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complementary pair

Hughes
The tones between the seven white notes of keyed instruments, and the tints and shades between the seven colours, cause the multequivalency of colours and of tones; consequently every colour, as every musical harmony, has the capability of ascending or descending, to and fro in circles, or advancing and retiring in musical clef. It is a curious coincidence that Wünsch, nearly one hundred years ago, believed in his discovery of the primary colours to be red, green, and violet; and in this scheme, red, answering to the note C, must necessarily be the first visible colour, followed by green and violet, but these not as primary colours, all colours in turn becoming primaries and secondaries in the development of the various harmonies. To gain facts by experiment, the colours must be exactly according to natural proportions—certain proportions producing white, and others black. In this scheme, green and red are shown to be a complementary pair, and therefore (as Clerk Maxwell has proved) red and green in right proportions would produce yellow. The same fact has been proved in Lord Rayleigh's experiments with the spectroscope. Yellow and ultra-violet, [Harmonies of Tones and Colours, On Colours as Developed by the same Laws as Musical Harmonies3, page 20]

being also a complementary pair, would produce white, as experimentally proved by Helmholtz. [Harmonies of Tones and Colours, The Arabian System of Music, page 21]

"Their music is of a style very difficult for foreigners to acquire or imitate, but the children very easily and early attain it. I low much the Arabs profited by the works of ancient Greek writers is well known."† As knowledge increases, may not the beginning of every physical science be traced first as a trinity springing from a trinity in unity, followed by a second partaking of the nature of the first, so as to unite with it in complementary pairs as here described in tones and colours, trinity in unity being the germ of never-ending developments? [Harmonies of Tones and Colours, The Arabian System of Music, page 21]

See Also


complementary pairs
Dual
Father-Mother
mate-pairs
pair

Created by Dale Pond. Last Modification: Saturday February 27, 2021 03:23:58 MST by Dale Pond.