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Alexander Burnett Hector

Alexander Burnett Hector (1865–1958) was a chemical engineer, who performed the first colour music concerts in Australia. In the first decade of the 20th century, Hector constructed purpose-built instruments by electrically wiring musical keyboards to arrays of coloured lights. Though Hector could not play music, he connected his coloured light display to a pianola so music could be played automatically. When particular notes were sounded, appropriately coloured light would glow in response. According to some reports, Hector initially aligned a C scale with the rainbow colours, ROYGBIV; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet corresponded successively with the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Semitones were obtained by mixing hues mid-way between adjacent colours (e.g. C sharp could be represented by a red-orange between a red C and orange D.) At times, Hector would employ an alternative scheme, based on the three primary colours of red, yellow and blue, plus the secondary colours of orange, green and purple. By mixing intermediate colours between these six, a sequence of twelve distinct colours is obtained. It can then be assigned to the sequence of twelve semitones that make up an octave. On December 21, 1912, Hector gave a public demonstration of colour music at the Sydney Town Hall. Other performances were arranged at the concert room run by Paling’s music shop, and at Hordern's Pitt Street department store in Sydney.

Hector had taken out a patent on his colour music device in January 1912, the first of many. By 1931, he had been granted over 20 patents, in Australia, Great Britain, France, the United States and Germany. He had been surprised to read, shortly after lodging his first patent in 1912, of a similar colour-music instrument invented by Alexander Wallace Rimington, Professor of Fine Arts in Queen's College, London. He read Rimington's "Colour-Music", which arrived in February that year, and entered into an amicable correspondense with the author. Hector would also corresponded with William Fraetas, a South African colour theorist, though Hector allied colour-music to science while Fraetas relied on astrological symbolism. He attempted a correspondence with Roy De Maistre, a local Sydney artist

Despite his initial misgivings, Hector found the public response to his ideas was heartening, which encouraged him to continue his efforts. The press soon took an interest in his work and, by 1922, the Sydney Morning Herald had invited Hector to write a series of three weekly articles. In these, he outlining the history of his endeavors, his theory of colour music, and the effect he hoped it would have on the public. Hector's efforts gained international attention, earning him an extensive entry in A B Klein's "Colour-music: The Art of Light", an extensive compendium published in London in 1926.

Hector built a small theatre onto his house in the Sydney suburb of Greenwich, where colour music concerts could be held. A band of enthusiasts, dubbed the Greenwich Colour-Music Society, gathered there. As well as colour-music concerts, Hector gave talks with the aid of hand-coloured charts. They illustrated relationships between colours and musical notes, as well as broader correspondences of science, society and religion. The meetings would continue into the 1950s, when Alexander Hector was in his late 80s.

Press

EARLY NOTICES IN THE PRESS

"Colour Music: Sydney Inventor's Achievement", The Sydney Mail, 5 June 1912, p 21.

"Music and Colour", The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 June 1912, p 8.

"Colour Music: What It Is", by 'Musicus', West Australian, Saturday 3 August 1912, p 12.

"Colour-Music as an Empire Idea", The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 November 1912, p 3.

"Color Music" The Lone Hand, July 1, 1913, pp 240-44.

"Colour Music", K McDowell, Sea, Land and Air, vol 2, no 19, October 1919, pp 417-22.

HECTOR'S ARTICLES ON COLOUR MUSIC

"I. Colour Music: Genesis of a Discovery", The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 18 February 1922, p 7.

"II. Colour Music: Producing the Octave", The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 25 February 1922, p 7.

"III. Colour Music: Health and the Emotions", The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 4 March 1922, p 7.

LATER PRESS NOTICES

"Colour Music: Set in a Sydney Interior", Ivy Moore The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 27 April 1935, p 11.

"The Art of Colour Music", The Sydney Mail, Wed June 26, 1935, p 15.

"Sound into color", Pix, vol 24 no 23, 10 June, 1950, pp 26-27.

"Musicolorist", The Bulletin, vol 73, no 3760 (5 March 1952), p 23.

Patents

AUSTRALIAN PATENTS

AU1912003713: "Improvements in and relating to apparatus for the production of color music", January 1912.

AU1916001299: "Improvements in and relating to apparatus for the production of colour music...", June 1916.

AU1916001412: "Improvements in and relating to apparatus for the production of 'colour music'...", July 1916.

AU1916001936: "Improvements in and relating to apparatus for the production of colour music...", August 1916.

AU1926002810: "Improvements in producing colour music and other spectacular luminous effects", July 1926.

AU1937004075: "Improvements relating to colour effects", September 1937.

BRITISH PATENTS

GB191229615A: "Improvements in and relating to Apparatus for Producing Music and Illuminated Spectacular Effects", December 1913.

GB107380A: "Improvements in the Production of Colour Music and Apparatus therefor", 18 June 1918.

GB107767A: "Improvements in the Production of Colour Music and Apparatus therefor", 27 June 1918.

GB109263A: "Improvements in and relating to the Production of Colour Music and Apparatus therefor", August 1918.

GB274468A: "Improvements in the Production of Colour Music and other Spectacular Luminous Effects", June 1928.

EUROPEAN PATENTS

FR485860A: "Perfectionnements à la production de musique représentée sous forme de couleurs...", 15 February 1917.

FR485928A: "Perfectionnements à la production de musique représentée sous forme de couleurs...", 20 February 1917.

FR486612A: "Perfectionnements à la production de musique avec effets lumineux...", April 1918.

FR637722A: "Perfectionnements dans les procédés de production de musique colorée...", May 1928.

DE540306C: "Vorrichtung zum Hervorrufen musikalischer Farbeneffekte...", December 1931.

AMERICAN PATENTS

US1388706: "Apparatus for Producing Color-Music", August 1921.

US1432552: "Production of Color Music and other Luminous Effects and Apparatus therefor", October 1922.

US1432553: "Production of Color Music and other Luminous Effects and Apparatus therefor", October 1922.

US1728860: "Producing Color Music and other Spectacular Luminous Effects", September 1929.

US1783789: "Apparatus for Producing Color Music or other Spectacular Luminous Effects", December 1930.

Further reading

Hutchison, N - "Hector's Colour-Music Code" and "Hector on Science"

Klein, A B - "Colour-music: The Art of Light", Ch XIX, "Instruments Past and Present", Crosby Lockwood & Son, London, 1926.

McFarlane, J - "Colour in Art & Alexander Hector's Electric Colour Music Organ", Art & Australia, vol 40. no 2, Spring 2002. pp 292-7

Rimington, A W - "Colour-Music: The Art of Mobile Colour", Hutchinson & Co., London, 1912

Wierzbicki, J - "Shedding light on the 'colour music' of Sydney's Alexander B. Hector", Musicology Australia 34 no 1, July 2012, pp 81-99

Yatman, B - "Sydney Eccentric: 'Colour music' pioneer Alexander Burnett Hector beat Brian Eno by 100 years", Sydney Morning Herald, December 26, 2014.

"Alexander Burnett Hector and his colour music invention", Jane Gibian, State Library of NSW blog.

ROYGBIV