Analogy of Colour and Music^*

Abstract

I HAVE read with interest the letters in NATURE of 31st March, on the relation between the harmonies of sound and colour, and I wish to point out that the most important principle of harmonising in colour is one which has no parallel or analogue in sound, except only that, like the harmony of sound, it has a mathematical basis. I mean the law that complementary colours harmonise with each other. The definition of complementary colours is, that any two colours which are complementary and of equal intensity, produce white when combined. In sound, on the contrary, there is nothing analogous to white, and consequently no relation analogous to that of complementaries.