The Symbolic Layer and Perception of The Colors in The Prospero’s Rooms

For this essay, I'm going to focus on Prosporo’s Rooms by Rouse. This musical work is very explicitly about the symbol of the colored rooms from Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. I want to explain exactly how Rouse was able to convey colors through music. Without going into any science of art and colors, we, as humans, associate emotions with colors. Colors can be happy, sad, cold, warm, and anything in between. Through this, the colors can be determined.

Opening with blue, a very vague color, we have to determine what shade of blue. The texture is relatively thin, with only bass. Then, some strings quietly run underneath the bass soloist. This is not a happy room. The main idea is very low in pitch and minor in tonality. Take those feelings and imagine a single color that conveys those feelings. I see a dark navy blue. It's not black because the high strings add some light to the color, but it's still very very dark.

Skipping ahead, white, the lightest color provided, has many woodwinds in their upper registers noodling around. Although the tonality is still minor, the busy instrumentation and general register makes me imagine a movie scene of someone running through a field of flowers, and then pans to a killer lurking in the shadows. This is, by far, the lightest segment and white is the lightest color.

Jumping to the other end of the spectrum, black, sounds like that killer mentioned above found his victim and has jumpscared them and began stabbing. I cannot imagine any other color than than the color death wears: black. The thick, well spread chord is relatively dissonant, causing the listeners blood pressure and pulse to rise, as if in danger. This is a very good portrayal of the black room.

Jumping back for my own enjoyment, I would like to discuss the violet room. The solo bass returns: which gives a very full-circle feeling and places this room on that end of the color spectrum. Once the bass stops, brass blow air through their horns without creating their true sound. This sound gives me chills down my spine. It's very lonely sounding. If used in the horror movie analogy, the main character would be walking into the spooky basement all by herself, where the killer is hiding.

These colors are important because Poe writes everything with a purpose. Very solidly colored rooms would be an odd detail to add for no particular reason. With some cursory research, theories have been thought up and I'd like to share a few. Many say the rooms symbolize the seven deadly sins, all of which Prospero can be assumed to have committed. Many of my colleagues say, in high school, they were taught it symbolizes a sunrise and sunset, with the blue sky being morning and the black representing the darkness of night. My favorite interpretation is that the rooms symbolize stages of life, beginning at birth and ending with death. This seems especially fitting because the room representing death has a window of red, possibly forshadowing Prospero’s demise by the hand of the Red Death. And the ebony clock in the black room, making everyone and everything freeze as it tolls, represents life ticking away. Every toll reminds you how much closer you grow to death, but also acts as a transition between rooms in this piece.