A totally dead silence, ... a silence with no possibilities, has the inner harmony of black. In music it is represented by one of those profound and final pauses, after which any continuationof the melody seems to dawn of another world. Black is something burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral pyre, something motionless like a corpse. The silence of black is the silence of death. Outwardly black is the colour with least harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the minute shades of other colours stand clearly forward. It differs from white in this also, for with white nearly every colour is in discord, or even mute altogether.
V. Kandinsky, Concerning the spiritual in art, Dover Publ. New York 1977, translated by M.T.H. Sadler