Neuromusicology or Musiconeurology? “Omni-art” in Alexander Scriabin as a Fount of Ideas

Abstract

Science can uncover neural mechanisms by looking at the work of artists. The ingenuity of a titan of classical music, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), in combining all the sensory modalities into a polyphony of aesthetical experience, and his creation of a chord based on fourths rather than the conventional thirds are proposed as putative points of departure for insight, in future studies, into the neural processes that underlie the perception of beauty, individually or universally. Scriabin’s “Omni-art” was a new synthesis of music, philosophy and religion, and a new aesthetic language, a unification of music, vision, olfaction, drama, poetry, dance, image, and conceptualization, all governed by logic, in the quest for the integrative action of the human mind toward a “higher reality” of which music is only a component.

Coloured hearing, colour music, colour organs, and the search for perceptually meaningful correspondences between colour and sound

“…Something of a similar challenge has faced those interested in trying to understand more about the idiosyncratic crossmodal mappings that have been suggested by synaesthetic Russian artists, namely the composers Rimsky-Korsakov (who reported 'seeing' music in the key of A-major as yellow; Myers, 1911), and Scriabin (Galeyev & Vanechkina, 2001;Myers, 1914). Once again, though, it has long been the subject of debate as to what exactly the relationship, if any, was between Scriabin's personal repertoire of idiosyncratic audiovisual inducer-concurrent mappings, and those that he chose to incorporate into his colour circle/score/luce (Galeyev & Vanechkina, 2001;Triarhou, 2016). 12 'Coloured hearing' turns out to be one of the most commonly-mentioned forms of synaesthesia, and often appeared in the scientific literature in the decades either side of 1900 (e.g., Dauriac, 1902;de Parville, 1883;English, 1923;Flournoy, 1893;Ginsberg, 1923;Jewanski et al, 2009;Jewanski et al, 2011;Jewanski, Simner, Day, Rothen, & Ward, 2020;Underwood, 1893).…”

“…Something of a similar challenge has faced those interested in trying to understand more about the idiosyncratic crossmodal mappings that have been suggested by synaesthetic Russian artists, namely the composers Rimsky-Korsakov (who reported ‘seeing’ music in the key of A-major as yellow; Myers, 1911), and Scriabin (Galeyev & Vanechkina, 2001; Myers, 1914). Once again, though, it has long been the subject of debate as to what exactly the relationship, if any, was between Scriabin’s personal repertoire of idiosyncratic audiovisual inducer-concurrent mappings, and those that he chose to incorporate into his colour circle/score/luce (Galeyev & Vanechkina, 2001; Triarhou, 2016). 12…”

Eggs, sugar, grated bones: colour-based food preferences in autism, eating disorders, and beyond

“…15. Lazaros C Triarhou (2016) , “Neuromusicology or Musiconeurology? ‘Omni-Art’ in Alexander Scriabin as a Fount of Ideas,” Frontiers in Psychology, 7: 364, p. 3.…”