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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 9, No. 5. May 7, 1946

—Fantasia

—Fantasia

Rimbaud's famous sonnet on colour, "Voyelles," ends with these three lines:—

O, the great Trumpet strange in its stridencies.
The angel-crossed, the world-crossed silences;
O the Omega, the blue light of the Eyes!

The letter O is associated with the sound of the trumpet, the thought or silent spaces, and the colour blue. In "Voyelles" the French poet attempted to solve a great problem of art—the union of sight, sound, idea and emotion. I have learnt most about this problem from the book "Film Sense" by Sergei Eisensteln (available at the public library), and armed with Eisenstein's opinions on the "synchronisation of the senses" I went again to see "Fantasia" to study what this film has to contribute to the solution of the problem.

At Oxford University, in 1885, a test of sound-colour association was undertaken by 500 students, and tills test unanimously decided an equivalence between brown and the note of the trombone, and between green and the note of the hunting horn. In Disney's colour interpretation of the "Toccata and Fugue," I noted the following satisfying associations: the brass section—orange-reds; the harps—blue; violins—silver and gold flashes; clarinets—yellow and blue discs; tubas and cellos—rich reds; and percussion instruments—white. In the movement, crescendos were rendered in blazing red and diminuendos, in darkening violet, which, incidentally, tallies with Binet's investigations on the emotional effect of colours. He found that red was strongly exciting, and violet enervating and inhibitive. Eisensteln also quotes Gaugin, who wrote about his famous painting "The Spirit of the Dead Watching:" "I must have a slightly terrifying background. Violet is obviously necessary."

"Toccata and Fugue" might produce ideas about absolute sound-colour equivalents, but Disney's interpretation of the "Nut-cracker Suite" using the seasons and their special tints, the autumn browns, winter whites and blues, and soon suggest that the processes of nature mould our idea-sound-colour associations. And in the interpretation of Beethoven's "Pastoral." Apollo the sun is gold and Morpheus violet-purple.

And yet there is a cultural tradition of symbolic colour meaning. Eisenstein quotes: "In heraldry, gold is the emblem of love, of constancy, and of wisdom, and, by opposition, yellow still denotes in our time inconstancy, jealousy, adultery." Primary colours seem to be associated with sets of ideas even where these Ideas are antithetic. In Disney's cartoon for the "Sorcerer's Apprentice," the broomstick, in yellow, is at first a symbol of power and freedom, and then the yellow becoming terrible. Red is the traditional [unclear: relpnutionary] colour of strength and courage: has Disney's story to "A Night on the Bare "Mountain," evil is voluptuous women, ugly animals, and skeletons, depicted in primary reds and yellows. Then, in the interpretation of "Ave Maria," the orange lights are the symbols of piety. Similar negative and positive ideas are historically associated with the colour green.

It is clear that there is no absolute law of correspondence between sound, sight and Idea, but, pertinently chosen, colour and sound have an intense heightening effect in the artistic expression of an idea. "Fantasia" indicates that the film can solve the problem of the union of the senses in a direct manner.

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