From Music to Sound

The Emergence of Sound in 20th- and 21st-Century Music

Makis Solomos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429575013
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

From Music to Sound is an examination of the six musical histories whose convergence produces the emergence of sound, offering a plural, original history of new music and showing how music had begun a change of paradigm, moving from a culture centred on the note to a culture of sound. Each chapter follows a chronological progression and is illustrated with numerous musical examples. The chapters are composed of six parallel histories: timbre, which became a central category for musical composition; noise and the exploration of its musical potential; listening, the awareness of which opens to the generality of sound; deeper and deeper immersion in sound; the substitution of composing the sound for composing with sounds; and space, which is progressively viewed as composable.

The book proposes a global overview, one of the first of its kind, since its ambition is to systematically delimit the emergence of sound. Both well-known and lesser-known works and composers are analysed in detail; from Debussy to contemporary music in the early twenty-first century; from rock to electronica; from the sound objects of the earliest musique concrète to current electroacoustic music; from the Poème électronique of Le Corbusier-Varèse-Xenakis to the most recent inter-arts attempts.

Covering theory, analysis and aesthetics, From Music to Sound will be of great interest to scholars, professionals and students of Music, Musicology, Sound Studies and Sonic Arts.

Supporting musical examples can be accessed via the online Routledge Music Research Portal.

1 On timbre

‘Timbre’

Defining timbre

The history of the notion of ‘timbre’ gave rise to an extraordinary adventure: although it appeared progressively, it ended up becoming a central category in music in the latter half of the 20th century. But it is a difficult notion to define. By timbre, does one mean the ‘colour’ of a sound (‘a shimmering timbre’) or else its cause (‘the timbre of a violin pizzicato’)? Can it be measured? Even today, it is often given a negative definition: in sound, is timbre something that is not pitch, duration, intensity or spatial position.

A definition that henceforth seems to have emerged introduces an important idea: timbre is ‘that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which a listener can judge that two sounds similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch are dissimilar’ (American Standards Association, quoted in A. Bregman, 1990: 92; our italics). Here let us sketch the history of the concept of timbre to understand why this definition has imposed itself and to ask the question of whether this concept still constitutes a useful notion.

From the origins of the word to Rousseau

The French language is the first to have used the specific word timbre. Certain languages would subsequently use the same word (timbro in Italian, timbre in Spanish and English, tembr’ in Russian), whereas others would make use of the composite expression ‘colour of sound’ (Klangfarbe in German, tone or sound colour in English – words used in parallel with ‘timbre’ – ηχόχρωμα in modern Greek, yinse in Chinese…).

The French word has a long, abundant history. In the Middle Ages, it had several meanings, some of which were already musical: ‘Timbre 1: a sort of tambourine / sort of bell / head / coat of arms. Timbre 2: trough, fountain / vase, jug. Timbre 3: furrier’s term, marten or ermine skin, etc. Timbrer: to make resonate (a timbre) / call someone with the sound of a drum / play the timbre / resonate’ (F. Godefroy, 1994; our translation). As for its musical sense, it would seem that the word ended up designating a bell: ‘A sort of round bell which has no clapper inside and is struck on the outside with a hammer. The timbre of a clock. Timbre of an alarm clock. The timbre of this clock is quite good’, one can read in the first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1694; our translation).

The modern musical sense does not appear until the fifth edition of that dictionary (1798), which, after the repeat of the previous definition, adds: ‘It is sometimes said for the sound made by the timbre. This timbre is too brilliant’ (our translation). However, this modern notion seems to have already been present, even without the usage of the word, as attests Marin Mersenne’s famous Harmonie universelle (1636–1637). It is possible to advance the hypothesis that the meaning of the modern sense was initially limited to the voice (see H. Xanthoudakis, 1992: 24–25). We would therefore have the following evolution outline: bell> sound quality of the bell > sound quality of the voice > sound quality in general. Regardless, let us observe that the word will always maintain the idea of a cause, i.e., the origin of a sound (a bell, a voice and, by extension, a musical instrument) – an important observation for henceforth underscoring its limits.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau seems to be the first to have officialised the usage of the word in its modern sense, integrating it in his Dictionnaire de musique (1767), which assembles what he had written for Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. The word (‘tymbre’) is encountered several times. In the entry devoted to it, its definition proposes a first typology: ‘One thus calls, by metaphor, this quality of the sound by which it is shrill or soft, dull or bright, dry or mellow’ (J.-J. Rousseau, 1995: 1135; our translation).

In the definition given for ‘sound’, it is placed as the third ‘object’, the third ‘part’ to consider, alongside ‘tone’ (or ‘elevation’) and ‘force’ (Ibid: 1047), and one discovers one of the definitions still used to the present day:

As for the difference found […] between sounds by the quality of the timbre, it is obvious that it is due neither to the degree of elevation nor even to that of force. No matter how much an oboe puts itself in unison with a flute, it will have to sweeten its sound to the same degree; the sound of the flute will still have that je ne sais quoi of mellowness and sweetness; that of the oboe, a je ne sais quoi of roughness and harshness, which will prevent the ear from confusing them; not to mention the diversity of the timbre of voices.

(Ibid: 1053; our translation)

To which Rousseau adds:

However, no one, so far as I know, has examined sound in this part; which, as well as the others, will perhaps find itself having difficulties: for the quality of the timbre can depend neither on the number of vibrations, which makes the degree from low to high, nor the size or force of these same vibrations, which makes the degree from strong to weak. So it will be necessary to find in the sound body a third cause, different from these two, to explain this third quality of sound and its differences; which, perhaps, is not too easy.

(Ibid: 1053; our translation)

Rousseau relates what, in current terms, we would call a sensation, with physical causes. The (sensation of) pitch (‘tone’ or ‘elevation’ in his language) stems from the number of vibrations, the (sensation of) intensity of their ‘force’; hence his hypothesis: timbre must have a cause, which is to be sought in the sound body. This hypothesis will be taken seriously by the positivists of the 19th century.

Romantic musicians, orchestration treatises and positivists

In the 19th century, the word entered the French language but was still little used – it was above all in relation to the voice. Italians still preferred to speak of colore de’ suoni (see P. Lichtenthal, 1826). In German, Klangfarbe, and sometimes Tonfarbe, gradually established themselves: Gustav Schilling (1838) noted for Tonfarbe: ‘more commonly Klangfarbe’, whereas Klangfarbe, as we shall see, became a keyword in Helmholtz’s famous treatise Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen. As for English, a plurilingual musical dictionary of 1871 notes that ‘timbre’ is a French word signifying ‘the quality of tone’ (J. Hiles, 1871).

In their writings, the Romantic musicians integrated the word only gradually. One would expect it in Schumann’s exceptional 1835 analysis of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, but it never occurs, whereas we have many other rich expressions such as in these sentences: ‘Admittedly, Berlioz blanches at nothing that makes a tone, a sound, a noise or a clang. He uses muted trombones, and horns, and harps and English horns and even bells’ (R. Schumann, 1965: 84; our italics).¹ Some 20 years later, Liszt used the concept and term more commonly – the French term, for most of his articles were originally in French – but he continues to utilise general expressions such as ‘sonority’, ‘sound’, ‘colour’ or ‘shade’ (see F. Liszt, 1995). During the same period, in Oper und Drama (1852), Wagner used the word Klangfarbe fairly frequently. In Berlioz’s memoirs, we find the French word some twenty times in reference to the voice or instruments – for example, when explaining that he attended performances at the Opera armed with scores: ‘In this way I began to see how to write for the orchestra and to understand something of the accents and timbres, as well as the ranges and mechanisms of most of the instruments’ (H. Berlioz, 1969: 98; our translation).

The slow introduction of the word ‘timbre’ during the 19th century is also attested to by orchestration treatises. It is not to be found in Louis-Joseph Francœur’s Diapason général de tous les instruments à vent (1772), the first book that, according to James E. Perone (1996), can be described as an orchestration treatise. This is also the case with its extensive revision by Alexandre Choron (L.-J. Francœur et al., 1813). The treatise by Georges Kastner integrates, albeit timidly, the word: once for voices and, more often, for string effects; for example, one reads: ‘The mute […] gives the violin a veiled, mysterious, plaintive timbre […]’. But Kastner can also use periphrases: ‘sul ponticello: it is a kind of sound […]’ (G. Kastner, 1835: 6; our translation). Berlioz’s extraordinary treatise (1843; 1993) does not use it a single time, preferring the words ‘instrument’ and ‘sound’.

At the end of the century, orchestration reaches its apogee. Rimsky-Korsakov’s treatise envisages complex operations such as ‘the amplification and elimination of tone qualities’: amplification is ‘the operation which consists of contrasting the resonance of two different groups (or the different timbres of one and the same group), either in sustained notes or chords, [… to transform] a simple into a complex timbre, suddenly or by degrees’ (N. Rimsky-Korsakov, 1964: 109). Staggeringly modern, in the ‘artificial effects’ paragraph, it prefigures the ‘auditory illusions’ that will be explored much later with electronic music, in particular by Jean-Claude Risset. Herein, Rimsky-Korsakov mentions ‘orchestral operations which are based on certain defects of hearing and faculty of perception’ and gives as an example glissandos in scales or in arpeggios played in a particular way (Ibid: 116).

Orchestration treatises of the 20th century will further refine the art of orchestration and systematise the use of the word ‘timbre’. Let us mention the treatise of Charles Koechlin who, in his overabundance of adjectives and pieces of information, brings to mind the attempts of the acousmatic school of the 1970s to 1980s to define timbre with the help of language; dealing with the timbre of the flute, he writes:

We would be unable to define it in a single word. If it is only a matter of sonority, you know that it is particularly transparent; crystalline and translucent (especially in the first notes of the upper register […]) or as immaterial in the medium, in light staccato.

(1944: 12–13; our translation)

Staying in the 19th century, the concept of timbre was analysed by musicologists and scientists alike, like Ernst Chladni or François-Joseph Fétis. Amongst the scientific works, it is Helmholtz’s that stands out, in particular his On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, first published in 1862 and still read today. Helmholtz innovates by proposing to substitute a ‘physiological’ acoustics for a ‘physical’ acoustics: a new acoustics, ‘the aim of which is to investigate the processes that take place within the ear itself’ (H. Helmholtz, 1895: 4). He would thus also study timbre in keeping with hypotheses about the hearing apparatus and the description of the ear. However, his definition is physicalist: ‘We have seen that force depended on amplitude, and pitch on rapidity of vibration: nothing else was left to distinguish quality of sound ² but vibrational form (H. Helmholtz, 1895: 65), he writes, localising timbre in the physical phenomenon itself and not in perception. Moreover, with him, the analysis of the sound wave occurs uniquely in keeping with the spectrum, and, above all, limited to the supposedly stable part of the spectrum. Admittedly, he does envisage studying the attack and extinction transients (the way sounds ‘begin and end’: Ibid: 66), but he describes them as ‘peculiarities of musical tones’ (Ibid: 66), before concluding: ‘When we speak in what follows of musical quality of tone, we shall disregard these peculiarities of beginning and ending, and confine our attention to the peculiarities of the musical tone which continues uniformly (Ibid: 67). By ‘simplifying’ timbre in this way, Helmholtz pursues the trail already blazed by Joseph Fourier, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 On timbre
• 2 On noise
• 3 Listening (sounds)
• 4 Immersion in sound
• 5 Composing sound
• 6 Sound–space
• Conclusion
• References
• Index