Charles T. Griffes (1884–1920), America’s first Impressionistic composer, was deeply inspired by Oscar Wilde’s (1854–1900) poetry. The composer drew out the latent musicality and highlighted colour-based thematic developments in Wilde’s works by interlacing written images with tonal references. And Griffes’ synaesthesia, or colour-hearing, plays a particular role in drawing out yellow/gold tonalities and images in his “Wilde songs.”  

Dr. Zan Cammack is a lecturer in the Department of English and Literature at Utah Valley University. She was the 2017-18 Fulbright Scholar at the School of Irish Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, and is a is a graduate of the MA in Irish Studies programme at NUI Galway. Her book Ireland’s Gramophones: Material Culture, Memory, and Trauma in Irish Modernism was published this fall by Clemson University Press.