“Among musicians, Liszt is credited with a number of pet phrases: ‘More pink here, if you please.’ ‘That is too black.’ ‘I want it all azure.’ Beethoven is said to have called B minor the black key. Schubert likened E minor ‘unto a maiden robed in white with a rose-red bow on her breast.’. . . ‘Debussy wrote: ‘I realize that music is very delicate, and it takes, therefore, the soul at its softest fluttering to catch these violet rays of emotion.’”

—Tom Douglas Jones, from The Art of Light and Color, 1972.