Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1985 - 15

mination, the time for the creation of a
new art of light was at hand. "The possibilities in this field are infinite," he
said. "The world awaits a new type of
artist, whose brushes are lamps, whose
pigments are colored lights, and whose
canvas will be the white concavity of the
dome of some new pantheon-a temple
to the Ever Living God whose symbol
has been, and is, and will be Light."·
Previous endeavors by such experimenters as Bainbridge Bishop before
the Civil War, and the Englishman Alexander W. Rimington in the latter part
of the nineteenth century led Bragdon
to pursue a corollary between the arts
of music and light. Like his predecessors, he drew upon "a correspondence
between a subdivided spectrum and the
musical chromatic scale of twelve semitones."5 Hesaid, "My first instrument,
like Bishop's and Rimington's, was
played from a musical score upon an
organ keyboard. Though this was the
obvious thing to do later experience
convinced me that it was not the right
one."· In time Bragdon concluded that
the route to a new art of light should
be determined by the uniqueness of the
medium of light and not by any similarities it might have with other art
forms, such as music. The parallel between music and light was of most

Wilson's Ophthalmic Color Scale related (0 musical scales.

value to the beginning experimenter
because it established working procedures and indicated some of the potential of light as an artistic medium.
Bragdon soon surpassed this level of
development.
Through theoretical and esthetic
considerations, as well as practical investigation into various formats for expressi ng an art 0 f ligh t, Bragdon sett led
upon three unique characteristics of
light; these were color, form, and mobility. Drawing upon the theosophical
tenet of identifying masculine and feminine characteristics, he explained:
I conceive of color-music as made up
of 101'11/ ("masculine"), and color
("feminine") the first corresponding
roughly to melody, as accurately and
elaborately synchronized as is an animated cartoon; and the second corresponding to harmony, or say rather
to the accompaniment, synchronized
to the main pulsations of the music
only.'

Its mobility, or the ability of light to
change readily in form and color by undergoing ordered, sequential, rhythmic
transformations, made it special among
the arts (and yet similar to music too)
in that it could not exist outside the
realm of time. Time was the bond that
joined music and light into color music,

as Bragdon explains in the following
passage:
Music unfolds in rill/e. Now time
implies succession-one thing following another-movement, change.
Color-music unfolds in space. Space
implies simultaneousness: in space
alone perpetual immobility would
reign. If there be a workable correlation between music and mobile color
it should therefore be sought rather in
the domain of harmony which involves simultaneity, than in the melody which has all succession. Moreover, the eye is less analytical than the
ear which means, in this connection,
that light-changes should succeed one
another less rapidly than soundchanges in order to be separately apprehended. It may be that as the eye
becomes more educated it will crave
more movement and complexity (such
was RiminglOn's experience), but
calmness, serenity, seem somehow the
very nature of light, just as sound
seems to imply movement and passion. For music is a seeking-"Iove
in search of a word," while light is a
finding-"a divine covenanr.'"

The future of an art of light, or
color music, depended upon the increasing sensitivity of both artist and
audience to the subtleties of the medium. The development of color music
relied as much upon the training of

Some combinations of musical notes
and (heir color countelparts.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1985