the ocular harpsichord of louis-bertrand castel - Gewina

66 Maarten Franssen
Tieck, in his turn, was a dominating influence on E.TA. Hoffmann, one of the
outstanding figures of German Romanticism, and it is in his writings that a last
mention of the ocular harpsichord can be found in Germany. On the one hand,
Hoffmann admitted that "tone is in music exactly what colour is in painting". On
the other hand he rejected the kind of formal colour music the ocular harpsichord
apparently performed. Melody and harmony in music could only be
compared with the full bloom of nature itself:
It is not the colour green, it is the wood with the graceful beauty of its foliage, that engenders
the thrill and sweet melancholia in our breast. The deep blue of the sky will soon start to
appear empty and sad to us when there are no clouds rising in myriads of changing images.
Apply this to art and realize how soon you would be tired of seeing the most beautiful colours
without any form, and how briefly sight would be tickled by them. Think of the silly ocular
harpsichord of Father Castel! - And in music the same is true. The tone will only deeply affect
the soul when it has formed itself into melody or harmony, in short, into music."*
It is an indication of the aesthetic changes near the end of the eighteenth
century as described by Neubauer and Barry, that Heinse and Tieck speak of
fantasy and the imagination as the vehicle of artistic delight, and the Romantic
synaesthetic imagery clearly has a primarily evocative function rather than a
descriptive one. However, for all of these early Romantics, music is still standing
very much apart; a harmony and melody of colours they find in nature itself,
something they would not have deemed appropriate for music at all.
Meanwhile, the word play of synaesthesia was developed and used especially
yellow to the clarinet, scarlet to the trumpet, pink to the oboe, kermes to the flute, purple to the
horn and violet to the basscxsn. Of course, the notion of a well-defined colour scale had at this
stage of the historical development completely drifted out of the picture. See Gauthier d'Agoty,
Observations, pp. 174-175; Hellwag, "Vergleichung," and his letter to Kant of December 1'790, in
Kant, Briefwechsel, vol. 2, pp. 194-204. For Hoffmann, see Goethe's Malerialien zur Geschichle der
Farbenlehre, pp. 395-399. Gauthier d'Agoty and Hoffmann developed their ideas in reaction to
Castel's ocular harpsichord, which they rejected all the more vehemently for it. Tieck just as well
called it a "kindische Spielwerk" (p. 243). A list of comparisons of colours with musical instruments
similar to Hoffmann's, developed independently by the Englishman William Gardiner, was given in
The lives of Haydn and Mozan (London, 1817), the English translation of the original French book
by L.-A.-C. Bombet, a pseudonym of M.-H. Beyle, better known as Stendhal. See the note there on
p. 255.
' Hoffmann, "Ein Brief des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler" (1819), in Werke, vol. 14, pp. 93-
94; "Der Ton ist in der Musik ganz und gar dasselbe was in der Malerei die Farbe ... lis ist nicht
die Farbung des Griinen, es ist der Wald mit der anmutigen Pracht seines Laubes, der in unserer
Brust das Entziicken weckt und die siiBe Wehmut. Das tiefe Blau des Himmels diinkt uns bald ode
und traurig, steigen nicht die Wolken auf in tausend wechselndcn Bildern: Wendet das auf die
Kunst an und denkt Euch, Wiirdiger, wie bald es Euch ermiiden, oder was fiir einen momentanen
Sinneskitzel es von Haus aus erregen wiirde, die schonsten Farben ohne Gestaltung zu schauen? -
Denkt an das lappische Farbenklavier des Paters Castel! - Und nun i.st's ebenso in der Musik. Der
Ton wird nur dann erst tief unser Gemiit ergreifen, wenn er sich zur Melodic oder Harmonie, kurz,
eben zur Musik gestaltet."