Architecture; Architecture -- United States; Decoration and ornament; Sullivan, Louis H., 1856-1924
of blue, blue-violet, violet and purple. The merging of purple into
purple-red will then correspond to the meeting place of the
highest with the lowest, "spirit" and "matter." We conceive of this
meeting-place symbolically as the "heart"--the vital centre. Now
"sanguine" is the appropriate name associated with the color of
the blood--a color between purple and purple-red. It is logical,
therefore, to regard this point in our color-scale as its
tonic--"middle C"--though each color, just as in music each note, is
itself the tonic of a scale of its own.
Mr. Louis Wilson--the author of the above "ophthalmic color scale"
makes the same affiliation between sanguine, or blood color, and
middle C, led thereto by scientific reasons entirely unassociated with
symbolism. He has omitted orange-yellow and violet-purple; this
makes the scale conform more exactly with the diatonic scale of
two tetra-chords; it also gives a greater range of purples, a color
indispensable to the artist. Moreover, in the scale as it stands, each
color is exactly opposite its true spectral complementary.
The color scale being thus established and broadly divided, the next
step is to find how well it justifies itself in practice. The most
direct way would be to translate the musical chords recognized and
dealt with in the science of harmony into their corresponding color
combinations.
For the benefit of such readers as have no knowledge of musical
harmony it should be said that the entire science of harmony is based
upon the _triad_, or chord of three notes, and that there are various
kinds of triads: the major, the minor, the augmented, the diminished,
and the altered. The major triad consists of the first note of the
diatonic scale, or tonic; its third, and its fifth. The minor triad
differs from the major only in that the second member is lowered a
semi-tone. The augmented triad differs from the major only in that the
third member is raised a semi-tone. The diminished triad differs from
the minor only in that the third member is lowered a semi-tone. The
altered triad is a chord different by a semi-tone from any of the
above.
The major triad in color is formed by taking any one of the twelve
color-centers of the ophthalmic color scale as the first member of
the triad; and, reading up the scale, the fifth step (each step
representing a semi-tone) determines the second member, while the
third member is found in the eighth step. The minor triad in color is
formed by lowering the second member of the major triad one step; the
augmented triad by raising the third member of the major triad one
step, and the diminished triad by lowering the third member of the
minor triad one step.
[Illustration: Figure 18. MAJOR TRIAD, MINOR TRIAD, AUGMENTED TRIAD,
DIMINISHED TRIAD]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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