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Scan 175
Harvard Dictionary Of Music(1950), 1950
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1COLOR ORGAN
3deutschen Tabulaturbüchern (1927; transcriptions).
5Color organ. The keyboard of the organ, harpsichord, pianoforte, has been frequently used as a medium of coordinating sound and color [see *Color and music]. In 1720 a Jesuit priest, L. B. Castel (1688–1757), constructed a "Clavecin oculaire" in which the keys were mechanically connected with colored tapes; similar contrivances were devised frequently during the 18th and 19th centuries. While these apparatus were based upon the idea of an exact correspondence between a single sound and a single color, thus producing what might be called an "optical translation of a composition," a more liberal attitude has been taken recently. Literal translation has been replaced by "general coördination" between musical and optical impressions. Examples are the color organ of Mrs. M. H. Greenwalt (exhibited in New York, 1921) and the Musichrome of G. L. Hall (Boston, 1930), which was designed "to create a color accompaniment which coördinates with the music and helps to enhance the mood and spirit of the composition." Still farther away from the idea of strict sound-color analogy is the Clavilux of Th. Wilfrid, which was exhibited in New York in 1922 and which, so far, has proved the most successful color organ, probably owing to the fact that it altogether renounces the coördination of sound and light, and merely bestows upon optical phenomena the essential musical factors of time, rhythm, and changing combinations. It has no sound-producing apparatus and is designed only as a medium for a new art of color, in which optical phenomena (colored circles, squares, spirals, etc., projected on a screen) move rhythmically in "crescendo," "decrescendo," "accelerando," "ritardando," etc. Mr. Wilfrid has created a number of "compositions," e.g., a "Triangular Etude." Performances of this type are occasionally shown in motion pictures, to the accompaniment of music.
7Among composers, Scriabin was the most outspoken protagonist of color music. In his Prometheus (op. 60, 1910) he undertook to demonstrate the affinity, scientific and spiritual, that he believed to exist between tone and color. He prescribed a special instrument for it, a "clavier à lumière" invented by Rimington. The only recorded performance of the composition with color accompaniment took place in Carnegie Hall, in 1914. For literature, see under *Color and music.
9COMBINATION TONE
11Colpo d'arco [It.]. Stroke of the bow (of violins, etc.).
13Combination pedal, . . . stops. See *Organ IV.
15Combination tone [resultant tone; G. Kombinationston]. In musical acoustics, a tone of different pitch which is heard when two loud tones are sounded simultaneously. Its frequency is the difference (differential tones) or the sum (summation tones) of the frequencies of the two primary tones or of their multiples. For instance, if the two primary tones have the frequencies 1200 and 700, the following differential tones (D) and summation tones (S) can be heard: D₁: 1200—700 = 500; D₂: 2 × 1200 — 700 = 1700; D₃: 2 × 700 — 1200 = 200; S₁: 1200 + 700 = 1900; S₂: 2 × 1200 + 700 = 3100; S₃: 2 × 700 + 1200 = 2600, etc. The combination tones are frequently referred to as an acoustical phenomenon. Actually, however, they are a physiological phenomenon. If the vibrations 1200 and 700 are produced, none of the vibrations 500, 1700, etc., actually exist in the air; it is the inner ear (cochlea) which, owing to its "non-linear" organization, produces the aural sensations corresponding to the additive or subtractive frequencies. The term "non-linear," roughly explained, means that the combination of two sounds with the intensities a and b is not determined by the "linear" formula a + b, but by more complicated formulae, involving squares, etc. The "linear" formula is valid only for small intensities; as a matter of fact, combination tones are heard only if the original tones are sufficiently loud.
17The differential tones (which are more easily recognized than the summation tones) were discovered by G. Tartini in
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