Hearing Music in Color: The Case of Pianist, Composer, and Synesthete, Amy Beach Synesthesia, a perceptive disorder that involves the cross-modal interpretation of different senses, is surprisingly prevalent in a number of famous artists and musicians, now and throughout history. One of these musicians was Amy Beach (1867-1944), a professional pianist and composer whose synesthesia highly influenced her choice of keys and modes within her writing. Synesthesia Synesthesia is a neurophysiological condition in which a sensory stimulation leads to a secondary perception in another sensory modality. “Synesthesia” comes from the ancient Greek words syn (joining) and aisthēsis (sensation) (Mikuš, 2013). There are two primary forms of synesthetic perception: synesthesia between the senses and synesthesia between senses and concepts (Williams, 2015). The most common manifestations of synesthesia are grapheme-color, tone/voice-color, and number forms, but there …show more content…
However, researchers have developed a set of criteria that embody the primary characteristics of true synesthesia. These five criteria are as follows: 1) synesthesia is involuntary and automatic; 2) synesthetic perceptions are consistent and simple; 3) synesthesia is memorable; 4) synesthesia is spatially extended; and 5) synesthesia is imbued by emotions (Mikuš, 2013). Amy Beach Born September 5, 1867 in Henniker, New Hampshire, Amy Marcy Beach (maiden- Cheney) lived in a time when female performers were considered improper and, as such, her husband encouraged Amy to focus her talents on composing rather than performing. A prolific female composer, Amy Beach wrote over 300 compositions, including the first-ever symphony written by a woman. Beach’s synesthesia influenced many of her compositions throughout her life, especially her small-scale works for piano and/or voice (Logan, 2015). Amy Beach’s
I chose to do my composer report on Florence Price. Florence Price was born April 9, 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas to Florence Gulliver and James H. Smith. She had two siblings. Florence gave her first recital at four years old. She attended the same elementary school as William Grant Still where they both studied under educator Charlotte Andrews Stephens. Florence Price is considered the first black woman in the United States to be recognized as a symphonic composer. Her training was steeped in European tradition, but still Price’s music consists of mostly the American idiom and reveals her Southern roots. Her mother, who was a soprano and pianist, carefully guided her early musical training. At the age of fourteen, Price enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music with a major in piano and organ. She studied composition and counterpoint with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse. She wrote her first-string trio and symphony in college, and graduated in 1907 with honors and both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate.
In this paper, I will argue that it is more likely that the qualia of colour could be explained by physicalism rather than by property dualism. Qualia are subjective experiences, such as our senses (pg. 3). Physicalism views every property as physical, and can be explained by science (pg. 29). Property dualism refers to the philosophical view that minds are made out of one substance, but contain physical properties, and a non-physical mind (qualia) that are not related to each other (pg. 29).
Another speaker, Margaret Livingstone delves into the visual aspect of our senses. Livingstone mentions how artists recognize things about vision that neuroscientists are not privy to until years later. Livingstone discussed the differentiation between color and lightness, and how the two contribute differently to a work of art. Color is thought of as “comparing activity” whereas light is thought of as “summing them.” Livingstone indicates that the visual system is subdivided into a ventral system and a dorsal system.
Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up in a small town in Maine. She was always encouraged by her mother to pursue her writing and musical talents. She finished college and moved to New York City where she lived a fast-paced life pursuing acting and play writing. Her liveliness, independence, and sexuality inspired her writing styles and gave her poetry a freshness that no others had. She is famous for writing sonnets like “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.”
Florence Beatrice Smith Price was born April 9, 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas to James and Florence Smith. Her father was a dentist and her mother had numerous careers working as a piano teacher, school teacher, and businesswoman. She had two siblings who both knew how to play the piano. Florence as well as her siblings, received music lessons from her mother who published some of her musical works. Price gave her first piano performance at the very young age of four. However, she did not write her first published composition until the age eleven; the other com positions were published while in high school. She graduated as valedictorian at the age of 14 from Capitol High School in 1903. She followed the footsteps of her mother and went on study at The New England Conservatory of Music, where she was only allowed to attend because she could pass as a Mexican. Despite racial issues Smith was able to forge all the right friendships with other African American composers who led her to the best of the best mentors. She was mentored by George Whitefield Chadwick and Fredrick Converse. There she earned and received her degree as an organist and a piano teacher in 1906.
John Adam in his early age he studied and learnt clarinet, composition and music theory which he actually studied from his father. He use to play orchestra and performed in marching bands. In the era of late 1960’s Adams attended Harvard University and appeared as a Clarinetists along with the band named Boston Symphony.
From the very beginning, Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck, a well respected German music teacher, intended for her to become a famous musician (Harding, 9). At a young age, he recognized that Clara had the gift of music. According to Bertita Harding, who wrote a biography of Clara Schumann, Wieck took cues from Mozart, in hopes to turning his daughter into a well known child prodigy. He began to rigorously train and cultivate Clara’s natural talent at the age of five and turned it into something extraordinary (Harding, 12)....
In a study done by V. S. Ramachandran and Zeve Marcus, seven synaesthetes and thirteen non-synaesthetes were tested on their personal effects of the McCollough effect (2017). Collectively, this study showed that the observations made could prove the possibility that the McCollough effect can take advantage of the color connections that synesthetes already possess to strengthen the effects.
Renner, T., Feldman, R., Majors, M., Morrissey, J., & Mae, L. (2011). States of Consciousness. Psychsmart (pp. 99-107). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Imagine a world where numbers, letters, tastes, and sounds have color. Imagine a world where letters and numbers have personalities. For a synesthete, this is their world. Synesthesia occurs from a cross wiring in the brain. Instead of one sense being used in a particular action, multiple senses are used. Although little medical knowledge is known about the condition, it is fascinating and continues to impact our world.
Imagine attempting simple everyday tasks and struggling because of confusion or memory loss. Well unfortunately, this is what it is like for many people with dementia. The severity of dementia ranges from person to person, but is there anything that can help? Music therapy, for one, can actually be tremendously helpful for those with dementia in more ways than the average person might think.
A recent neurobiological approach to understanding consciousness, at least on a perceptual level, has involved the study of the phenomenon of blindsight. Damage to areas of the visual cortex often result in complete or partial blindness. Although the eye itself is undamaged, patients report an inability to detect any light input in part of (or the entire) visual field. However, experiments regularly show that somehow, visual cues are processed. Visual inputs presented to the blind field affect the patient's response to stimulus in the normal visual field. Reaction times to stimuli are affected as well as the interpretation of the stimuli. A visual cues presented in the blind field may suggest a certain interpretation of an ambiguous stimuli. For example, the interpretation of the word "bank", presented as an auditory cue, differs depending on whether the word "river" or "money" is presented to the blind field, even though the patient does not...
Our five senses –sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch help the ways in which we perceive the world around us. And while they seem to work independently at time they can effect each other and the way we comprehend something. Seeing something pretty, touching something soft, eating something cold and smelling something rotten are the sense we use to connect with the world around us and will all effect how we move forward in that situation. When you look at the top picture say the color of the word not the word itself. It is harder than it seems and takes a little practice to do it efficiently. It is because we see the spelling we were taught not the color it was written in. It is hard to process it the other way, but not impossible. Take the bottom picture for another example is this a
With each of our senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear), information is transmitted to the brain. Psychologists find it problematic to explain the processes in which the physical energy that is received by the sense organs can form the foundation of perceptual experience. Perception is not a direct mirroring of stimulus, but a compound messy pattern dependent on the simultaneous activity of neurons. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of laptops, music, flowers, food, and cars; into sights, sounds, smells, taste ...
Visual perception and visual sensation are both interactive processes, although there is a significant difference between the two processes. Sensation is defined as the stimulation of sense organs Visual sensation is a physiological process which means that it is the same for everyone. We absorb energy such as electro magnetic energy (light) or sound waves by sensory organs such as eyes. This energy is then transduced into electro chemical energy by the cones and rods (receptor cells) in the retina. There are four main stages of sensation. Sensation involves detection of stimuli incoming from the surrounding world, registering of the stimulus by the receptor cells, transduction or changing of the stimulus energy to an electric nerve impulse, and then finally the transmission of that electrical impulse into the brain. Our brain then perceives what the information is. Hence perception is defined as the selection, organisation and interpretation of that sensory input.