of the
description. Some folks on the FLUTE discussion group gave what I
considered to be convincing testimonials about the colors of tones. I
still maintain that maybe there are some members of this list who hear
"dark" tones and neither Dan nor I will ever enjoy the same experience.

Oliver

>Annie dear, the very idea of calling a tone "golden" and "darker" in the
>same sentence shows the futility of using colors to describe the sound
>character of an instrument.

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