COLOR HARMONY
87
is illustrated by fixed and definite sound intervals, whose measured relations form the basis of musical composition. Each key has an unmistakable character, and the written score presents a statement that means practically the same thing to every person of musical intelligence. But the adequate terms of color harmony are yet to be worked out.
Let us leave these musical analogies, retaining only the clue that a measured and orderly relation underlies the idea of harmony. The color solid which has been the subject of these pages is built upon measured color relations. It unites measured scales of hue, value, and chroma, and gives a definite color name to every sensation from the maxima of color-light and color-strength to their disappearance in darkness.
(154) Must not this theoretical color solid, therefore, locate all the elements which combine to produce color harmony or color discord?[1]
(155) Instead of theorizing, let us experiment. As a child at the piano, who first strikes random and widely separated notes, but soon seeks for the intervals of a familiar air, so let us, after roaming over the color globe and its charts, select one familiar color, and study what others will combine with it to please the eye.
(156) Here is a grayish green stuff for a dress, and the little girl who is to wear it asks what other colors she may use with it. First let us find it on our instrument, so as to realize its relation to other degrees of color. Its value is 6,—one step above the equator of middle value. Its hue is green, G, and its chroma 5. It is written G65.
(157) Color paths lead out from this point in every direction.
- ↑ Professor James says there are three classic stages in the career of a theory: “First, it is attacked as absurd; then admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim to be its discoverers.”
