As a “grapheme-colour synaesthete”, I’ve always had automatic colour associations for letters and numbers. Since Scriabin and Messiaen also had synaesthesia (of the sound-colour variety), I decided to use colour to distinguish stylistically between movements, and influence my compositional decisions. Each movement of my piece is based on the colour of the first letter of each composer’s surname (since Scriabin and Stravinsky both begin with S, I mixed the first 3 letters of Stravinsky’s name like paint to result in a 5th new colour, for variety’s sake). Oddly enough, I see different colours for musical notes than for my regular letters and numbers — likely a creative colour/sound (or possibly colour/piano key) association from childhood rather than synaesthesia, which is involuntary. Therefore, to make things really complicated, each movement’s primary tonal centre corresponds with the note the influencing composer’s name-colour represents in my brain, each evoking the character and emotion I associate with that colour. Below is a general overview of the piece’s structure, including the colour, primary tonal centre, character, and imitative techniques used in each movement.
