Si La Couleur Pouvait Chanter

Si La Couleur Pouvait Chanter, meaning "If Color Could Sing" in French, was composed in a way that artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko approach paintings. Although this piece is no reflection of any specific painting, the idea behind it came to me after admiring Pollock's Convergence. I began thinking about how one would even begin such an intricate work of art. Like every painting, deeply complex or utterly simple, I knew it was approached as a blank canvas with a set palette of colors. I decided to take the same approach with this piano piece; my palette consisted of the three primary colors blue, red, and yellow. I created thematic, rhythmic, harmonic, motivic, and textural material that I felt best represented each color musically. With this, I then through-composed this piece as if I were approaching a blank canvas. I played with the distinct primary colors by mixing elements of each to create new blended colors. This allowed me to develop secondary colors as well as different color shades all expressed on the colorless black and white keys of the piano.