# Colour-Music: The Art of Mobile Color/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII
THE COLOUR SENSE AND ITS DECAY
THE decay of the colour sense has been referred to already, but it may be as well for us to consider the subject a little more fully, for if this decay is occurring it forms an important part of the plea for the further development of a pure colour art.
There is, I believe, some danger of the need for a better education of the colour sense being overlooked or under-rated, because many of us are unaware of the extent to which it has deteriorated and is deteriorating, and because we happen to be in contact with cultured or artistic people amongst whom there has been a slight revival of the feeling for colour.
To show the construction of the diaphragms for giving piano and forte effects. The diaphragms consist of transparent mica crossed by innumerable lines which break up the light more at one end than the other.
If we go back to mediæval times we find good colour everywhere in pictures, mosaics, and illuminated manuscripts, in the costumes of the people, in stained glass and decorative frescoes, in pottery and textiles; and in these and other things there is evidence of its having been present amongst all classes. Do we not continually return to the art works of these great colour periods and study them with care and reverence, while our best artists are almost hopeless of excelling them in refinement and strength? Does not the glass of Chartres, Le Mans or Fairford, or that of so many of the great German and Spanish cathedrals, not only excite our highest admiration, but our envy; and is it not rare for our most skilled colourists to reach the colour harmonies of the craftsmen who produced the enamels of Limoges, the mosaics of St. Mark's, Ravenna, Monreale or Cefalu? Can we compare, with any satisfaction, the average decorative coloured fabrics produced in Manchester, or other of our manu​facturing towns, with the exquisite woven materials which were once common throughout Europe, and which still linger in a few out-of-the-way districts?
If we turn from European mediæval art to that of the East, we find the contrast with the present appreciation of colour in Europe—at any rate in the decorative arts—still more marked. Persia, India, Japan, and China have all had their decorative colour arts for centuries past, and they retain them to a great extent to this day. Eastern colour is not only strong and splendid, but is also subtle and delicate to an extent which we can hardly appreciate; and though here and there there may be a tendency for it, at the present day, to run into the stereotyped forms which descend from generation to generation without much change, this cannot be said to be so everywhere. The craftsmen of China and Japan are still able to design in colour, to obtain ideas from nature and transmute them into exquisite decorative colour schemes. If it be argued that the colour sense in Eastern nations has from very early times been stronger and ​better than in Western ones, surely the reply is that we should profit by their example, and endeavour to render our eyes as sensitive to colour and our minds as open to its influence as theirs; that we should, in fact, make special endeavours to bring our appreciation of colour up to their standards of the past as well as the present. The artistic colour sense must have been gradually developed in them as in us, and we should study the mode of its development even though our modern Western surroundings, apart from unspoilt nature, may be ugly and colourless as compared with those of the East, and our opportunities for seeing and enjoying colour fewer. This very ugliness and absence of colour is the outcome of our neglect, and due to the decay or non-development of the colour sense.
It can scarcely be disputed that at the present day large numbers of people are almost entirely insensible to colour, living in the world without being conscious that nature is full of beautiful colour harmonies, and never stopping to ask themselves how much of the beauty and interest of the surroundings of life ​are dependent on colour, or in the least realizing that there is urgent need for cultivation of the colour sense.
It is not, however, necessary to press the point. Even if the opinions expressed are considered pessimistic or over-stated, it is better to see clearly our weak points than to under-rate them, and we shall at least lose nothing by being on our guard against the decay of the colour sense, whether it is, or is not, as serious as some of us consider it to be.
Turning to another aspect of the question, I think it can be shown that the possession of a refined colour sense is of far more importance to a nation than its possession of a widespread musical one.
The defence of this bold assertion—which will, it may be feared, raise the ire of many musicians—may enable us better to see the position.
I have not the slightest wish to disparage music, which to me is one of the greatest of the arts, and one of the greatest pleasures in life, but it is at least conceivable that we might live (as man did once live in the early cen​turies) without other music than that of the birds or streams, and it is evident that there are at present thousands of people who hear hardly a note of music from one year's end ta another, so that music is not essential to life.
But unless we are blind, or colour-blind, it is impossible for any of us to escape the influence of colour, be it good or bad. No object of any kind (unless it be black or white) is without colour. It is everywhere in nature, most of whose beauty is chiefly dependent upon it. In land and sea and sky it is omnipresent and in ever-changing variety—it is in every house and street, in every room and garden and field. We are constantly under its action—beautiful or ugly, healthful or morbid. We cannot escape from it if we would.
Is it not certain, then, that as it enters so much into our surroundings we cannot safely afford to know nothing about it, or to neglect to study it intelligently and cultivate our feeling for it?
Not only is it on all sides of us in nature pure and simple, but it is also practically ​everywhere in man's handiwork. All he produces (unless it be sooty black or absolutely white) has colour, and to a very large extent that colour is within his choice, and depends on his taste and the degree of the development of his colour sense. He selects the colours for most of the things he makes, modifies the natural colour of objects in a thousand ways, and has, in fact, the choice between good and bad colour constantly presented to him, and cannot escape from that choice. Moreover, upon his sensitiveness to colour depends to no small extent the effectiveness of his investigations in many sciences and his capacity for producing work of various kinds.
He stands, therefore, in a relation to colour very different from his relation to music, of which, if he is indifferent to it, he need have little or none; and colour must therefore be of more immediate importance to him in his daily life.
To illustrate inharmonious contrast of blue and rose-red, rendered less unpleasant by intermediate colour.
Example of a simple colour phrase in correspondence with musical notation.
Note.—It must be understood that the colours are merely diagramatic, and give little idea of their purity as actually seen upon the screen.
To these questions the following points may be submitted in proof of its importance:
Firstly: Neglect tends to degrade and destroy the great colour sense with which we have been endowed, just as disuse of any member of the body usually brings about its atrophy or disease.
Secondly: Because much in civilization besides art is dependent upon a widespread and refined colour sense, without which many channels of observation are closed. For example, delicate questions of colour enter into biological, chemical, and spectroscopic research.
Thirdly: Our intellectual and even our literary capacity is injured if we do not possess a keen sense of colour. Without it our great poets could never have written many of the best passages in some of their most imaginative poems, for to give only one instance—the delicate colour harmonies of sea or sky would ​never have suggested many a subtle metaphor or stimulated many a delightful phantasy.
Fourthly: The absence of a refined colour sense, as already pointed out, affects us very prejudicially in every kind of art, handicraft or manufacture into which colour enters; and if, speaking from a national point of view, our capacity for colour falls below that of other nations, we shall not be able to compete with them in many of these.
Fifthly: It has been shown that colour has a direct influence upon health, mental and even physical, and this influence is probably greater than we have yet ascertained, and cannot be properly studied without the possession of the colour faculty.
Sixthly: Colour stands in a very similar relation to us to that which music occupies as a means of emotional expression, and the increase in the happiness and interest of life due to music will probably find a parallel in the pleasure and interest derivable from colour.
The importance of the retention and development of a refined colour sense being ​admitted, two further questions at once arise: firstly, whether it is possible to develop the colour faculty by education in the individual and in the race; and, secondly, whether colour-music has any such educative influence.
As to the first of these questions. It is sometimes asserted that it is impossible to develop the musical faculty in those who do not possess it, that without a natural talent for music a musical education is of very little use. When we come to examine this assertion, however, we find that it is but a half-truth. There are doubtless persons who, having no musical ear whatever, can by no possibility be taught to appreciate music, much less become musicians. But for the majority of people, starting with some slight appreciation of music, it is quite certain that much can be done by education to develop their pleasure and interest in it. We know that this is so, and were it not most of our study of music in schools and colleges would be useless. The recent improvements in the musical education of children upon new aural methods have also proved it.
​Turning from music to colour, there are of course those who are colour-blind, and there are many intermediate stages between total colour-blindness and a full sensitiveness to all the colours upon the spectrum-band. But the majority of people unquestionably have a certain appreciation of colour, even though it be slight or latent, and experience has shown that it can be increased and refined by education. Almost every artist realizes this. He knows from experience that the pictures he has seen and admired in which colour plays an important part have had an educative influence upon him. He knows that his study of nature has had a similar influence, and it cannot for a moment be denied that as a rule those persons who are brought up in artistic surroundings become more sensitive to colour and are less satisfied with the crude combinations which are sufficient to please the uneducated.
Apparatus used for producing spectrum and obtaining position of colour intervals or "notes." The box for enclosing the arc-lamp has been removed in order to show the latter.
​results obtained in elementary and other schools have, I believe, been very satisfactory. In Germany, and here and there in England also, systematic training in the matching of colours and distinguishing between tints varying very slightly has also shown a movement in the right direction.
Passing from the general question of the possibility of this education—as to which there can be little difference of opinion—we now have to consider whether colour-music has any such educative influence. This is, of course, purely a matter of experience, and it can only be stated in general terms that experiment has shown that it has such an influence. The more the eye is trained to notice very slight differences of tint in colour, the more sensitive does it become to these differences. In colour-music not only is an immense variety of tints presented to the eye, but the changes in these tints are often very rapid. At first they are not fully appreciated, but in course of time the eye gradually learns to follow and to enjoy the rapidity of change, and it also becomes more sensitive to very slight differ​ences of combination. On general grounds also it may be reasonably argued that the use of any faculty tends to strengthen and develop it; and it is therefore probable, if not certain, that an art devoting itself entirely to colour would, and must, develop the special faculty to which it appeals. There can, in fact, be very little doubt that the art of mobile colour does stimulate and strengthen the colour sense even in a comparatively short time, and, were it in more general use, its effects and influence would of course be wider, and therefore the contentions as to its importance in this respect on general grounds would seem to be well founded.