O USO RACIONAL DA COR

 

O uso racional da cor

                           A TEORIA DA COR BASEADA NA TEORIA DA MÚSICA

      
          Quando um raio de luz mergulha sobre um cristal, o esplendor das cores se esparrama ao seu redor retalhando- o em um espaço multicolorido! Quantos mistérios se escondem atrás desse fenômeno simples, mas representá-lo numa tela ou em um ambiente é uma tarefa complexa. O colorido sempre foi a fonte inspiradora para artistas de todos os tempos - um enigma ainda não totalmente desvendado!

          A luz mexe com as nossas emoções, seja em uma tarde ensolarada de inverno ou de um verão intenso. O poder que se irradia de uma simples visão pode transformar nosso humor como se fosse o dono dela. Entender essas variações e seus estímulos para provocá-la no espectador é um dos objetivos da pintura.

          Acostumada a luz dos trópicos e poder trabalhar com suas cores vibrantes sempre me fascinou.  Porém eu não conseguia entender a  lógica de sua  harmonia, notando que deveria haver um sistema que o regia.  Após pesquisar e estudar em vão quase todas as teorias publicadas sobre o assunto,  parecia-me que a combinação harmoniosa de cores era um segredo que os artistas guardavam para si mesmos -  a sete chaves!

         Amante da arte da aquarela, onde o misturar das cores sem perder a transparência tem extrema importância, lancei-me então numa pesquisa própria.  Adquiri todos os tipos e cores de pigmentos existentes no mercado e ao mistura-los entre si, tentava recriar a magia da natureza. Mas quanto mais eu tentava, mais frustrada  ficava, pois a mistura dos pigmentos resultava apenas em tons sujos e opacos.

         Um dia, uma amiga que  acompanhava de perto minha odisseia, presenteou-me com um exemplar de uma obra republicada em Londres,  sobre os estudos do filósofo grego Pitágoras - The Secrets Teachings of all  Ages pela Philosophica Research Society-LA.   Era um manuscrito muito raro do filósofo que viveu no ano 400 AC,  e entre suas teorias de Geometria, Astronomia e Música trazia também alguma referencia sobre cores. 

         Ele foi um profundo observador e estudioso da natureza, para ele tudo começava e terminava nela.  Um fato que chamava sua atenção era em relação aos sons harmônicos: as dissonâncias e as consonâncias musicais. Foi ele quem criou o sistema das sete notas musicais do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, si, dando a cada uma delas uma determinada cor do espectro solar. As cores primárias: amarelo, laranja, vermelho, magenta, violeta, azul e verde. Ele criou também todo o fundamento da harmonia musical -  a lei das oitavas e a ESCALA DIATÔNICA.

         Como a música tem uma teoria muito definida e comprovada, talvez eu pudesse me apoiar nela inspirando-me em sua harmonia. Era apenas uma relação das notas musicais com a cores  mas para mim foi uma luz - um novo caminho de pesquisa que foi aberto.

        Na ocasião, minha filha tinha aulas de piano com um maestro americano, Mr Georg Byrd,  radicado na Alemanha, com quem eu comecei a ter aulas de teoria da música. Mas enquanto ele falava em acordes musicais eu só pensava em cores.  Notei logo que a música era sustentada pela matemática, logo as cores também deveriam, ser, e o são!

         No início, eu confesso, foi apenas a curiosidade de entender seu mecanismo, mas fui logo encontrando pontos de convergência entre elas e fui me apaixonando!... Esperava ansiosa pelas aulas,  que eram como o abrir da caixa de Pandora!.........
              
                  Percebendo que estava no caminho certo comecei a procurar outros prováveis seguidores dessa ideia. A relação de tons ou sons com uma cor específica já aparecia na antiguidade, precisamente no Oriente Médio.  Na Renascença, Leonardo da Vinci, criador em vários ramos da arte afirmava: ¨A musica e a pintura são irmãs pois ambas dependem do mesmo princípio – o da Harmonia¨. Pomponius Gauricus, em 1503, em suas escritas " De Scultura", menciona a exatíssima harmonia do corpo humano e sua relação com a geometria e a música.  Miguel Angelo, pintor e poeta, escreveu Madrigais, e para ele também a poesia e a música caminhavam paralelamente.

        Segundo Rudolf Wittkower em seu livro ": Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanismus", Londres, 1952- " O conhecimento das proporções harmônicas de Pitagóras passou através da música para todas as outras artes". Mas essa relação só apareceu na Europa na Renascença com o desenvolvimento da sua arte e com o aprimoramento de seus artistas.

         No Romantismo descobre-se o aspecto musical com Corrégio, cujo trabalho é comparado com o do músico Pergolesi, pois ambos usavam os tons altos e claros para representar a luz e os baixos e escuros para as sombras. O ponto alto desse encontro deu-se no Impressionismo, quando músicos e pintores como Delacroix, imitavam a natureza com seus tons e cores como inspiração para seus trabalhos.

         Quais seriam os segredos de um bom colorido? Existiriam regras a serem seguidas? Se existe uma teoria comprovada da música, dar cor às notas seria a solução do problema ? As notas de um acorde transformadas em cores também seriam harmoniosas? E qual seria o segredo das maravilhosas cores do fundo do mar?  Com todas essas perguntas borbulhando em minha cabeça  mergulhei nessa pesquisa e a cada passo sentia estar no caminho certo!

        Esse estudo foi feito com uma profunda pesquisa das cores, da música e de suas  aplicações. A comparação entre elas foi feita intuitivamente, mas como dizia Pitágoras: -
¨O conhecimento é um processo cumulativo que se adquire observando os fenômenos naturais, os quais interpretados pelo consciente permitem que o inconsciente aja intuitivamente¨.

        Comecei a aplicá-la em minhas aquarelas, lembrando-me de uma frase de Paul Klee ao pintar pela primeira vez sob a luz dos trópicos na Tunísia  na África, exclamou:-
  ¨Agora eu me tornei um pintor!¨

         E eu pensava Eureka!......
     

                                                         P I T Á G O R A S

                  Pitágoras nasceu na Grécia no séc. VI AC, era filho do mercador Mnesarchus e de Parthenis. Ambos haviam deixado a Síria por medo de Cambyses, um rei muito cruel que perseguia a todos que se opunham a ele. Segundo Godfrey Higgins escreveu em "Anacalypsis", o casal resolveu consultar um sacerdote em um oráculo em Delphi, para saber se poderia voltar sem perigo para a sua terra natal - a Síria!

       O profeta Pythoness colocou sua mãe, grávida,  sobre um tripé de ouro, profetizando que ela daria a luz a um menino excepcional - um ser predestinado! Esse estaria destinado a suplantar todos os homens na área do conhecimento e através de seus estudos contribuiria muito para o progresso da humanidade. Através de todos os tempos, Pitágoras sempre foi considerado como tal, havendo até comparações do seu nascimento com o de Jesus Cristo. Ambos nasceram em Sídon, mais tarde chamada Belém na Síria, durante uma jornada, e ambas as mães foram avisadas sobre importância dos filhos que teriam.

       O Deus Sol como era chamado então o Espírito Divino, apareceu depois também para seu pai, pedindo-lhe que não mantivesse relações carnais com sua esposa durante a gestação. Por esses motivos, ele foi chamado na  época - o filho do Deus Sol! Seu pai ficou tão impressionado com o fato,  que mudou o nome de sua esposa para Pythasis, em homenagem ao profeta.

       Em 535 AC, Pitágoras foi para o Egito, onde foi  aceito como sacerdote  no templo de Diospolis. Foi iniciado em todos os mistérios de antigas doutrinas e também em Brahmins, a antiga Maçonaria. Em 525 AC, o rei da Pérsia, Cambyses invadiu o Egito, e ele foi feito prisioneiro e enviado à Babilônia. Em 520 AC,  retornou a Samos, sua cidade natal pois Cambyses havia morrido e em seguida foi para Crotona no  sul da Itália, para estudar leis. Lá ele fundou uma escola que foi chamada de - " O Semicírculo".

        Ele é considerado o pai do Esoterismo e o primeiro a ser chamado de " filósofo", nome criado por ele mesmo, que queria dizer: -¨Aquele que se dedica a decifrar os mistérios da natureza". As mulheres também podiam  tornar- se filosofas e ele casou–se com uma delas, Teano, a primeira mulher matemática e filósofa da história. 

       Pitágoras foi um grande estudioso do universo, do bem e do mal, do belo e do feio, afirmava que: -" "artista é todo indivíduo sensível que educa, interpreta e aplica suas percepções provenientes dos fenômenos naturais". Dizia também que os homens sabem o que desejam, mas poucos sabem do que necessitam, e explicava Deus, como um composto de substâncias de luz e de verdades, e a causa e a inteligência de tudo.

        Considerava essencial um entendimento racional do Universo e um de seus dizeres favoritos era: "Devemos evitar nos mostrar superiores, amputando com fogo e espada e por todos os outros meios das doenças da alma - a ignorância;  do ventre- a luxúria;  da cidade- o tumulto;  da família- a discórdia; e de todas as outras coisas- os excessos¨.
    
                      Tinha poucos discípulos, aos quais ensinava os mistérios que lhe tinham sido revelados, o estudo da geometria, da música e da astronomia, com aulas que eram sempre iniciadas pelo canto, que considerava terapêutico. Por seus ensinamentos e descobertas ganhou muitos inimigos que o assassinaram. Existem diferentes relatos sobre sua morte, quando muitos dos seus seguidores também teriam sido também mortos.

        Foi ele que criou os fundamentos atuais da matemática, da astrologia e da musica,  considerando-se esse tripé triangular, a base das artes e ciências atuais, que graças a sua mulher e seus discípulos foram perpetuados.

                                            A   MÚSICA   DE   PITÁGORAS

         Pitágoras  acreditava que o universo era um monoacorde -  uma única corda conectada na parte superior com o espírito absoluto e na parte inferior com a matéria absoluta!  A arte da música, segundo ele, era uma ciência rigorosa com leis perfeitamente fundamentadas na harmonia, a qual por sua vez com fundamentos matemáticos. Ele, apesar de não ser músico, estudava a sua harmonia -as dissonâncias e as consonâncias musicais. 
            
                 Um dia, enquanto meditava sobre ela, ao passsar por uma serralheria enquanto o serralheiro martelava um pedaço de metal sobre uma bigorna, notou a variação dos tons produzidos por ele ao martelar o metal. Entrou na oficina e observando cuidadosamente o som das batidas e o peso do martelo teve o primeiro indício dos intervalos de uma oitava e de sua escala diatônica.

         Ao voltar para a sua casa, fez uma armação de madeira na parede,com intervalos regulares onde instalou quatro cordas de metal. Na primeira corda pendurou um peso de doze pounds, na segunda um de nove, na terceira um de 8 e na quarta um de 6. Esses pesos correspondiam os mesmos pesos,  composições e tamanhos usados pelo serralheiro dando diferentes tensões ao arame esticado. 
 
        Com esse experimento, ele descobriu que a primeira e a quarta nota tocadas tinham o mesmo som. Elas produziam o mesmo som, a harmonia de uma oitava, isto é, ao dobrar ou dividir o peso conseguia o mesmo efeito - o mesmo som em um timbre mais alto ou mais baixo. A tensão da primeira corda era duas vezes maior que a da quarta e assim por diante. A nota DO ou C, tocada em diferentes oitavas do piano, ecoa o mesmo som, embora mais alto, mais baixo, mais grave ou mais agudo, mudando apenas seu timbre. No estudo dos sons musicais em cordas esticadas, sob a mesma tensão, descobriu a relação altura e timbre do som da nota emitida com o comprimento da corda.

        Explicando melhor -de  todos os sons emitidos só são sete os que podem ser diferenciados pelos nossos ouvidos, já que o oitavo é a repetição do primeiro - mais grave ou mais alto, o que ele chamou de OITAVA!  E assim também as cores que apenas 7 tons podem ser diferenciadas pelos nossos olhos. A primeira nota Do do piano tem vinte e quatro vibrações, para que uma escala seja completa tem que terminar no DO seguinte no dobro das vibrações, ou seja, quarenta e oito vibrações, e assim por diante..... 

                      Ele então criou as sete notas musicais da oitava:-DO, RÉ, MI, FÁ, SOL ,LÁ E SI  atribuindo a  elas as sete cores do espectro celeste: vermelho, laranja, amarelo, verde, azul e violeta.

 
                      Ele foi tão longe em suas pesquisas que pode reconheceur o poder da musica sobre os sentidos e as  emoções. Para comprovar como uma melodia provoca os sentidos, ele fez diversos experimentos e em um deles colocou um músico tocando numa esquina da cidade. Conforme a melodia, um homem que batia à porta da casa de sua amante, tornou-se enraivecido e começou a querer derrubá-la, mas quando a melodia mudou,  acalmou-se e foi embora. Ao ter conhecimento do poder da musica sobre as emoções, a igreja católica decretou que as composições musicais apenas poderiam ser criadas pela igreja e a sua desobediência poderia ser castigada até com a morte.


                     Comprovando as leis de Pitágoras, o quimico John A Newlands 1837/1898-,em Londres, aplicou  a lei das oitavas como modêlo para os elementos químicos. Ele ordenou os elementos químicos na ordem ascendente de seus pesos atômicos como na escala musical, e descobriu então que todo oitavo elemento quimíco era uma repetição das propriedades do primeiro. Contribui com isso para a criação das leis periódicas,  lei que é conhecida como a lei das oitavas da química moderna.

·                 Pitágoras afirmava poder ouvir a melodia celestial dos planetas se movimentando no espaço.  Santa Edwiges-1174 ( Hildegard von Bingen) a qual foi internada em um convento ( onde não se podia conversar umas com as outras) , com apenas seis de idade,  Ela também afirmava ouvir a m[usica dos planetas, e tinha visões que foram documentadas em um livro - Älle Schönheit des Himmels"de Charlotte Herner. Essas visões se parecem muito com os gráficos deixados por Pitágoras.

·     

                     A NASA (Aeronautics and Space Administration) conseguiu recentemente através de novos instrumentos, registrar e reproduzir as vibrações eletromagnéticas emitidas pelos planetas e estrelas. Estes sons vêm de várias fontes tais como das vibrações eletrônicas dos diferentes planetas, suas luas e anéis em seus campos eletromagnéticos.

               Da mesma maneira que uma onda sonora ressoa dentro de um instrumento musical para criar uma nota, em uma escala muito maior elas ressoam dentro de uma estrela ou planeta. As magnetosferas planetárias se transformam em ondas de rádio ao tocar as suas superfícies produzindo turbulência em sua  estrutura interna que causam o som das sinfonias celestiais. A medida dessas turbulências criadas pelas vibrações depende do tamanho, densidade e da rotação da estrela.

                   Astrônomos creem que essas frequências sonoras também podem variar pois são oscilações como uma mudança rítmica causada pela mudança minuto a minuto sob brilho ou luz das estrelas, a luz do sol. Os cosmólogos tentam entender o enigma chamado de " a harmonia perfeita". De acordo com o físico Lee Smolin, fundador do Instituto Perimeter de Física Teórica, Waterloo, Ontario, nosso universo já criou muitos universos ocultos além dos horizontes negros de buracos negros. "As leis da natureza são perfeitamente afinadas para que o Universo possa abrigar a vida", diz Smolin.

         Desde que foi comprovado que a harmonia não é determinada por intuição e percepções, mas por razões matemáticas, Pitágoras a chamou de Cânone. O princípio do cânone é de um motivo ou tema repetido ou tocado contra si mesmo. Isso acontece quando vozes ou o mesmo motivo principal é copiado várias vezes. Na música, isso acontece de várias maneiras, e é também chamado de FUGA, ex: nas canções de roda. Na arte, nos desenhos de estamparia onde o mesmo motivo repete-se ordenadamente.

         Na geometria ele acrescentou a esfera às formas sólidas já conhecidas na antiguidade - a mais perfeita delas. São elas:- tetraedo, cubo, icosaedro, dodecaedro, pentágono e esfera.  Na aritmética,  é atribuído à Pitágoras  várias descobertas:- as propriedades dos números inteiros e sua classificação em primos e compostos, pares e ímpares; o máximo e o mínimo divisor comum.

         Na filosofia pitagórica tudo eram números, concepção essa que vinha dos números naturais aplicados aos objetos geométricos, e todas as medidas podem ser mensuradas tendo como base uma unidade de medida. Entre as descobertas de Pitágoras, a mais importante delas é o teorema que leva seu nome, seu enunciado:- ¨Em qualquer triangulo retângulo , o quadrado do comprimento da hipotenusa é a soma dos quadrados dos comprimentos dos catetos¨.Hipotenusa = lado oposto ao do ângulo reto Cateto= os dois lados do ângulo reto. 

             O triângulo tetraedo é o vermelho no centro, os quadrados resultantes dos lados, tem diferentes áreas, mas elas têm uma proporção entre si. O símbolo que representava os pitagóricos era o pentagrama ou pentágono estrelado, devido as propriedades dessa figura. Ao cruzarmos dois pentágonos, formam um novo pentágono, chamado de secção áurea.

       Para dar continuidade a minha pesquisa e entender como era usada a harmonia tive que retornar ao princípio da história da música  - aos Cantos Gregorianos! Então vamos lá......


                                                     OS CANTOS GREGORIANOS

                               

      No começo da Cristandade surgiu uma outra maneira de ver e entender o universo. O papa Gregório, o grande,no sec. VII, ordenou que fosse criada uma melodia simples e perfeita para os rituais da igreja. Essas criações levam seu nome -Cantos Gregorianos, uma música de sons claros, calmos, transparentes e modulações bastante típicas, chamadas de melismas.

     Conhecia-se os efeitos provocados pelas diferentes formas de composições, das quais brotavam  emoções como: de ira, paz, paixão, etc O coral gregoriano não nasceu do espírito ocidental, mas foi uma ponte entre as culturas orientais e ocidentais. È um sistema que admite não uma relação entre os tons, mas sim um parentesco entre eles.    

                   Benedito de Nursia que fundou o mosteiro de Montecassino em 529 DC,  adotou os cantos gregorianos para os rituais da igreja o qual é usado até hoje. Sua raiz é a  modalidade, a proporção ou  a equidistância entre os tons da escala diatônica de Pitágoras.
       
                  Existe uma semelhança entre os modos musicais gregos antigos com os cantos gregorianos por causa da modalidade. A modalidade era e continua sempre a base mais rica da musica de todos os tempos. O princípio da modalidade é o diatonismo.   O diatonismo aparecia também no sistema grego, a base mais rica da musica antiga e da moderna. Ele não admite alterações, mas também não leva em conta o cromatismo. 

                  A música da idade média era composta nesse sistema de tons, o ideal C –Dur o qual possibilita outras combinações originais. As outras escalas derivadas dela, diferenciam-se apenas pelo lugar do meio-tom dentro da oitava.    Julia D`Almendra estudou os modos gregorianos nas composições de Claude Debussy, em uma pesquisa do arcaísmo da arte da musica francesa, afirma que são os intervalos que determinam as modas: Protus, Deuterus, Tritus e Tetrardus.

                   A musica de igreja, segundo Julia D`Almendra em seu livro- ¨Les Modes Grégoriens dans l' Ouevre de Claude Debussy¨( 1947/48), mostra como é possível a simples transposição da terceira nota para a frente, uma vez que a essa melodia não tem nada a ver com a altura do tom. 

          O Si ou H, é a única nota que pode ser alterada ou bemolbelizada, sem fazer nenhuma diferença no sistema diatônico. Elas são lidas sempre no sentido ascendente, enquanto os modus gregos são lidos no sentido descendente, e são os intervalos que constituem o modo. 

        A transposição é feita pela modulação, na quarta ou quinta nota, contadas partir de sua tônica. Teremos assim protus em Re,Lá e Sol com Si bemol. Deuturus em Mi, La bemol, e Si ou H sustenido. Tritus em Fa, Si bemol e Do. Gregorio) – hexa- acorde de seis notas- tinha um padrão fixo de intervalo.

                   Benedito de Nursia que fundou o mosteiro de Montecassino em 529 DC,  adotou os cantos gregorianos para os rituais da igreja o qual é usado até hoje. Sua raiz é a  modalidade, a proporção ou  a equidistância entre os tons da escala diatônica de Pitágoras.         

     O sistema musical da antiguidade corresponde às teclas brancas do piano e tem a forma da mais pura natureza melódica. Entre o primeiro e o ultimo tom existiam mais 6 tons, diferente da escala atual de onze (11) tons.

  A música gregoriana não é apenas uma prece, mas sobretudo uma forma de arte magnífica, uma expressão musical perfeita. O estudo dos cantos gregorianos nos permite acompanhar a evolução das formas que são contidas nos antigos cantos da igreja. São modos diferentes do colorido, que dá ao compositor a possibilidade de outras modulações, diferentes do sistema tonal.

                  O diatonismo aparecia também no sistema grego, a base mais rica da musica antiga e da moderna. Ele não admite alterações, mas também não leva em conta o cromatismo. A música da idade média era composta nesse sistema de tons, o ideal C –Dur o qual possibilita outras combinações originais. As outras escalas derivadas dela, diferenciam-se apenas pelo lugar do meio-tom dentro da oitava.  Julia D`Almendra estudou os modos gregorianos nas composições de Claude Debussy, em uma pesquisa do arcaísmo da arte da musica francesa, afirma que são os intervalos que determinam as modas.                                  

 A MUSICA NA IDADE MÉDIA

    A música na idade média era como uma pintura em tons de cinza, só se considerava o seu valor tonal, isso é o claro escuro. 

                            
         As composicões musicais  não consideravam o cromatismo, a cor em si mesma, a harmonia acontecia pelo grau da cor em uma escala de cinzas a preto, chamada de melódica da escala monocromática. Se fecharmos os olhos e comprimindo a testa em direção ao nariz, ao observarmos as cores, as veremos que todas têm seu valor total, do cinzas ao preto.

                                           A MÚSICA NO CLASSICISMO

    Durante o raiar desse século, a musica francesa, com Claude Debussy, iniciou um movimento musical utilizando o sistema modal cromático. Foi ele, quem fez essa emancipação apelando para as fontes modais da Idade Média, criando uma ponte entre musica moderna e o sistema modal.
                       
            O movimento de abandono do antigo sistema tonal, chamou-se atonalismo. Esse sistema utilizou a escala cromática de 12 tons e semi tons, respeitando a equidistância entre as notas do sistema tonal, movimento que devolveu à musica o ritmo da melodia, como pretendia Schönberg.

      A harmonia funcional foi introduzida no Brasil por Hans-Joaquim Koellreuther, um alemão nacionalizado brasileiro. De acordo com ele, a principal função do acorde está na TÔNICA, a qual lhe dá o nome que origina o acorde. Sua função é de repouso- a mesma da cor complementar. A função de aproximação é da dominante – de maior area, e a de afastamento é a subdominante. Essas funções, segundo ele, permitem criar uma perspectiva temporal, podendo-se notar o movimento da música em uma direção.

     Nos concertos de musica clássica temos geralmente o grande final dava-se com o encadeamento da dominante mais a tônica- isso significa- a soma das duas cores complementares- dão sempre um NEGRO!

                                                        JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

    Johann Sebastian Bach( 1685/1750) foi um compositor alemão, organista e mestre na arte da fuga e do contraponto. Ele não ganhou reconhecimento durante sua vida, mas hoje é conhecido como os 3 B da Musica-Bach, Bethoven e Brahms, e é considerado o pai da música ocidental. O seu maior feito foi a criação do piano temperado, tal como hoje o conhecemos, onde aplicou os conhecimentos de Pitágoras sobre a escala diatonica. Esse sistema internacional de escalas sonoras que me serve também como ponto de convergência para um sistema de cores.
    Seu pai era capelão e mestre da corte do rei da Prússia, Frederico , o Grande, e lhe apresentou o pequeno Bach, o qual ficou impressionando pela sua capacidade de improvisação. A corte em Potsdam era frequentada por grandes pensadores como Voltaire e também pelo matemático Leonhard Euler.
    Bach teve uma vida de tragédias pessoais, perdeu a mãe e o pai ainda criança e foi criado por um irmão mais velho que não lhe dava o direito de ser músico. Esse, também  músico, tinha aulas com um famoso professor da época- Pachebel. O jovem Bach, enquanto o irmão dormia, no escuro, copiava as partituras para estudar mais tarde, mas quando esse  descobriu as rasgou todas.
             Casou-se com uma prima, mas ela também morreu cedo e no fim de sua vida ainda ficou cego. Ele passava a maior parte de seu tempo dando aulas de piano, mas também era organista em diversas igrejas.
    O instrumento musical da época era o Cembalo ou piano forte, onde a melodia só podia tocada com os sons na mesma altura. Qualquer pessoa que analise as fugas de Bach pode constatar sua preocupação com a modulação e a harmonia. Seus trabalhos lhe exigiram uma reforma no teclado do piano e de todos os instrumentos musicais e com consequência também na maneira de compor - ele dava muita importância à frase musical!

             O piano temperado criado por Bach é um instrumento que tem um número limitado de tons- se falarmos em cores, posso dizer que se restringe a 11 cores, sendo que a décima segunda é novamente a primeira. Esse sistema permite que os sons e as cores possam se misturar ou soar entre si.

                               Organista, como era, foi inspirado num coral, que criou o piano temperado, o mais completo dos instrumentos musicais, o qual tem sete oitavas de seis teclas brancas e quatro de negras. Temperadas pela temperatura e timbre como as vozes de um coral- mais altas e mais baixas, a mesma melodia cantada em diversas vozes e em diversas alturas.

   Ele foi um mestre da FUGA,  um tema tocado em diversas vozes, depois vem uma parte fantasia que era quase sempre improvisada, voltando depois ao tema.
   O teclado do piano pode ser pensado também como cada oitava em  tons de cinza, começando pelo mais claro, a seria das notas mais altas FA, e ao mais escuro- as notas mais baixas SI. Essa correspondência também pode ser representada pelas cores, considerando seu valor tonal.                               

 O CONTRAPONTO E AS CORES COMPLEMENTARES

              Contraponto é a gramática da música exercendo o mesmo papel da cor complementar para a pintura. Contraponto é o tom que faz o contraste, o oposto, como o quente do frio,o alto do baixo, o inspirar  do expirar- o movimento da vida! Tudo na natureza é regido pelo mesmo princípio desse movimento e isso acontece também na música e nas cores. 

             Nossa visão é um dos sentidos mais importantes do ser humano, a maior parte de nossas sensações de vida são captadas por nosso órgão óptico. A ilusão de cor, é porque a cor não existe no mundo real, ela é causada em nosso cérebro através dos raios de luz. Os animais veêm apenas em uma sequência de branco, cinza e preto. 

  Podem imaginar um mundo sem cores

          Ao olharmos  longamente para o ponto preto no centro da esfera colorida, depois de alguns segundos, olhando para a bola branca na tela, veremos sua cor complementar!  Isso acontece porque os olhos precisam de descanso, o que ocorre ao ver sua cor complementar. Pela cor magenta veremos o verde, azul - laranja, amarelo - violeta, coral -turquesa, etc

          Nossos olhos são compostos por um tecido com um grande número de receptores de luz, ou das ondas electromagnéticas,  que decompôem a luz branca em um espectro de cores, como em um prisma.

The rational use of colors

    The Rational Use of Color                                     

      When a ray of light falls on a crystal splint the splendor of color stirs around it fragmenting theworld in a multicolored spectacle. Many mysteries are hidden behind this simple phenomenon but to reproduce it on a painting is a very difficult task.
    The light plays with our emotions equally in a sunny winter afternoon or in an intense summer morning ! The irradiation power of a simple vision can change our mood as being its real owner .    It has been the inspiration source for artists of all time, a puzzle not yet fully revealed. Th at variations and stimulus reproduction has always been the painter 's main purpose .
     I'm used to the tropical  light whic h has always fascinated me. Although I realized  that the harmonious color combinations were a secret that artists had hiddenonly to them- under seven keys! I  could not understand the color harmony believing that there might be a system behind it .  I have already researched almost all color theory published without any satisfactory results, so I started working on  my own project . In an attempt to reproduce the nature color combinations , I bought all painting material existing on the market , but by mixing these pigments resulted only in a dirty tones mixtures - the more I tried the more frustrated I got !      One day, a close friend of mine who joined my odyssey gave me a copy of a Pythagoras´manuscript:¨ The Secrets Teachings of all Ages¨ - edited from The Philosophical Research Society-LA. It was a special publication about the philosopher who lived in 400BC. His study of geometry, music and astronomy was considered essential to a rational understanding of God and Nature. Amongst these theories there were also some references to colors.
     Pythagoras was a profound studious and observer of the nature -  for him, everything began and ended in it. He created all the musical harmony fundamentals, noting the harmonious sounds relations: the dissonances and the consonances. He also created the seven musical notes giving each of them a different color - the rainbow colors - also creating the law of the octaves and the Diatonic scale. For him this was only a relationship between the musical notes and the colors, but for me it was a new path opened - a light! 
     As the music has a very defined and proven theory perhaps it might be possible to apply it in colors too. As my daughter studied piano with an American maestro, who lived in Germany, Mr Georg Byrd, I also decided to have music theory classes with him. While h and spoke about notes I only thought about colors. 
     At the beginning it was only a caprice but soon as I started finding convergence points betweenthem, then - I felt   in love !  I anxiously waited for the next class, it was like opening the Pandore´s Box!

     The relationship between notes and colors had already been pointed out in the ancient age, on the Middle-East. Music is based on Mathematics, so that colors must be too, and they are indeed!

     When I realized that I was on the right path. I started looking for other believers in the same idea.   In the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci (1452/1508), creator of several branches of science said: ¨The music and the painting are sisters, both of them depend on the same principle of Harmony. Harmony is the prerequisite of beauty, and beauty, therefore is harmony manifesting its own intrinsic nature in the world of form.¨

    Pompinius Gauricus (1481/1530), a humanist, in his handwriting De Scultura wrote about the exact proportion among the human body, geometry, and music. For Miguelângelo Buonarroti (1475/1564), a painter, architect, sculptor and poet who composed Madrigals, to him, music and poetry ran together.

   According to Rudolf Wittkower (1865/1942) in his book - ¨Principles in the Ages of Humanismus London 1952, ¨ the knowledge of Pytharogas´ harmonic proportions spread from music to all other arts and science.

     This relationship appeared in Europe only a long time later with the development of its artists and arts. In the Romanticism, Corregio compared the musical aspects of his work with Pergolesi's.

     The high point of the convergence between music and painting  app is a read in Impressionism when musicians and painters like Delacroix applied the nature colors as inspiration sources.

    Would the harmonious colors combination keep a secret ? Would there exist rules to be followed? By attributing colors to the notes, would I solve the problem? Would the notes transformed into colors also be harmonious? And what about the marvelous colors in the bottom of the sea? All these questions bubbled in my head.
     I investigated the music theory deeply and seriously, but the comparison I have made intuitively, as Pythagoras said: - The knowledge is a cumulative process which is acquired by the observation of nature phenomenon, which interpreted by the conscious allows the unconscious to act intuitable.

     I started using these colors on my watercolors, and I remembering Paul Klee´s exclamation when he was in Africa and for his first time under the tropic light – Now Ï became a painter! and I thought: - EUREKA!

                                                                PYTHAGORAS

     Pythagoras was born in Greece in the VI Century BC, son of the merchant Mnesarchus and Parthenis. The couple had left Syria fearing Cambyse, a very cruel king, who used to persecute everyone who was against him.

    According to Godfrey Higgins on Anacalysis, they decided to consult the oracle of Delphi as to whether the fates were favorable for their return voyage to their native land Syria.

The prophet Pythoness seated Parthenis on a golden tripod, and prophesied that she would give birth to an exceptional child - a predestined being! He was destined to surpass all men in wisdom and beauty, so he would contribute to the benefit of all mankind due to the course of his life.

    Pythagoras was considered throughout all the time as such being, even with comparisons between his birth with Jesus Christ's. Both were born during a trip through Sidon, later called Bethlehem in Syria, and both mothers were warned about the importance of their sons.

    Then, the Holy Spirit called the Sun God, appeared to his father asking him not to have any carnal relations with his wife during her pregnancy. He was so impressed that he changed his wife's name to Pythasis, like the prophet. For all this reasons Pythagoras was known as the Sun God´s son.

     In 525 BC, Pythagoras went to Egypt where he was accepted as priest at the temple of Diospolis. He's been introduced to all the mystery of the ancient doctrines, also in Brahmins- the ancient masonary. Two years later Cambysis, the King of Persia, invaded Egypt where he was caught as a prisoner and he was dispatched to Babylon.

     In 520BC Cambysis died and he was free to return to his town Samos. Later, he headed to Crotona in Southern Italy to study laws, where he found his school called -The Semi-circle! He is considered the father of the esotericism, being the first one called philosopher, a name created by himself that means-¨Everyone devoted to studying the mystery of nature¨.

     Women could also become a philosopher and he was married to the first one, Teano, who was also a mathematician.

     His school didn't have many students, and they learned geometry, music and astronomy. The lessons always began with singing because it was considered therapeutic. One of his favorite statements was: “We must avoid with our utmost endeavor and amputate from the body, sickness; from the soul, ignorance: from the belly, luxury; from a city, sedition; from a family, discord; and from all things, excess.” “All men know what they want but few know what they need.”

    The study of geometry, music, and astronomy was considered indispensable to a rational understanding of God, man, or Nature. Not all his followers could be his disciples, only if they were familiar with these sciences.

     He has created all fundamental geometry, art and astronomy, and the most important of them was his triangle-tetractys.

THE MUSIC OF PYTHAGORAS

The music of the spheres. There was speculation that Pythagoras heard the music of the planets. Saint Hildegard von Bingen,1174, who was applied as an inmate in a monastery at the age of six, wrote about it too; she had the same experience. She affirmed to hear the marvelous melody of the planets, and had visions resembling Pythagoras'.- “Alle Schönheit des Himmels”- Charlotte Herner.

                                 

      NASA (Aeronautics and Space Administration) with the use of new instruments has recently succeeded in recording and reproducing planets' and stars' electromagnetic vibrations , which produces sounds coming from various sources : planets , their moons and rings in their electromagnetic fields. Just as a sound wave resonates within a musical instrument creating a note in a much larger scale they resonate within a star or planet. Planetary magnetospheres become radio waves touching their surfaces producing turbulence within it . The consequence is the appearance of the heavenly symphonies . The turbulence created by the vibrations depends on the size , density and rotation of the star .   

      Astronomers also see these movements as a rhythmic change caused by the brightness or starlight change. These sound frequencies can vary from minute to minute in the light of the sun - our light star.

     "According to the physicist Lee Smolin, a faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physic in Waterloo, Ontario. our universe has already created many hidden universes beyond dark horizons of black holes. "The nature laws that are perfectly tuned to the universe may harbor life", says Smolin

      Like the figure below, nowadays we know that the planets have colors, and they are the same colors that Pythagoras gave to the seven notes. He believed the universe to be an immense monochord with its single string connected its upper end to the absolute spirit and its lower end to the absolute matter.
    This recent picture shows the colors and sizes of the planets. How could he know about their physical characteristics?  The art of music is a well-supported science of the harmony laws having also mathematical foundation. In spite of not being a musician he was interested in its harmony- the consonance and the dissonance.

     One day, while meditating about harmony he passed in front of a workshop where the locksmith hammed a piece of metal over an anvil. Perceiving the variations of the tones while he was hamming using different sizes of hammers, he had the first evidence of his diatonic scale intervals.

He came into the workshop carefully noticing the knock sound variations and the weight of the hammer. He returned to his house and made a wooden frame on the wall where he seated four metal strings at regular intervals.

     On the first string he suspended⁸ a twelve-pound weight, on the second, nine pounds, on the third- eight pounds, and on the fourth- six pounds. These weights correspond to the locksmith's hammers sizes and compositions but giving them different tensions.

     With this experiment he discovered that the first and fourth strings when sounded together produced the same sound, the harmonic interval of the octave. By similar experimentation he ascertained that the first and third strings produced the harmony of the diapente, or the interval of the fifth. Pythagoras continued his investigations, discovering that the first and second strings produced the harmony of the diatessaron, or the interval of the third.

     The key of the secret was contained in the tetractys or pyramid of dots, which is its proportions reveals the interval of the octave-1, 2, 3, and 4.

     He went so far in his investigations about the therapeutic value of the harmonics, that Pythagoras discovered that the seven modes of the Greek system of music had the power to incite or allay the various emotions.

     It is said that while observing the stars one night he encountered a young man befuddled with strong drink and mad with jealousy, who was pilling fagots about this mistress' door. The frenzy of the youth was accentuated by a flutist a short distance away who was playing a tune. Pythagoras induced the flutist to change the rhythm, whereupon the mad man was composed and quietly returned to his home.
    The Catholic Church was the only one allowed to compose music, because of its power on the main senses and emotions; the decreasing disobedience could be punished with death.

     John Newlands, 1837-1898, a chemist, corroborated this ancient philosophical teaching with the progression of the elements according to harmonic ratios. While making a list of the elements in the ascending order of their atomic weights, he noticed a distinct repetition of properties at every eighth element. This discovery is known as LAWN OF OCTAVES in modern chemistry.

     Since it was proven that harmonic is not determined by intuition and perceptions but for mathematical reasons, Pythagoras called it as Canon. The canon principle is a motive or a musical theme which is repeated or played against itself several times, likewise textile design.

     In Geometry, he added the sphere, the most perfect of them, to other geometrical forms. They are: dodecahedron, icosahedron, hub, pentagon, tetrahedron, and sphere.

                                                      THE GREGORIAN SONGS

     In seventh century Pope Gregory the Great, ordered to be created a very simple and perfect melody for the church rites. Such creations received his name: Gregorian Songs- it has a clear, peaceful and transparent sound with fairly typical modulations called melismas.

  In 529 AD, Benedict of Nursie founded the monastery of Monte Cassino where he adopted the Gregorian calendar for the rituals that are used almost until today. The root of these songs is the modality, the proportionality or the equidistance between the tones - the diatonic range of Pythagoras. This proportion is also observed between the colors, which are also the six primary colors.

     The church music, according to Julia D`Almendra in her book: - 'Les Chants Grégoriens in Les modes l'Ouevre by Claude Debussy. '(1947-1948) shows us how with the a simple transposition of the tonic changes the melody.   The B or H, violet, is the only note that can be changed or Flat B (H), without making any difference in the diatonic system, which are the intervals that constitute the mode.

    In Christianity's began a different way to see and understand the universe arose. The effects caused over the senses and emotions by different forms of musical compositions were already known.
    The Gregorian Choir was not born in Western but it was a bridge between Western and Eastern cultures. It was a system that didn't admit any relationship among the tones, but a real kinship.   The ancient musical system corresponds to the white keys on the piano, between the first and last tones there were over 6 tones, different from the scale of eleven tones. 

 

  The Gregorians' Songs are not just a prayer, but rather a form of a magnificent art, a perfect musical expression. Its study allows us to follow the evolutionary forms contained in the church's ancient songs. There are different modes of tones and colors, which gives the composer the possibility of several modulations on different tonal systems.

     The diatonicism also appeared in the Greek system, the richest base of ancient and modern music, it did not admit changes, but also does not take into account the chromatism. Middle Age's music consisted of tones in the ideal Do(C)-Dur which enables other unique combinations. The other scales derived from it, are differentiated only by place of halftone within the octave.     Below, the song Holy Mary with colors:             THE MIDDLE-AGE MUSIC       Music in middle age was like grayscale painting, because they considered only the tonal value. The harmony happened by the degree of color in a gray and black scale called melodic - the monochromatic scale.       If you close your eyes, forcing your forehead in the direction of your nose, you can see the colors in their shades of gray, this is the tonal values ​​​​of colors.

   This harmony of the modal system began to change and give way to another, the chromatism, which ruled all classical music until the 10th century.
     Julia D`Almendra studied the Gregorian modes in the compositions of Claude Debussy, in a search for the archaism in French music. She stated that there are intervals that determine the modes: Protus, Deuterus, Tritus and Tetrardus.
   

   In any painting, song or decorating environment can be used shades of gray to achieve cadence.                    

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer (1685/1750) who didn't get any recognition in his lifetime, but today he is known as- "The three Bs of Music -Bach, Beethoven and Brahms". He was an organist, master of the fugue art, and a counterpoint being considered as the Western music father.

     His greatest achievement was the tempered piano's creation, as it is called today. He has applied in it the Pythagorean's diatonic scale. This international scale sounds system that also served me as the convergence point for the color system. 
  As an organist, he created the piano inspired by the Chor's voice- the most complete musical instrument. It has eight octaves with six white keys and four black keys, tempered by temperature and timbre as it is like the same song sung by voices at different heights.
    His father, Prussia King's master of the chaplain of the court, Great Frederick presented him to the king, who was impressed by his improvisation capacity. The Potsdam's court was frequented by great thinkers like Voltaire and the mathematician Leonhard Euler, too.
    Bach had a lifetime plenty of personal tragedies losing his mother and father during childhood, and was raised by an older brother who didn't give him the right to be a musician. That one was also a musician and had classes with a famous music teacher at that time - Pachebel. The young Bach, while his brother slept, in the dark, copied the lessons to study it later, but he was caught and his brother ripped everything. He got married to a cousin, but she also died early. At the end of his life he became blind.     He devoted a lot of his time to teaching piano or organ. He was appointed as an organist in several churches. The instrument of music at the time was the Cembalo or pianoforte, which could always play the melody with the same sounds' height only.     Anyone who analyzes Bach fugues will be convinced that he had an approach to modulation and harmony in general. His own job required him to make a reform in piano's keyboard of all musical instruments and also on their writings.     His insistence on correct phrasing indicated in his works show us the importance about harmony. The piano created by Bach is an instrument with a limited number of tones, if we're talking about color, it is limited to 11 colors, and the twelfth is the first, again. This system allows the sounds and colors to be mixed together.

                             

THE MUSIC IN CLASSICISM     

During the dawn of this century the French music, with Claude Debussy, began a musical movement using the chromatic modal system. He had made that emancipation appealing to modal sources of the Middle Ages, and creating a bridge between modern music and the modal system.
          

    That very different movement from the old tonal system was called atonality because it used the chromatic scale of 12 tones and semi tones, respecting the equidistance between the notes of the tonal system. This movement was a return in order to give rhythm to the melody, as intended by Schönberg.
     The functional harmony was introduced in Brazil by Hans-Joachim Koellreuther, a German composer nationalized Brazilian. According to him, the main function of the agreement is the TONIC- that gives its name and causes the chord, its function is the same as the complementary color. The approximated function is the dominant , which has the largest area, and the removal is the sub-dominant. These functions, he said, allow us to create a temporal perspective, being able to notice the movement of music in one direction.
    In classical music concerts, usually the “grand finale” gave up with the chaining of the most dominant tonic – this significant sum of two complementary colors.

       THE COMPLEMENTARY COLOR

     By staring at the black point in the center of the colored ball, after a few seconds, looking at the white ball or at a white paper, we will see its complementary color!    It happens because the eyes need to rest, which occurs by visualizing its complementary one. By magenta- we will see green, blue - orange, yellow – violet, turquoise – coral…

 

THE COUNTERPOINT AND THE COMPLEMENTARY COLOR

     Counterpoint is the grammar of music like the complementary color is for painting. Everything in nature is governed by the same principle of movement: birth- death, day-night, inspiration- expiration, rest-fatigue, this also happens in music and colors.

    The view is one of the most important senses of the human being, most of our life sensations are captured by our optical organ. This statement, illusion of color, is because colors do not exist in the real world, it is only caused in our brain by the rays of light. Animals see only a range of white, gray and black. Can you imagine the world without colors?

     Our eyes are composed of a tissue with a huge number of light receptors, or the electro-magnetic waves, decomposing white light into a spectrum of colors, such as a prism. There are three (3) types of sticks in it, each one is sensitive to one field of color - the primary colors.
    The key of harmonic proportion is contained in the famous Pythagorean tetractys or pyramid of dots. It is made up of the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4, which in their proportion reveals the intervals of the octave, the diapente, and the diatessaron.

    As explained before, the octave is composed by eight notes or colors which the first tone is the same as the last one. The diapente is the interval from one point to the fifth one in the order which are the complementary colors. The diatessaron is the interval from one point to the third one in the order which are the chords or triads. 

  The complementary colors displayed in the exercise above are: magenta-green, blue - orange and yellow and violet.

    The mixture of two complementary colors produces this rich range of tones below. At the center of this mixture it produces a range of gray to black tones which proves that those colors are really complementary.

    The following picture was painted only with the yellow and violet range of tones (as presented under it).

Mantra

  Mantras are melodies produced by sounds known in antiquity as - the seed of the sounds. They're basically Pythagorean's fundamental sounds of its diatonic scale, in which each sound or color corresponds to a vowel or a semivowel of the alphabet: A, E, I, O, U and Ä and Ü. The M and N is obtained by two complementary colors or sounds fusion. They are used for meditation inspired on the cosmos, whose melodies are pointed out to human's organs. In accordance with the same belief, playing upon the nerves, the spirit thus created the harmonies of normal functioning and they could be revitalized or even cured.

There are several combining possibilities using the counterpoint notes.

Mantras' examples: SUN (G)...................DO (C), LA(A) ............ .....................RE (D), SI 

(B) ......................... MI(E) etc ........

    In Antiquity, mathematics, geometry and music were developed together while the caves'man still represented humans and animal figures on the walls rocks. The fundamental reason from geometry appearances was the necessity of the objects representation in a flat and three dimensional surface.

        According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the geometry first steps happened on Egypt's pyramids constructions. The Greeks inherited from the Babylonians all their experiments, intuitions and empiricisms.   But it was through Thales of Miletus(624-546 BC), with the ruler and compass finding, that geometry was established as a science. He was its great booster and one of its main proposition was the demonstration of the pyramid height constructions through its own shadow.    Geometry was strongly influenced by aesthetic, religious and philosophical conceptions considering perfect everything in a circular form     Greeks' geometry was strongly influenced by philosophical, aesthetic and religious considerations, which saw perfection in everything that was circular. The Polygon word meant "many knees" and Isosceles meant "equal legs." 
                                                            

   

      The pointed colors by the  hexahedral dots constitute a family, having like a kinship, because they are under the same temperature.

    THE TRIAD

     Ternary is the complementary pair of opposing principles which in addition to a third element, the intermediate and balancing one produces harmony. Ricardo Cirenti, in his Manual for Apprentices and Great Initiates says: "All great religious initiators were aware of the great importance of the ternary laws." Thus ends the conflict of opposites and the duality becomes fruitful, as the father and the mother generating their child.    Ternary chords give personality and richness to colors and they are:

 Pythagoras's tetrahedron, has four equilateral triangles as faces, and it is the universal symbol of strength and power. Its three points summarizes all the mysteries of: Unity, Duality and Trinity!

 The consonant chord is obtained when the colors mixture results in a neutral tone- from gray to black. Vincent Van Gogh, painted his self portrait this chord below;

                                                           

Below, my watercolor - A Fruta do Conde- 1989- which was painted with the following chord:

              

               Interval or Modulation

      Interval is the distance between two simultaneous or successive tones. To this theme belongs many aspects, like: interval, counterpoint, dissonant tones and speed. Pythagoras believed in the existence of a ratio between cosmology and interval. 

      In color, the interval is called modulation, which means the passage from one color to another. Every color projects its complementary color over the next one by mixing them.

     In the above example: the turquoise color projects its complementary color- red-orange on the border. On the other hand the red-orange color also projects its complementary color -turquoise on its border, that two colors mixture results in the feathers green-moss tone.

GAUGUIN'S PAINTING MODULATION

       Paul Gauguin, 1848-1903, was born in Paris spending his first seven years of life in Lima, Peru, where he fell in love with the vibrant colors of the tropics. He returned to Paris when he was 38 years old, he had a bureaucratic job and was married with children.

     The dream of becoming a painter seemed within him was finally materialized by meeting Van-Gogh and Cezanne- the boosters of Impressionism. He was an autodidactic as well as his friends, he had little or no recognition during his life-time, the reason he moved to Tahiti. Once there, the colors of his childhood's memories exploded on the screens, creating his most famous works.

  CLAUDE DEBUSSY

     Debussy was born in Saint-German-en-Laye in 1862, but he spent his childhood in Cannes, with a very pious aunt. At the church, through the songs and hymns imbued with the religious feeling of past centuries, he received his first notions of Art and Music.

     He began his studies of piano at the age of six, and with eleven he was already accepted at the Conservatoire of Paris. He was considered a very rebellious student, because he didn't accept the teachings of harmony and hated the conventional rhythmic forms. ((Maurice Emmanuel)

     At the age of twenty-two, thanks to the Prix of Rome, he stayed three years at the Villa Medici, where he had the opportunity to study and play the Palestrina's old masterpieces in the masses. That feeling he had already manifested on the conservatory's harmony classes reappeared, and it should bring him to seek new composition forms.

    Backing to Paris, he wanted to emancipate the music like to other manifestations of art, such as painting and poetry.

       This Prelude's theme has a Gregorian character - the Greek inférier Dorian tetrachord, therefore - the deuterus. In this composition Debussy reveals his preference for a richer and positive language, like the old modes.        Since the Prelude's first chords, we feel even an unexpected feeling; something intangible, a gentleness and peace quite religious.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Below a Debussy's composition  excerpt of Proses Lyriques-1893- De Soir, showing how he tried to paint it. H is scores over a recited text.

           DE SOIR - CLAUDE DEBUSSY

   

      THE IMPRESSIONISM IN MUSIC AND PAINTING      The music in Europe had exhausted its inspirations sources that found resonance in Debussys' mind. From the beginning he had noticed the structure and rhythm differences between  the profane and church music, then he looked for the  Gregorian song'spirituality as an inspiration for  a new composition form.     A similar reaction occurred with painters like Monet and Pissarro, who released their landscapes classical style, leaving aside the  Romantic era  earth tones. The contours of the paintings became only colored spots, and according to Corot: "The beauty in art is the truth of nature."

     In Paris, Debussy became an avid listener of Saint-Gervais singers, where he could feel the rhythm freedom of the Latin accent flexibility.

      Sisley, Monet, Bazille, Cezanne and Pissarro, formed the impressionist painters' group. 

While artists pervaded his paintings and poems with color and light, Debussy tried alone to do the same with his compositions . 

     Music combines sounds and silences according to a time organization. Painting, especially textile design, repeats a motif according to a background proportion, it is called canon.  The canon principle is a motif or theme repeated or played against itself. It happens when voices or motifs are copied several times, so many sounds or motifs harmonize with each other and become part of the melody. 

                  The  Syllabic Chants

     The first attempt to translate words into music happened in the church's choir with natural, soft and curved intonations called melismas. It would be easier to understand it while listening to a Debussy's composition on a Stéphane Mallarmé's poem: Prélude l'àprés-midi d'un Faune played by Leonard Bernstein. 

   The melody runs in a monologue form, as someone reciting and alternating slowly and-sadly almost tearful passages with others exalted and fast. Just by listening to the melody we can notice all the emotions contained in the text.  

Music notes are like colors since both have a saturation degree. The mixture of two complementary colors results in black, which corresponds to 100% of the total saturation. That saturation degree is divided among complementary colors: violet has   86%  of saturation and yellow has 14% , blue has 71% and orange, 29%,  green would have 57% and   magenta  43%, and so on ........ 

                                                             

  The figure and their background

  The senses like seeing and hearing are sensations captured by our brain through the optical nerves and audio system. They are physically and externally ones because only the human being sees in colors while animals see in black and white. If the color caused by solar rays only exists in our brains, does the sound caused by air vibrations exist outside it? If the color is an illusion, should the sound also be?      According to the neuroscientist Francisco J. Rubia in his book -What do you know about the brain? -"The brain is a closed world translating external stimuli into the language provided by the brain structures, giving an internal version or representation of an external reality." "From what we understand that the human being is closed in itself! As the computer has its own language, the brain also has its, the harmony is the accepted way to its perfect understanding.

    On many above-named compositions there is an analogy between the figure, its background, as the musical theme and its accompaniment. In all musical or artistic compositions forms, the figure, the musical theme as their background have the same influence on our brain.

   On Bach's baroque compositions can be noticed the musical accompaniment coming along the melody theme which is repeated several times but in a higher or lower voice, called recursive- the famous Bach's fugues! The video below shows it perfectly:

   Maurits C. Escher was a mathematician and a Dutch graphic artist who especially worked in two-dimensional plans. He used the figure and its ground in a very special way. 

   In Escher's graphic designs, the same motif is repeated several times, in a positive and negative form.

      Douglas R. Hofstadter in his book- “Gödel, Escher, Bach” asserts that the figure is the positive form while the background is the negative one. The melody is the music's most important part and the accompaniment is its background.  There are two background types, cursive and recursive. The cursive appears spontaneously and not as a planned result, like in most artworks. It also happens in the great majority of music compositions, as the accompaniment only plays like the counterpoint. What means that within a limited space or time, every color or tone needs its complementary one to build the harmony.

                                                        Textile design made by me

     As other figures or messages appear in a planned background it's called recurvise, like in the Escher's lithography above.

     Below  is a painting of mine attempting to play with the positive and negative backgrounds by mixing their outlines. In the ballroom there are just two couples, but it gives us the impression of seeing a room full of people.

           JOHN COLTRAME - JAZZ

John Coltrane (1926/1967), was a saxophonist and composer of American jazz who brought great innovation to contemporary music. Like Debussy, he spent his early years playing the clarinet in the choir of the Catholic Church, and like him he was influenced by sacred music and its harmony. He studied music at the Ornstein School of Music in New Jersey and harmony at the Granoff School in Philadelphia.
He also attended other churches and religions such as Islam and the occult, a neo-pagan belief prior to Christianity that affirms the existence of the supernatural and the physical and spiritual principles. The symbol of this belief was the pentagram which, for esoteric and pagans, represents the five elements: earth, air, water, fire and spirit.
In geometry, the pentagram is the name given to the regular starry pentagon, used as a talisman by the Pythagoreans, that is, followed in the rules of life attributed to Pythagoras.
Leonardo da Vinci's illustration for the book “A Divina Proporção”, by the Franciscan monk and Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, shows the geometric relations of man with the universe. The so-called "Vitruvian Man" represents the pentagram under a human figure. 

The tonal system is not simply a set of notes or distinct colors, but it´sa system with a relationship, almost a family one, (DNA); because the chromatic scale notes are under the same temperature and frequencies.

Musical frequency is the number of times a sound wave is repeated per second. Giuseppe Verdi (1813/1901), opera composer, tuned his instruments at 432 Hz, as he considered it to be the same frequency as nature. His first application of the new harmony was in Giants Steps.

COLOR MODULATION

I started this blog researching ancient art works from painters and musicians on the use of 2 colors or two notes (mantras), three colors or 3 notes (chord), four colors or notes. John Coltrane used the fifths of Pythagoras in his jazz compositions, which was already used in baroque one. The fifth note, passively changes from one musical system to another one, what´s called modulation. It was a new way of composing, that changed the entire conception of music theory, serving as inspiration even for bossa nova.

  The world we live has no colors, it is in shades of gray and black, because the color we see is produced in our brain through three rods: yellow, red and blue. It´s connected with another part of it, the macula, the central part of the retina, with photoreceptors, which receive rays of light and transform them into colors

 I didn't add anything to my blog for a long time, but my head continued to ask me questions, trying to understand and explain the path in the harmonious on use of colors... When taking my daily sunbath, with closed eyes, I see colors moving on my mind, so I decided to paint them, but always remembering how difficult it's

to reproduce colors on the computer. 

     I noticed lit starts with a strong color in a small area, that increases to another color to a slightly larger and then another one, but it doesn't go beyond five colors, starting all over again. The color of the smallest area, which would be the tonic, has its complementary color in the fourth area and the fifth one serves as a modulation to another system. I believe it's a natural connection of our brain. 

Scientists claim that we have a gray matter in our brain, called the uncertain zone, which plays an important role in learning and memory. It works like a traffic light network that optimizes brain traffic, not by exciting neurons, but by inhibiting them. This inhibition creates an optimization of the flow of connections to other areas.

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I tried using this color harmony system in a portrait of myself and I liked it, it's was a new way of thinking, it looks harmonious.

 A ray of light has different applications, the 2023 Nobel Prize for scientists ALAIN ASPECT, JOHN CLAUSER AND ANTON ZELLINGER caught my attention about the connections experiments between the entanglements of subatomic particles, the quantum dot, which they gave colors.

 The matter filters the ray of light according to its density, like a kitchen filter, thinner or very closed. The color of the object or matter is the one that is expelled, because the others are absorbed. The ray of light was considered straight and direct, but scientists discovered that they form a tangle and mix, like the colors on a palette creating new color, in that case of news connections. It was possible for them to see how this connection operates and also how the system repeats itself.

BOSSA NOVA

 The new musical movement called Bossa Nova appeared in Brazil in the late 50's, at a period known as the golden years – it was attended by brilliant-young and idealist musicians, such as Debussy was in his lifetime, trying to find new way of composing music. And again they turned to the past to the lost roots of a very melodic music: the Gregorian choirs

    At that time, Brazilian popular music lived to a dark turning point, in which the American and Caribbean rhythms were dominating the music market. Then, a cultural and economic audience elite rediscovered the samba of Rio de Janeiro's slums and suburbs, which was created and played by popular musicians. 

  As that public also enjoyed the jazz, it had a decisive influence on the composers' scope work. Some music critics also highlight the influence of Debussy and Ravel classical impressionism pace on this new rhythm due to its syncopated elements. It was a natural melody with a syncopated rhythm like a ticking clock and the heartbeats, but always accompanied by sophisticated musical arrangements. The syncopated rhythm is the church and worship music feature, in which weak beats extended to the strong one. 

  This syncopated rhythm is very important for the ritual because it changes the standard rhythm by moving the forte beat accents to the faint one, thus, opens the mind to another dimension and knowledge beyond the body. The syncope symbolically reproduces a cyclic action linked to the concept of reversibility of time and space. But it is not only an act of emotion because it brings a physical effect on the human body, its breathing and movements. This "obligation to movement" is like coming to the natural standard rhythm back.

   The syncopated rhythms accentuates the temps  never the contretemps or the syncope itself. But it always has a very strong rhythmic accompaniment, with strong beats looking for exactly the same effect.             Bossa Nova also uses vivid and vibrant colors, but instead of a feeling of serenity, it brings an appeal quite intimate and sensual.

    To have turned in colors the Ipanema's girl melody.

           

 NOBODIES

 

HARMONIC SPACE     

The arrangement of the spectrum colors and the musical notes needs a different system to preserve their roper tone and color analogies. It was possible to notice certain particularities between the old music and the classical music. The main one refers to the tone notes amount in a musical composition. 

The golden ratio concept determines how to divide a certain area in harmonic proportions between the largest and the smallest ones, applying the IP knowledge. It describes the perfectly symmetrical relationship between two proportions, it´sa shape with a proportion of 1 to 1.618 approximately.

In this blog I have already discussed about the famous PI and the gold cut, because of that I just will demonstrate the results without going into the mathematical calculations. 

According to Fibonacci, at the end of the 12th century, who elaborated a succession of numbers in a numerical sequence starting with 0 and 1 and It is infinite. Those can also be used in order to calculate the quantities or spaces. 

It`s present in various phenomena of nature, living organisms and facts of our daily lives. The following numbers are always the sum of the previous two numbers, as an arithmetic progression.

Fn = Fn - 1 + Fn - 2

1 + 1 = 2

2 + 1 = 3

3 + 2 = 5

5 + 3 = 8 . 

By turning these numbers into squares and arranging them geometrically, a rectangle with specific characteristics can be constructed, called the Golden Rectangle. This is a geometric shape with the following property: If we divide it into a square and another rectangle, the new rectangle will look similar to the original.

The Golden Ratio is illustrated behind using a Golden Rectangle: a large rectangle consisting of a square (with sides equal in length to the shortest length of the rectangle) and a smaller rectangle.

Cezanne's picture

     As already mentioned, music and mathematics are governed by laws and systems. Modus is the system used to order a musical composition or an artistic creation. It is formed by colors or notes from the same family in an ascending or descending order. It always begins with the dominant one which appears in greater quantity, and the followings in a progressive mathematical proportion. The color which makes the contrast gives balance to all is called Tonic, and it is always the  dominant  complementary one.     

   The Egyptians, 3500 years ago, started with an 8-sided polygon, inscribed in a circle to get the Pi's value. Then they have found the ratio of the circle dividing its length by its diameter that is always the same for any circle and its value was a number about 3.16.

    The Pi is an irrational and  transcendental number having  an infinite decimal sequence, which is used to measure the diameter and volume of the circle. But it calculates much more than that: the rolling of the waves on a beach, the apparent daily path of the stars in the sky, the compass of the music, the movement of the gears and bearings, the propagation of electromagnetic fields and a very large number of the natural and mathematical phenomena, which are associated with the circular and spherical symmetries .

    But the most impressive calculation was made by the Dutch mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen (1540-1610), starting with a polygon of 15 sides and doubling the number of sides 37 times, Ceulen obtained a value for Pi with 20, and later with 35 decimal sequences.

   The 1-meter-diameter circle in order to roll back to its initial position runs 3.1415... meters -the Pi's value.
The amount of colors or tones in the melody follows Pythagoras' Golden Ratio calculation The color or the note which occupies the largest area is called dominant, it is followed by the sub-dominant and the tonic which in spite of occupying the smallest part in the melody, gives its name.

Sphere to study the curved space described by Einstein.

The geometry of the hyperbolic plane is the curved surfacegeometry, although the heptagons are distorted, they all have the same size.

He showed us the space is three-dimensional and curved space, which makes this term relative, creating an architecture in which the two things merge, space and time. I added the colors, because this sphere reminds me Pythagoras´s. That Sphere opens the study of curved space described by Einstein.    

                                     EINSTEIN´ STAR

The heptagon is a polygon with seven sides and seven vertebrae which area is the same as that of the PI. The sum of the internal angles is 360 degrees and the number of triangles formed in it is 7. It has all the elements studied so far, it is the most complete of them.

Today I came across the quantum physics, because was Nobel Prize 2023 Nobel Prize was given to Alain Asect, John Clauser and Anton Zellinger for experiments on the connections and intertwining of subatomic particles. The quantum point, and which gave them colors to each of them. The ray of light was considered straight and direct, but they discovered that they form a tangle and mix with each other, like a nanoworld rainbow. Like colors on a palette? .... Electrons are the unit of matter while the unit of light is called photons. The result of the meeting and intertwining of both produces is called quantum mechanics. Can you imagine the research field that opens up? Even Newton's sphere is a step beyond those before it.

The size of each color in a work of art

I am studying the golden rule used by artists and scholars since the beginning of time. I wish to calculate the proportion of each color on the surface of a painting. I have studied Pythagoras's tetrahedral triangle, Einstein's color wheel, and I made a comparison with John Coltrane's musical pentagram, the creator of jazz.  These mathematical studies always take the sphere as a starting point, considered a perfect shape, like our planet Earth. I have used musical theory to compose the harmony of colors, just as one builds chords. Thus, each color corresponds to a musical note, according to Pythagoras.  In this way, I have developed a system that works for me. I specify that even after extensive research, I have kept my mind open to draw its own conclusions.  Artistic work is always linked to proportions; to use a set of harmonious colors, one must consider the amount of each color on the surface of the visual field. I used the famous number PI and performed many calculations, but I did not achieve satisfactory results. I had the idea to research the dimensions and proportions of colors in the solar spectrum, the rainbow. There are seven colors, like the seven musical notes. I checked their wavelengths in nanometers:

 Red: 750–620 | Orange: 620–590 | Yellow: 590–570 | Green: 570–520 | Turquoise: 520–450 | Indigo: 450–420 | Violet: 420–400. Some documents indicate 750 or even 780...   By subtracting the interval values: red: 130, orange: 30, yellow: 20, green: 50, turquoise: 70, iindigo: 30, violet: 20. We can see the creation of a mathematical progression – 30+20=50; 50+20=70, which continues by maintaining the same proportion.Working with colors must also take into account complementary colors. I decided to add them: orange 30 + indigo 30, yellow 20 + violet 20, but turquoise 70, whose complementary is red, should be 70 and not 130. The complementary of green is magenta, which introduces an eighth color, assigned the value of 50. It is known that the human eye does not have the capacity to perceive all colors nor to hear all sounds present in the world. I have often read and heard that composers complain about the difficulty of working with musical semi-tones. I do not wish to create controversy, but to work with colors, pigments, magenta must be added to the octave. In this case, the value of red cannot be 130, but 70, like its complementary turquoise. So magenta can be 50 like green.In this way everything becomes reasonable and logical.

                                                    The Dome of the Rock Jerusalem 

 The eight-pointed star formed by the octagon is part of Islamic tradition, two superimposed squares symbolizing the union between the material and spiritual worlds. The dome of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is one of the oldest examples of its use. Known as the Star of Solomon and mentioned in the Quran, it occupies a central place in the art, architecture, and cosmology of Islamic tradition. It was also widely used in the Iberian Peninsula during the Arab occupation.

Until now, I have followed everyone who has studied theq1 subject, but now I need to deviate a little from them, whether I am right or not.   I have adopted the 8-pointed star or octagon as a standard for color selection. Following the colors of the rainbow, plus magenta, which exists but our eyes can distinguish in the sky, but is necessary to neutralize green as its complementary color.

So I rotate the 8-pointed star inside a 12-pointed star, following the musical genius Johann Sebastian Bach, who placed the 12 notes in each octave of the piano keyboard. For a very simple reason, also in colors, this number allows us to differentiate one color from another, just as one sound from another. The other notes are repetitions of the same notes.

PLAYING WITH COLORS IN THE KITCHEN

Having mixed colors so often—always striving for harmony—I gradually began incorporating them into my kitchen routine: in salads, juices, dish presentation, and even table settings. It is fascinating to observe how the visual appeal of a dish pleases the senses and stimulates the salivary glands; I also noticed that digestion felt lighter and the meal more satisfying. Yet, the same question kept arising: what should be mixed with what? While researching the topic, I discovered the work of Dr. David Heber—a Harvard-educated physician and founder of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California. He authored several books on the subject, such as *What Color Is Your Diet?* (published in Brazil as *Coma pelas Cores*), in which he defined color ranges associated with specific vitamins and foods. The term "vitamin" was coined in 1912 by Casimir Funk, a Polish biochemist.

The term *herba salata*—meaning "salted greens"—originated with the Romans, who introduced the use of oil, vinegar, and seasonings in their preparation; prior to this, greens were simply dressed with wine. The Vatican kitchens became a model and a hub for recipe research. Italian cuisine played a pivotal role in dish preparation and remains a benchmark for fine food today.

When it comes to nutrition, it is essential to understand our body's daily needs and the components of a healthy meal—specifically how to optimize nutrient absorption. Our bodies are composed of macronutrients (50% carbohydrates, 30% fats, and 20% proteins) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). To create a colorful, healthy diet, I will draw upon food colors recognized by experts to compose a harmonious blend. But remember: I encourage you to use your own creativity to play with colors while you cook.

 Black / White – total harmony; each provides what the other lacks regarding digestion and nutrient absorption. Examples: coffee, milk, black beans, and rice.

Purple – one of nature's rarest colors; I will use it to represent seeds, as they contain the healthy fats necessary for digestion, which—along with fiber—aid in nutrient absorption. Examples: olive oil, chia, flaxseed, walnuts, etc. Known for fighting "bad" cholesterol (and supporting "good" cholesterol). Also includes blueberries, plums, blackberries, etc.

Yellow – rich in vitamins C, A, and the B-complex.

Orange – rich in beta-carotene and antioxidants; I will use this color to represent meats.

Blue – I will use this color to represent red meat.

Red – Besides being rich in vitamin C, these are powerful antioxidants.

Turquoise – Represents seaweed and products from the sea. I will use this color to represent white meats, especially fish.

Carmine – Tomatoes, beets, radishes, and vegetables with dark red skins, such as sweet potatoes and apples.

Green – Represents leafy greens, characterized by high chlorophyll

Examples: kale, spinach, kiwi, avocado, broccoli, etc.

My initial goal is to make dishes beautiful and appetizing by playing with colors while cooking. To do this, I need to provide a simple explanation of how these colors work and how combining them can aid nutrient absorption. We start with two colors that can be served as a salad, juice, or dessert, but which meet in the mouth or stomach as part of the same meal.