[ 117 ] 



XVII. On the Music of Colour and Visible Motion. 

 By Professors John Perry andW. E. Ayrton*. 

 [Plates V. & VI.] 



AT the present time, when musical instruments of one form 

 or another are employed nearly throughout the whole 

 world, when even the emotions evoked by the sounds of the 

 human voice have given life to the efforts of a whole nation 

 in the ' Marseillaise/ we are apt to forget that our feelings 

 may be excited through other media than sound. But, just as 

 now all kinds of musical instruments are used in rendering 

 the works of great composers, so we may expect that all known 

 methods of exciting emotion will be combined in the grand 

 emotional compositions of the future. 



Although our feelings may be worked on through the me- 

 dium of any of our senses, one only of these has been hitherto 

 cultivated in the highest degree. And the reason of this is, 

 that there exists an infinite number of easy ways of producing 

 sound ; so that combinations of sound have been used as the 

 vehicle for exciting emotion in us, and in our forefathers, for 

 the last four hundred years ; and, as a result, the ear has been 

 slowly trained to act as the conveyer of the varied impres- 

 sions it is the province of the artist to create, whereas the 

 means in our power of acting through the eyes are even up to 

 the present day clumsy and inadequate. 



Of the optical methods hitherto employed to work on the 

 emotions, the oldest is certainly sculpture ; but this can never 

 create an emotion unconnected with thought ; and the feelings 

 produced by it vary much in different people, and even in the 

 same person at different times. The musical composer, on 

 the other hand, is able to produce a definite succession of 

 emotions which he can vary at will, and which are not utterly 

 different in different people. A piece of sculpture is but sug- 

 gestive — it merely introduces some simple emotion which acts 

 in a controlling way upon the human mind; so also a fine 

 picture induces a dreamy state and sets one a thinking. 



Other emotions, again, are excited in particular people by 

 certain associations connected with a taste, smell, &c. ; but 

 these may be likened to the energy stored up in gunpowder 

 or nitroglycerine, to be set free by the smallest accident, 

 whereas the efforts of real emotional art may be likened to 

 those of which the effects may be calculated according to 

 known laws. 



For the eye to act as an agent for the emotions, it must 



* Abstract of a paper read before the Physical Society, November 23rd, 



1878. 



