• Listening to perfume
• Interview:
  Klaus Doldinger
• Raiders of lost flavors
• The palate has ears
• The scent of an evening
• From closing doors and fizzing bottles
• Tasting sound

Listening to perfume

An essay by Heiner Gembris, Professor of Empirical Music Education and Music Psychology, Paderborn, Germany

A tone, a chord, a sound. Three words, one sensuous realm in which we are immediately transported to the land of sound located in the world of music. But even as we explore this new territory, we come across similar terminology in the land of fragrances. Accords, harmonies and consonances permeate the perfumers' language. Knowing how much our speech mirrors our thoughts, it is fascinating to discover how very similar the vocabulary used to describe a piece of music and a fragrance actually is. Both are built up on a "note." For the one, it is a musical note. For the other, a perfume note. One requires various musical elements to compose a coherent opus, a melodic sequence of recurring musical notes; the other requires a variety of substances to compose a fragrant nosegay, an aromatic sequence of recurring perfume notes. It's no wonder composers have tried to come up with their own musical interpretation of fragrance – albeit rarely. A hundred years ago, French composer Claude Debussy successfully translated music into fragrance in his orchestral masterpiece Les parfums de la nuit: the fragrance of the night. Its title is as mysterious as it is evocative. Whenever I listen to it, I am transported to a warm summer night on the Iberian Peninsula, where a bouquet of flowers and Mediterranean trees exhale their fragrance in a gentle wave of perfume carried on a light breeze. Debussy's unique compositional style lends itself to creating such musical illusions. His colorful harmonies create richly sophisticated and imaginative melodies that release him from the constraints of traditional harmonies. Debussy's music lingers. It is indefinable.

Fragrance has neither physical nor material counterpart

Although there are linguistic similarities, perfume and music are built on two very different sensory modalities and, without a common frame of reference, it is not easy to compare them. Music's unique elements of notes, scales, chords and rhythms, however, can be described and measured according to such physical parameters as pitch, volume and tempo. What is not measurable is the connection between fragrance and music, between a musical note and a perfume note, between a musical chord and a perfume accord. Fragrance has no physical or material counterpart. Unlike sound recording, it is not possible to record the smell of perfume and then use modern technology to encode its substance and spirit into bits and bytes.

A good recording is an emotional experience

If I wanted to enjoy a perfume in a different location or at some other time, I would have to secure the perfume composition and its ingredients in its original formulation. It's different with music. I get the same feeling of sound and emotion from listening to a faithfully reproduced musical performance – meaning a good recording taken up by perfectly matched instrumental, vocal and studio microphones. Submerging oneself in fragrance or music isn't just a matter of fragrant substances and musical elements. Other factors such as one's mood, expectations, social context or room conditions can play an important part in their modality. But do music and fragrance ever play in counterpoint? Yes. Their common attribute is their ability to create an atmosphere. A mood. A lingering impression in the air that is perceived by all the senses: hearing, smell, sight, touch and taste.

Quiet tones – delicate fragrances

One way to understand how music and fragrance intertwine is to describe their notes. In music, high notes are associated with brightness and a sense of spatial height; low tones with darkness and heaviness. In the perfumery, high notes describe fresh, light notes; low notes, deep and rather intense oriental fragrances. A quick musical tempo signifies the smell of cologne as it quickly fades away. A leisurely tempo conjures up the sense of heavier, muskier notes. Loud sounds reflect a fragrance's intensity; soft sounds, delicate or light fragrances. However, there has likely never been such a beautiful combination of fragrances as those interpreted by Debussy in his Les parfums de la nuit.

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