Colored tones of emotions: the relationship between music, emotions and color

Music influences not only emotions but also cross-modal perception, including color. Previous studies have demonstrated that major keys and faster tempi are often associated with bright hues and positive affect, whereas minor keys and slower tempi tend to evoke darker shades and negatively valenced emotional states. However, how tempo and tonality jointly relate to emotional and chromatic responses has rarely been systematically examined, and the role of emotion in linking musical features to color choices remains underexplored.

In this study, 80 participants with no formal musical training listened to 30-second excerpts derived from the 18th-century Neapolitan repertoire and other classical works. These excerpts varied in tonality (major/minor) and in the pitch class of their tonic (C-B), and each was presented at three tempi (-60, original, +60 BPM). Following each excerpt, participants reported an emotion in free-text form, which was mapped onto continuous Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) scores using the NRC-VAD lexicon, and selected a color using an HSL-based picker; colors were analyzed in terms of Hue, Saturation and Lightness. Data were analyzed with generalized estimating equations accounting for repeated measures within participants.

Excerpts in major keys were associated with higher pleasure, whereas minor-key excerpts were associated with higher arousal, which increased at faster tempi; minor-key excerpts were also associated with darker color choices. Crucially, the emotional dimensions predicted color selection: pleasure was associated with more saturated and lighter colors, and arousal with darker colors. These associations remained stable after controlling for tonality, tempo, and absolute BPM.

These findings are consistent with an emotion-mediation account of music-color correspondences, whereby listeners form flexible, emotion-linked associations between sound and color.