Introduction
So many, if not most, of the musical works we study, write and perform can be described as interdisciplinary. Ballets, dance works, operas, musicals, film and television scores, and absolutely anything using text, are all collaborations in various guises, often involving a long list of creative contributors. Composers, conductors and performers must always consider a multitude of extra-musical factors when approaching this type of work, and on a sensory level, these collaborations usually combine music with a visual element. But how often do we encounter an interdisciplinary musical work involving a fragrance? Or inspired by a fragrance? Almost never.
If we consider our biological make-up, that is actually quite nonsensical. Our sense of smell is the most powerful and evocative of our senses, yet it often plays a disproportionately small part, if any, in our daily lives and routines. ‘Unlike other senses, which pass through complex filtering systems in the brain, smell has a direct line to the limbic system – the part of the brain responsible for memory and emotion’.[1] Fragrance, therefore, has an extraordinary ability to transport us elsewhere, alter or elevate our mood, accentuate different elements of our personalities, calm us down, help us concentrate, and seduce or persuade in both subtle and pronounced ways.[2] It’s just not an exact science.[3]
It is not widely appreciated that perfumery is just as much of an art form as the visual and performing varieties. It goes far, far beyond the use and appreciation of simple essential oils in isolation – perfumery turns these beautiful raw materials into showpieces, and as with the rest of the arts, there are certain perfumes that are widely regarded as masterpieces in the field (for example, Chanel No. 5 or Frederic Malle’s Portrait of a Lady). The training needed to become a perfumer often involves towards ten years of study. A chemistry degree is usually required, followed by a stint at a perfumery school (the most famous and prestigious being in Grasse, France) and then starting professionally as a junior under a master perfumer. Perfumers are quite the alchemists.
The structure of fragrances is very reminiscent of the compositional structures found in music and fine art. Perfumers work with what are termed as top notes, heart notes and base notes. Top notes are what is smelled immediately after spraying the fragrance, the heart notes quickly follow and form the main body of the perfume, and the base notes are what is left after the so-called ‘dry down’. This is very much akin to melody, harmony, and bass in music, and foreground, middle ground and background in the visual arts. Similarly, these notes in perfumery can either be complementary or starkly contrasted, depending on the desired effect. Some fragrances change a lot through this time, and take you on a kind of olfactory journey. Others are more what is termed as ‘linear’, in that they don’t alter (other than gradually fade) over time.
Another parallel that can be drawn between the worlds of fragrance and music is in the phenomenon of synaesthesia: the perceptual phenomenon whereby one sensory stimulation (e.g. a sound) can create involuntary experiences for another (e.g. images). Most musicians are familiar with the notion that sounds can be experienced visually, with commonly mentioned synaesthetes being composers such as Messiaen, Sibelius or Ligeti. Yet it’s not only sounds that can instigate visual responses, scent can do the same thing. Far fewer of us are aware of this, and famous examples of synaesthetes in this respect are the perfumers Jo Malone and Olivia Giacobetti.
Perfume houses are usually divided into three categories: designer, niche and indie. Designer fragrances are those made by major fashion houses such as Chanel or Dior; niche perfumes are usually brands that focus exclusively on fragrance, with smaller production runs such as Creed or Byredo; and indie perfumes are made by small, self-owned brands like Imaginary Authors or Karen Timson. Indie perfumery is currently bursting with creativity and innovation, with the internet and social media giving independent brands a far more effective platform from which to grow.
Perfumes, as well as exploring interesting and novel scent combinations, often have a story behind them. As with any musical work, a perfume can be inspired by anything. Sources of inspiration I have recently come across include coastal walks, an orange grove, a fleeting moment between two strangers on a train platform, the night sky, nurses during World War I, Japanese Koto music, and jam on bread. The possibilities are endless.
Some niche and indie perfume houses even dedicate themselves to very specific types of inspiration. At Immortal Perfumes, [4] an independent perfumery based in Seattle, every scent is inspired by a character from history or literature: examples include Marie Antoinette, Cathy and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights and Sylvia Plath. Perhaps these could be viewed as an olfactory equivalent of one of Strauss’ tone poems. The perfumes of d’Annam [5] are all inspired by specific regions in Asia (so far focussing on Vietnam, Japan and China). They evoke the sensory pleasures of the national dishes and drinks, or paint olfactory pictures of the country’s unique landscapes – effects more akin to a work like Sibelius’ Finlandia or Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Zoologist’s 47 fragrances are all named after and inspired by animals, and there are plenty of musical equivalents there.
—
Perfumery is an exceptionally expensive hobby, and the social media world surrounding it displays eye-wateringly huge issues of overconsumption. Fortunately, the availability of sample sets or vials (usually just 1 or 2ml in size), either from online companies or the perfume houses themselves, has made it infinitely more affordable to explore. This is where I started. Like most of this journal’s readers, I’ve always been interested in the arts, but the world of fragrance had never piqued my interest, mainly due to so much of it being tested on animals and smelling so artificial and synthetic. Once I had, quite accidentally, discovered the fast growing world of indie and niche perfume whilst looking for a gift for a friend, I felt like I had opened a door onto surprisingly fruitful territory. These little potions were going to have a much bigger effect than I had anticipated.
The main draw for me was that working with scent can completely shift your perspective. If certain perfumes give a feeling of safety, clarity or optimism, they can in turn inspire greater creativity, more skilful interaction with others and even reduce stress-related symptoms. Naturally, working in this way with fragrance will inevitably involve a large amount of trial and error: a scent that makes one person feel safe or inspired might trigger anxiety in another. We also perceive certain notes in perfume more prominently, and those notes react differently on each person’s skin. Just recently I showed a friend of mine a beautiful perfume that to me smelled of dried mango and African spices. All he could smell was briefcases. Not really the effect I had in mind.
Wagner’s Roses
Wagner’s sensory environment was of the utmost importance to him, and he is, to my knowledge, the only well-known composer associated with fragrance. His tendency for excess is well known, as well as his well- documented fetish for soft fabrics like silk and satin.[6] One of the most flamboyant and extravagant examples of this is a pink carpet he had made for him in 1879. Cosima (Wagner’s wife) arranged with Julius Cyriax, a London-based merchant, for it to be crafted for his studio from ‘flamingo feathers with a border of peacock feathers’ (Dreyfus 2010:145). It was said to help him write the music for the Klingsor’s Magic Garden scene in Parsifal. ‘Wagner indulged in a long-standing fetish for wearing and surrounding himself with soft fabrics, especially satin and silk, without which he found it difficult to compose music’. He liked yellow, light blue and white materials, but his overriding preference was for pale pink silk and satin (135).
However, Wagner also had an obsession with fragrance, particularly rose scents (although occasionally lilac). He used copious amounts of rose oil, with a particular penchant for Otto de Rose. This is evidenced in his letters to Cyriax, in which Wagner wrote twelve letters from London between 1878 and 1881, specifically requesting rose oil in eleven of them (145). He experimented, at first mixing it with Eau de Cologne and using it like incense, but he found this destroyed the effect. In the end he found that that less was more: ‘Now I know that the incomparably gentle scent of this aroma is not achieved by violent application… therefore less will be wasted in the future’ (Wagner cited Dreyfus 2010:146). The composer’s fascination with scents also features in his music – it’s an important aspect of many of his works. Examples include the ‘rosy mists, pleasing scents, and pink lights of the Tannhäuser Venusberg’, the bridal chamber in Lohengrin (the ‘sweet-smelling room bedecked for love’), the Lilac tree scene in Act II of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and the Flower Maidens in Parsifal.
When I first learned of Wagner’s sensory preferences years ago, I remember rolling my eyes. Wagner needed his perfumes and silk to compose? Of course he did. Even the most ardent Wagnerians acknowledge the composer’s sense of entitlement and overspending – it is all well documented. Back then, I couldn’t imagine being so precious about the conditions in which you composed that you could go as far as being picky about what you’re smelling and touching at the time. But it was actually me that needed to catch up, and there is a lot of practical potential in this for all of us.
It has now been shown that wearing rose-scented essential oil daily can do more than uplift your mood: it could increase your brain volume. A study, carried out in 2018 at Kyoto University, Japan and published in Brain Research Bulletin, Vol. 208 March 2024,[7] showed that Wagner may well have been onto something. 50 healthy females [8] participated: 28 in intervention and 22 in the control group. Those in the intervention group were asked to wear 1-3 drops of a designated rose scent (rose essential oil) on their clothes for a month, and to apply it twice daily. The study found that the continuous inhalation of that rose oil actually increased their brain volume.
Using MRI scans to assess changes, the researchers observed significant structural brain gains in the women who wore the rose scent daily. It led to measurable growth in grey matter volume (GMV) across the whole brain, particularly in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC); a region linked to memory and emotional processing. These changes in brain structure, not just brain responses, suggest that using rose essential oil could even prevent brain atrophy and dementia. Rose oil was the only scent used, so it is possible that this could also apply to other fragrances. Nonetheless, this was the first study to show that continuous scent inhalation alters brain structure.
I decided that it was my duty to society to try this out for myself. I ordered quite a large range of 1ml rose perfume samples: lighter and darker rose scents; aquatic roses; expensive and cheap perfumes; woody and smoky roses; alcoholic roses; spicy roses; fruity and jammy roses… and then I experimented to see which ones made a difference to how I felt and how I worked. This was hardly a chore for me – I’ve always loved the scent of roses. Perhaps that’s partly because I am English, or because I spent many years living near Glyndebourne Opera House with its stunning rose garden. But I also love the rose’s darker images: Morticia Adams snipping dark red roses from their thorny stems, Angela lying naked in a sea of red rose petals in American Beauty, or the white roses painted deep red in Alice in Wonderland.
I wasn’t expecting any miraculous effects, but on the very first day of using one of the lighter rose scents, some mild stress symptoms that I’d been experiencing went down a significant notch. It wasn’t an instant cure, but a very noticeable shift. Over the next month or two, although my initial favourite perfumes to wear were the darker, fruitier rose scents, I finally realised that the ones making the greater psychological impact on both my work and state of mind were the pale, ‘garden rose’ perfumes. It was as if they were softening my thinking, and that was what was needed. In aromatherapy terms, rose is used for safely activating the nervous system, and taking gentle rather than aggressive action seemed to be the most effective and productive approach to almost everything I was taking on at the time. I even started using it for difficult interactions, indecision, and when I was feeling frustrated, confused or impatient.
Unlike Wagner, I actually found that the most effective scents for composing were usually dependant on the style of music I was writing, and as a result I ventured away from purely rose scents in this regard. Everything that worked well for me was a strong scent. I used Serges Lutens’ Fille de Berlin to help me depict a seductive, dangerous woman. A mandarin perfume I had (Windsong by Saltworks) helped make the music I was writing sound more ethereal, rich strings were aided by a rather overpowering coffee and tobacco scent (Tobac Nuit, also by Saltworks). More masculine leaning fragrances helped the most when writing music for male characters in a narrative piece, and a sumac and incense perfume (Phoenix Flame by Lebanese/UK perfumer Mabelle O’Rama) was invaluable when writing music for a story based in the Middle East. Some other perfumes that I tried were more like icy blasts of winter air (especially Mid Winter 21 by Norfolk Natural Living) – these seemed to encourage a kind of spaciousness in my thinking that led to some effective problem solving.
Although a very rudimentary experiment, the benefits felt were enough to prove to me that it is worth continuing to work with fragrances in my daily life. Perhaps not with the same intensity as in the last few months, as that would be so extravagant in the long term, but definitely with a view to continuing its elevation of my own work, health, and cognitive function. This would most likely involve maintaining a small collection to draw upon when needed. It is something I would certainly recommend to other musicians to try. Just start by visiting the nearest department store, or ordering small samples online, and gradually hone in on your own preferences, what works best on your skin, with your work and with your lifestyle.
Fabio Luisi
Chiming well with this journal’s primary focus, there is actually an Italian conductor who has established his own perfume line. Fabio Luisi has harboured a passion for perfumery his entire life, buying his first aftershave Vetiver de Guerlain when he was 13. However, he first started experimenting with perfumery himself when he lived in New York, and has been a self-taught perfumer and qualified aromatherapist for approximately 15 years.[9] A whole room in Luisi’s house in Switzerland is dedicated to perfume and has been converted into a laboratory. He is very conscious of the smells in his environment in much the same way that musicians are usually more finely tuned into sounds. The ‘world of smell is something that [has] fascinated me, always. Not just perfumes, but all kind of smells… As a passionate hobby perfumer there are no bad smells. Everything has value’.[10]
The process of creating a fragrance, from conception to the finished product, takes far longer than most might imagine: it requires both a creative flair and a high level of scientific acumen. ‘The creation of a perfume for me takes six months, eight months, one year, and it doesn’t stop… Even the perfumes I have already in the bottle can be improved’.[11] As is the case with many dedicated perfumers, Luisi sources his ingredients from very specific places around the globe. He started a partnership with the Agrigallo Company in San Carlo, Calabria (Italy), that he believes produces the best citruses. His oud oil is sourced from a distiller from Indonesia called Mohamed Taftazani (known as ‘the Oud Oil Artist’) and he has a partnership with a small organic Olii Factory in Indonesia, where jasmine and frangipani oils are produced using ancient methods.[12]
Luisi’s perfume house, FLParfums, sells a range of ten fragrances, all inspired by a wide variety of ideas, scenes and situations. Examples of these inspirations include a morning walk in New York’s Central Park, the Australian Forest, the sensation of cleanliness and wellness after a shower, tributes to the notes of oud or rose, and the essence of the feminine and masculine spirit. However, he has also created bespoke perfumes for commissioning clients, one being for an unnamed famous opera singer in the US.
Just as a composer aims not to recreate sounds in their environment, but more echo and enhance them in new interpretative ways, Luisi does not aspire to put together photorealistic scents of known smells. ‘I try not to recreate. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to recreate the perfume of a rose because the perfect perfume of a rose is a rose itself. What is the point? It already exists in perfection. So I try to create something new, something that doesn’t exist’.[13] Luisi relies on his memory to create new fragrances, ‘but it’s not a memory of a scent, it’s a memory of a situation… or a story or a location… A room full [of] men who are smoking and then a beautiful woman comes in and everybody is looking at her. This is an idea for a perfume’.[14]
In New York Luisi had an inspirational perfumery teacher that encouraged a very integrated and interdisciplinary approach to the craft. He taught him not only about perfumery and the tools of the trade, but also about exploring his feelings, and they painted during lessons and connected certain colours to particular fragrances.[15] This interdisciplinary approach is also seen on his website, which exhibits artwork inspired by his fragrances by a photographer and two illustrators.[16] Luisi feels that there is a similarity between the mental processes involved in creating perfumes and conducting an orchestra. ‘The art of blending is putting together different things and to find a balance, and this is very similar to what I’m doing with orchestras’.[17]
It seems that for Fabio Luisi, the process of working with numerous creative ingredients to develop a complex, artistic product was a transferable skill, and involves a creative practice similar to that found in music. If we think in these terms, it’s quite surprising that we don’t see more musicians using their creativity in this way. Once you start exploring the world of perfumery, the connections to arts for the other senses become very obvious.
L’Orchestre Parfum
Olfactory and auditory art are intricately intertwined in the creations at L’Orchestre Parfum. Founded in 2017, the French perfume house currently has fourteen scents, and each one is paired with its own corresponding piece of music (written especially for the house by a variety of composers). Although a niche brand, L’Orchestre Parfum is well known, and has also circulated widely on social media channels, with the milky, sandalwood fragrance ‘Piano Santal’ being a particular favourite. The house collaborates with numerous perfumers (such as Anne-Sophie Behaghel & Amélie Bourgeois, Camille Chemardin, Pierre- Constantin Guéros, and Nathalie Feisthauer) to create fragrances inspired by a variety of scenes and locations from around the world, and these images are brought to life further by its musical counterpart.
Musical terminology is used to describe the perfumes on the house’s website. The projection or ‘sillage’ is measured in terms of volume, from pianissimo through to fortissimo and every option in between, and each scent is given a tempo. The range of musical styles used is vast, ranging from electronic, techno, Low-Fi, and Turkish Psychadelic rock, to bluegrass, blues guitar, jazz piano and trombone. Japanese Koto music, contemporary cello, flamenco, Senegalese Kora music, and Saharan Darbouka also feature (all of these pieces can be heard on their website).[18] The scents are equally diverse, although there is a warm, earthy and spicy ‘DNA’ running through much of the line.
The more common notes of rose, neroli, citrus, white florals, vanilla etc. all make an appearance, but more unusually the ‘guitar wood liqueur’ found in ‘Cocktail Appalaches’ definitely smelled very familiar to me as a classical guitarist. These unusual notes are common in niche and indie perfumery – there really are no limits. The more gothic variety of perfumes in particular commonly have ‘blood’ notes, and fragrances such as Demeter’s ‘Funeral Home’, Amorphous’ ‘Cemetery Moss’, and Nui Cobalt’s ‘Entombed’ all aim to evoke the atmosphere and scent of a graveyard using notes such as rotting flowers, dirt, moss, crumbling cement and mist. After all, who hasn’t dreamt of smelling like a graveyard?
I ordered L’Orchestre Parfum’s sample set at the end of last year, having acquainted myself with all of the fragrance house’s music beforehand. Each composition is of a high quality, and uniquely inventive. My personal favourites included the guitar pieces paired with ‘Flamenco Neroli’[19] and ‘Cocktail Appalaches’,[20] the contemporary cello work paired with ‘Ambre Cello’,[21] and the solo piano piece paired with ‘Piano Santal’,[22] although I enjoyed all fourteen pieces. I had an idealised vision of loving the scents that corresponded to my favourite compositions, but for me there was no correlation between my musical and olfactory preferences. Over time, the earthy, spicy mango and leather fragrance ‘Cuir Kora’, as well as the Japanese-inspired incense fragrance ‘Encens Asakusa’ proved to be my favourites (the latter having a pronounced effect on an increased level of calm, organised thinking). If this ‘polysensory journey’[23] interests you, the L’Orchestre Parfum shop is in Paris (21 rue du Bourg Tibourg, 75004 Paris) but they also deliver throughout Europe and the UK.[24]
Final Thoughts
As our children grow, we all invest time teaching them the colours of the rainbow and sounds in nature. Yet we don’t seem to make that same effort with the scents around us. How many of us, even in adulthood, can differentiate between the scents of lily and jasmine, or cedarwood and sandalwood? Maybe this can partly explain why it’s still far more unusual for us to draw on our sense of smell for assistance and inspiration in our personal and professional lives, despite its known benefits.
Major barriers for many of us regarding the consumption of perfumes is their cost, potentially toxic chemicals, lack of sustainability, and the terrible track record many of the designer brands have regarding animal cruelty.[25] However, indie and niche perfumery have far better track records regarding most of these issues, offering affordable samples or travel-sized bottles, refills at a discounted price if you return the bottle, recyclable components and packaging, fragrances free of parabens and sulfates, and their fragrances are very often completely vegan and cruelty-free. It doesn’t even have to be perfume: you might prefer a room spray, incense, soap, fresh flowers, plants, herbs and spices, essential oils… just use them one at a time so you can give yourself a chance to assess how it is affecting your state of mind throughout the day.
A good friend from my university days, composer Luke Bateman, is also Founder of The London Lavender Company.[26] Inspired during lockdown, when he couldn’t escape to his usual retreat in Provence, he recreated the calm and tranquillity of its lavender fields at home in Camberwell. Using locally sourced lavender, the company creates a variety of beautifully scented products including soap, essential oil, lotions and candles. Luke actually plays the piano to his lavender plants, believing it enhances their aroma, and conversely its relaxing effect helps him compose. The band on his last show was absolutely obsessed with his side business – perhaps there is something about sensory artistry in general that is especially appealing to us musicians.
Perfumes can assist us and enhance our performance in all manner of situations: social, professional, creative, confrontational, relaxation… it’s a powerful tool that can aid us in managing our behaviour, our moods and our state of mind. I think we owe it to ourselves to lift the lid on all of this sensory potential. After all, without making full use of our most powerful sense, we could all be missing a trick.
Wagner can’t be the only one this can work for…
—
If you already use perfumes (or start to experiment with them) to study, write, practice or compose, please let us know (info@notesfromthepodium.co.uk).
—
Bibliography
Dreyfus, L. Wagner and the Erotic Impulse (Harvard University Press, 2012)
Endnotes
[1] https://www.happyscentsco.com/blogs/happy-scents-blog/the-power-of-our-sense- of-smell-a-gateway-to-memory-and-emotion
[2] See, for example, ‘Aromatherapy and Essential Oils in Mood, Anxiety, and Depression’ in ‘Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine’ 2013. It found that certain essential oils, particularly lavender, had significant anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing) effects and could positively influence mood and mental health.
[3] See ‘Effects of Fragrance on Emotions: Moods and Physiology’ Rachel S. Herz Chemical Senses 2013. Herz concluded that the emotional and physiological responses to fragrance are highly individualised, depending on the personal and cultural associations with the scent.
[4] https://www.immortalperfumes.com/
[5] https://uk.dannam.co/
[6] In 1877, a cache of Wagner’s letters were published, which revealed innumerous orders for satin dressing gowns, slippers, bedclothes, soft furnishings countless other embroidered accessories (Dreyfus 2010:135-6).
[7] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38331299/
[8] The study itself was limited to women, as they are generally more sensitive to odours than men, and as men are not used to wearing scents and may find the intervention more uncomfortable.
[9] See https://www.flparfums.com/about/
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_O_dUsNNf8 15m24s (accessed 2nd February 2026)
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umwTir6ilvM 2m30s (accessed 2nd February 2026)
[12] https://www.flparfums.com/natural-perfumes/where-my-raw-substances- come-from/
[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_O_dUsNNf8 24s (accessed 9th May 2026)
[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_O_dUsNNf8 16m59s (accessed 2nd February 2026)
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_O_dUsNNf8 18m47s (accessed 4th February 2026)
[16] https://www.flparfums.com/artists-inspired/
[17] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umwTir6ilvM 3m42s (accessed 4th February 2026)
[18] https://lorchestreparfum.com/playlist
[19] Composer – Mathias Berchadsky
[20] Composer – Headlund
[21] Composer – Gautier Capuçon
[22] Composer – Edouard Ferlet
[23] If exploring other types of multisensory art appeals, you may also like to draw inspiration from another one of its burgeoning branches: the combination of scent with painting. One example is the independent Lebanese-British perfumer Mabelle O’Rama. As well as having her own line of perfumes (two of which were finalists in the Fragrance Foundation UK awards) she also creates abstract, olfactive art with scented wax. See https://mabelleorama.com/collections/olfactive-art
[24] A more comprehensive review of L’Orchestre Parfum line number of there by Claire Smith. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeEJOrAqNgc All of their fragrances available in 15ml and 100ml bottles (although more affordable sample sets are also available).
[25] So many of the biggest perfume brands still test on animals, and many of those who don’t still allow their products to be tested on them in China where their products are sold. The issue of trading in China despite being otherwise opposed to animal cruelty has been addressed by L’Occitane on their website. https://help.loccitane.com/selfloccitane/webanoenus/en-us/1022/brand-and- products/5430/does-l-occitane-test-on-animals
[26] https://www.thelondonlavendercompany.com/