Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-05-02

your nose educated? Can you tell, for
Instance, the difference between laven-
der and garlic with your eyes shut?
If not, you had better begin to give
your nose daily setting-up exercises,
{or the long neglected sense of smell
is coming into it's own.
Perfume concerts are the latest con-
tributi0n of science to aestheticism,
and persons who have always depended
largely on convention to tell them what
to like and dislike in the category of
scents are said to be at a loss when
turned loose among futuristic perfume
harmonies.
The perfume concert is a recent
scientific experiment. 1t has long been
held by some scientists that harmonies
OF color, scent, or taste, are as capable
OF giving aesthetic pleasure as har-
monies of sound. If we enjoy a Sc
ries of musical chords, they reasoned,
why should we not enjoy a series OF
perfume harmonies, or a series of
blended coiors. A dress or painting
may be beautiful by reason of its coli
ors alone. But both color and per-
fume have always been made to serve
as accessories. They have been ig-
nored as aesthetic stimulants. Yet
both can be fixed in q scale, similar
to the musical scale, scientists find.
Using these scales, harmonious or
clashing chords and sequences can be
evolved, just as in music. This, in a
general way, is the theory Of the scien-
lists who have experimental with per-
fume and color.
So far as taste goes, it will be re-
%membered that Huysmans, in one of
his novels, describes a liquor organ.
This was made up of a scale of liquors
in glasses, and combinations were
formed and tasted by the operator. The
symphony of taste would seem to be
a more far-fetched idea than the con-
cert of color or scent. 1t is especially
few aesthetics would be able to rig out
a complete set of liquid notes for an
organ.
Scale Of Soft Stuff
More practicable, perhaps, would be
a soda fountain organ, with a scale
running from strawberry to vanilla.
The difficulty is that one sample at a
time of the soda clerks skill at har-
monies lis enough for most people. A
complete symphony, consisting of a
succession of allegros, adagios, college
delights, and cherry whoops would
knock almost any patron of the arts
into transports of indigestion. The
American stomach will have to be
strengthened before the American
sense of taste can be very much de-
veloped to appreciate the soft drink
concert.
The color organ presents fewer diff
ficulties. At least, it offers no internal
danger to those testing it's delights. 1t
has been used for some time as an
interesting novelty.
The score for a color composition Is
generally written in advance, and the
colors are projected on a screen in the
combinations and order that the score
directs. The concert is produced by an
operator at an organ-like instrument
with a keyboard. and stops which con-
troll different light rays.
Almost any one who Is not color
blind or who is not entirely devoid of
a feeling for beauty can get some
pleasure from a simple color concert,
it is claimed. Very subtle haTmonies
require a more sensitive audience. OF
course, at any color performance the
person who is a critic and a lover of
colors can get much more out of the
display than a person who is indiffer-
ent to the appeal of the spectrum.
Civilized man is used to depending
on his eyes for information more than
on his ears, nose, or fingers. For that
reason, at least. the color organ has
a chance for popularity. When it comes
to the neglected nose, it seems likely
that at first only a few sensitive souls
will be able to enjoy fully the subtleties
of a perfume concert.
A perfume scale has been fixed by
Or. Septimus Piesse, a French chemist.
He uses delicate and pungent scents
the high notes and the heavy scents
for low notes. Though a few of the
odors of his scale are not familiar to !,
the layman, most Of them are; SO we
quote the plan Of the perfume key
board:
PatchouIi to Civet
Starting with the bass clef, three
below middle G.: do, patchouli;
re, vanilla: mi. Glove bark; ia, benzoin:
sol, frangipane; la, s%torax; ST, Glove;
sandalwood; re, clematis: mi, rattan;
ia, castoreum; sol, %pergulaire; la, bal
sam of Peru: ST, carnations; do, gera-
mum; re, h%eliotrope; mi, iris; fla, musk;
sol, pois de sonteur; la, balsam of Tolu;
cinamon: do, rose.
Rose corresponds TO middle c. The
treble rises with re, violet; mi, ~cassia;
ia, tuberose; sol, orange flowers; la,