Synesthetic Musicians and Multisensory Creativity in the History of Western Music

Synesthesia is a neurocognitive condition in which sensory modalities are automatically and consistently cross-linked, such that individuals may “see” colors when hearing musical sounds or perceive chords as shapes, textures, or moving visual forms. Although it is estimated to occur in only about 2–4% of the general population, synesthesia appears at markedly higher rates among artists, composers and musicians. Contemporary neuroscientific research suggests that synesthetic brains exhibit elevated levels of structural and functional connectivity (hyperconnectivity), together with reduced inhibitory filtering between sensory regions, thereby enabling a multimodal integration of auditory and visual information that can profoundly influence musical creativity. This article presents a theoretical examination of synesthesia as a multisensory mechanism underlying musical imagination and compositional practice. It synthesizes key perspectives from neuroscience, perceptual psychology and musicology, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Ramachandran, Hubbard, Cytowic, Ward and Eagleman. These foundations are integrated with historical and contemporary case studies of prominent synesthetic or likely synesthetic musicians, including Mozart, Liszt, Scriabin, Messiaen, Duke Ellington, Billy Joel, Pharrell Williams and Lorde. By tracing the impact of synesthetic perception from the Classical and Romantic eras through 20th-century Modernism to contemporary popular and electronic music, the article argues that synesthesia should not be regarded as a disorder, but rather as a “creative engine” that expands the perceptual and conceptual space within which musical sound can be imagined, organized and communicated.