Keys and Colors: Is There a Connection?

by Gail Smith

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Each key has peculiar characteristics. Beethoven selected the key of E for the Heroic Symphony and the key of F for the Pastoral Symphony. There is a mysterious law that some suspect assigns each key to a color of the rainbow. In the book Music and Musicians written by Albert Lavignac in 1905, he describes each key this way:

B Major:	Energetic
E Major:	Radiant, warm, joyous
A Major:	Frank, sonorous
D Major:	Joyful, brilliant, alert
G Major:	Rural, merry
C Major:	Simple, naive, commonplace
F Major:	Pastoral, rustic
B Major:	Noble and elegant, graceful
E Major:	Vigorous, chivalrous
A Major:	Gentle, caressing, or pompous
D Major:	Charming, suave, placid
G Major:	Gentle and calm
G# minor:	Very sombre
C# minor:	Brutal, sinister, or very sombre (Chopin's Prelude in C# minor)

Think about a song you know that is in each of these major and minor keys.

F# minor:	Rough, or light, aerial
B minor:	Savage or sombre but vigorous
E minor:	Sad, agitated (Chopin's Sonata in E minor)
A minor:	Simple, naive, sad, rustic (Beethoven's Für Elise)
D minor:	Serious, Concentrated (Mendelssohn's Variations Serieuses Op. 54)
G minor:	Melancholy, shy (Chopin's Premiere Ballade Op.23)
C minor:	Gloomy, dramatic, violent (Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, Op. 13 in Cm)
F minor:	Morose, surly, or energetic
B minor:	Funeral or mysterious
E minor:	Profoundly sad (Scharwenka's Polish Dance Op. 3, No. 1)

"Each person will regard this aspect according to his own personal temperament; to characterise it in any absolute way would probably be going to far; but, to my own mind, these are the preponderating shades of the different keys major or minor," said Lavignac. It is interesting that both Berlioz and Lavignac agreed on many of the same keys.

When composing a song it is necessary to make a choice and select a certain key. The composer should never lose sight of the musical architecture resulting from the key relationships... relative minors, or going to the dominant or sub-dominant keys. The chart above does seem to make sense especially when you play some of the pieces in those keys. For instance, Beethoven's "Für Elise" just doesn't sound the same in any other key. but A minor. This key is described perfectly by Lavignac as "simple, naive and sad." Berlioz described A minor as soft, mournful and rather noble. All the definitions seem to describe "Für Elise" perfectly.

Tchaikovsky chose interesting keys when he composed The Seasons. Here are some of the months and keys he chose:

The composer Amy Beach heard keys in color. She had perfect pitch and discovered that various colors corresponded with certain keys in her mind. The key and color relationships remained the same with Amy all her life. The following is the color code she assigned to keys:

A	Blue
A	Green
E	Pink
D	Violet
C	White
G	Red
E	Yellow
F# minor	Black
G# minor	Black

Whether you agree or not, it is very interesting to link keys with colors. Some music is more soothing than other music just as some colors are found to be soothing. Perhaps some musical keys are more pleasant to our ears just as we have our favorite colors.

My favorite color is purple, every shade is beautiful and I like the key of D flat and E flat. What are your favorite colors and keys? Write a list of your five favorite piano solos and see what keys they are in.

The lowest tone that can be heard by the brain has sixteen vibrations a second. It is sub contra C, an octave lower that the lowest note C on the piano. At 38,000 vibrations per second sound vanishes from the human brain. That tone would be three octaves above the highest E flat of the piano. The lowest vibrations of color that are visable to the eye are red rays, which vibrate at about 460 trillion vibrations per second. The highest vibrations of color are violet, vibrating about 730 trillion vibrations per second. The colors range from the lowest to the highest as follows: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet -- not an octave altogether.

If notes actually gave color-impressions, they would need to follow the order above and all composers would have to agree in their color-scheme. Since neither of these things have happened we must conclude that the correlation of notes and color is in the imagination of the composer.

Here is a piece for January in the Key of C from Celebrate the Piano Book Two. Play it and see if you hear it in color!