A Historical Survey of Cross-modal Interactions in Musical Compositions

Cross-modal views in musical compositions have already received a considerable amount of contemporary scholarly attention. Within Science, a cross-modal perception is associated with the term, “Synesthesia”, which indicates a union of human beings’ five major senses including sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The most common type of synesthetia in musical realms is the sound-color correspondence, in which an individual tone or a specific harmony relates to a certain color, shape, or colorful pattern. Aside from the scientific methods, a great number of studies were contributed by philosophers who interpret the cross-modal interaction as metaphorical expression. This study will investigate the sound-image correlations in human senses from a philosophical point of view with metaphorical aspects utilized in the musical compositions.