Composing Symmorphies: Annie Besant’s Theosophies, František Kupka’s Chromatic Music, and Astral Visions

The concepts of chromatism in music and musicality in colour were vital for composing what František Kupka called his “symmorphies”: Astral symphonies of colour and sound in painting designed to vibrate with major and minor chromatic modalities and intone in major and minor keys. Their correspondences were vital for capturing the interrelationship between visible and invisible realities that Kupka considered were conveyed by Spiritualism, Buddhism, astrology and theosophy, particular that of Annie Besant. While Kupka’s exploration of music and theosophy germinated at The Viennese Academy of Fine Art, not until Paris did he conceive of musical scales as synchronous with the pitch and vibration of primary and secondary colours, and define his paintings as “concepts, syntheses, chords”. Long familiar with Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, it was in Paris that Kupka absorbed Annie Besant’s theosophy through her lectures regularly organized by the Société théosophique de France and widely published with her books by Publications Théosophiques. Immersing himself in Besant’s Man and his Bodies, Reincarnation, Karma, Thought power and thought-forms, amongst others, Kupka scrutinized how his mediumistic, musical and visionary experiences resonated with Besant’s concepts of The Astral Plane, Astral Bodies and Astral Vision.1 Conterminously inspired by the new music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel amidst discoveries in astrophysics at the Observatoire de Paris, Kupka fused these dimensions into his symmorphies.

This paper was presented at two different conferences. The first conference was completed Novemeber 10. The YouTube conference was published on September 21. The website links are respective of the order of the conferences.