choler

Uraufführung am 27.11.2004 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival: Nic Hodges, Rolf Hind (pianos)

humour

/´hju:ma(r)/ n. & v. –n. 5 (in full cardinal humour) hist. each of the four chief fluids of the body (blood, phlegm, choler, melancholy), thought to determine a person´s physical and mental qualities.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary

choler

´kale(r)/ n. 1 hist. one of the four humours, bile. 2 poet. or archaic anger, irascibility. (ME f. OF colere bile, anger f. cholera f. Gk kholera diarrhoea, in LL = bile, anger, f. Gk khole bile)

The Concise Oxford Dictionary

Of the medieval humours, choler (anger) was hot-blooded and red:

...reddish colour shews blood, but fiery, flaming, burning hot, shew coller, which by reason of its suitability, and aptness to mix with others, doth cause divers colours more: for it be mixed with blood, and blood be most predominant, it makes a florid red...

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy as refered to in Derek Jarman´s, Chroma 1994, Vintage Books.

(Rebecca Saunders)