Timbre

Paradox, Materialism, Vibrational Aesthetics

Isabella Van Elferen

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781501370649
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501365829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

Timbre is among the most important and the most elusive aspects of music. Visceral and immediate in its sonic properties, yet also considered sublime and ineffable, timbre finds itself caught up in metaphors: tone "color", "wet" acoustics, or in Schoenberg's words, "the illusory stuff of our dreams." This multi-disciplinary approach to timbre assesses the acoustic, corporeal, performative, and aesthetic dimensions of tone color in Western music practice and philosophy. It develops a new theorization of timbre and its crucial role in the epistemology of musical materialism through a vital materialist aesthetics in which conventional binaries and dualisms are superseded by a vibrant continuum.

As the aesthetic and epistemological questions foregrounded by timbre are not restricted to isolated periods in music history or individual genres, but have pervaded Western musical aesthetics since early Modernity, the book discusses musical examples taken from both "classical" and "popular" music. These range, in "classical" music, from the Middle Ages through the Baroque, the belcanto opera and electronic music to saturated music; and, in "popular" music, from indie through soul and ballad to dark industrial.

1

Ecologies of sonorous difference

The date is 20 May. I attend a performance of the vocal ensemble VocaMe in the Schauspielhaus in Leipzig, Germany. It takes place in the context of the annual Gothic festival Wave-Gotik-Treffen, and – as an Early Music researcher and singer as well as a Gothic researcher and subcultural participant – I cannot believe my luck that this concert is programmed at the event I visit every year. I’ve looked up VocaMe’s website beforehand. The ensemble performs late Medieval and early Renaissance music in innovative arrangements for two sopranos, two mezzo-sopranos, and a multi-instrumentalist doubling as tenor. The singers are each renowned in the Early Music world, and two of the performers are part of the Goth electro-medieval band Qntal. VocaMe’s musical aim is explicitly timbre-orientated: they wish to create a ‘homogenous unison’ through a blend of four very different, highly expressive voices (VocaMe).

The programme contains excerpts from the twelfth-century Codex Calixtinus, compositions by the Notre Dame School of Léonin and Pérotin, and the fourteenth-century Messe de Tournai. Sung by four female voices with the occasional male addition, and accompanied by instruments from the domain of secular music such as lute, theorbo, hurdy-gurdy, and hammered dulcimer, this is certainly a wholly new timbral approach to late Medieval sacred music. But it works. From plainchant to early polyphony, the voices blend into a mesmerizing mixed timbre, and the instrumental colours add hushed, warm tones to their sonorities.

One sublime moment stands out for its dazzling timbral brilliance. The ensemble changes positions, and one of the mezzo sopranos sings a top line over a falsobordone vocal setting accompanied by a hurdy-gurdy. If I was impressed by the timbral richness of the ensemble before, a sudden energy now vibrates through the room and utterly blows me away. This singer’s timbre, her phrasing and legato, her portamentos and dynamic changes hit me like a violent bolt of lightning that cracks my skull open and reaches into the darkest heart of my being, exposing the deepest desire I had never known: to simply be in this place at this time and dissolve as this voice sings. I am struck by the force of my own reaction. Tears roll down my cheeks, uncontrollably, and doubtlessly creating black eyeliner traces on my Gothed-up face. I don’t care if they do. People next to me turn in their plush red seats, their elaborate costumes rustling, to ask if I’m okay. Yes, I am, I’m very much okay, thank you – I’m just completely, devastatingly, deliciously overwhelmed by this timbre. My friends ask why, exactly, but I fail to find the right words.

Timbre eludes definition in every corner of musicology and philosophy. Organology and acoustics, psychoacoustics and neuroscience, musicology and music philosophy alike have been unable to find firm definitions for timbre, that component of sound production and sound perception that is as ephemeral as it is tangible. Its most concise definition is ‘tone colour’, timbre’s synaesthetic synonym which points both to its grounds in the materiality of sound production and to its capacity to add individuality to tone. But ‘tone colour’ is a metaphor, not a precise descriptor. The frustrating absence of a clear definition of timbre also obstructs the development of stable research methodologies for timbre (Hajda et al. 1997: 253). In an attempt to chart the variety of possible approaches to and definitions of timbre, this chapter outlines a working definition of timbre that accommodates as many scientifically quantifiable and subjectively ascertainable properties of tone colour as possible. Aiming not to achieve an unambiguous outcome but rather, and explicitly, to highlight the many uncertainties, ambivalences and inherent paradoxes of the sonic phenomenon that is timbre, the accumulative approach in this chapter will set up a flexible, and – to retain, for the moment, the vicarious precision of visual timbral metaphor – kaleidoscopic basis for the considerations of timbral aesthetics that comprise the scope of this book. In order to construct this basis, it is necessary to disentangle the various simultaneously occurring components of timbre that afford its manifold properties.

Sonorous difference

The most often-used and often-dismissed definition of timbre, as cited by psychoacoustician Stephen McAdams in the Grove Music Online, is one ex negativo. It describes timbre as the quality of sound that remains after pitch, loudness and duration are discounted as tonal differentiators:

Timbre is the auditory attribute that distinguishes two sounds presented in a similar manner and having identical pitch, loudness and duration.

(McAdams 2001: I; cf. McAdams and Giordano 2016: 113)

This definition identifies timbre as a unique sonic quality that can easily be distinguished by the ear: if the same pitch is produced by a piano and a violin at the same volume, the difference between these two sounds is timbre; by the same token, if the same pitch is sung by soprano A and soprano B at the same volume, then the difference between these two tones is timbre. Because timbre-as-difference is a percept as well as a material fact, McAdams argues, it can be measured by quantifying subjective assessments of the quality and extent of that difference:

Timbre is now understood to have two broad characteristics that contribute to the perception of music: (a) it is a multifarious set of abstract sensory attributes, some of which are continuously varying (for instance, attack sharpness, brilliance, nasality), others of which are discrete or categorical (the ‘blatt’ at the beginning of a sforzando trombone note or the pinched offset of a harpsichord sound), and (b) it is one of the primary perceptual vehicles for the recognition, identification and tracking over time of a sound source (a singer’s voice, a clarinet, a set of carillon bells) and thus involves the absolute categorization of a sound.

(McAdams 2001: I)

Timbre’s function within individual musical contexts is very different from that of other musical agents. Rhythm and metre organize the temporal dimension of music; harmony and melody create the organic development of tension and resolution that is the basis of any composition. Timbre, while it is a constituent of every possible sound and a crucial aspect of harmony, can only be described as the sonorous agent that adds ‘colour’ to music. Western music theory does not have a sufficient understanding of timbre’s musical functionality, and traditional musical notation lacks timbral indicators beyond orchestrational instructions and articulation marks. As a result, it is impossible to quantify timbre’s contribution to music, decisive though it is for musical aesthetics: unlike pitch, duration and loudness, timbre cannot be described in objective relationalities such as ‘an A is higher than a C based on a pitch scale measured in Hertz’, ‘allegro is faster than adagio based on a time scale measured in beats per minute’ or ‘fortissimo is louder than mezzo piano based on a dynamic scale measured in decibels’ (cf. Hajda et al. 1997: 254).

Since the 1960s a wealth of empirical research has attempted to track and categorize the perception of timbral difference through psychoacoustic and physiological methodologies (cf. Howard and Angus 2009: 231–75; Pratt and Doak 1976; Slawson 1985: 91–164; on psychoacoustics and physiology see below). But such mappings of perceived difference, while useful as a documentary tool for the range and scope of timbral perception by human (and sometimes animal, Slawson 1985: 151–2) subjects, do not offer a full picture of timbre as a sonic phenomenon. They do not provide insight, for instance, into timbre’s relation to the three factors that contribute to the sounds whose perception is quantified: the factors of pitch, loudness and duration by which timbral difference is aurally distinguishable and upon which such quantitative reviews are implicitly based.

When examined more closely, those factors themselves and their relationships to timbre are far from unequivocal or constant. Because timbre shares a number of variables with pitch, loudness and duration, it is not always easy to distinguish between these elements of sound and sound perception (cf. Bregman 1990: 92–3). If we take harmonic spectrums into account, for instance, pitch can be described not as a separate component of sound that is distinct from timbre, but as a contributing element to perceived timbre: perceived pitch is nothing but a formant within the full spectrum of harmonics that together comprise a specific timbre which is in itself foregrounded by the contingencies of instrumental, vocal, or electroacoustic material circumstances (Howard and Angus 2009: 122–5, 146–50; Parker 2009: 64–7; Smalley 1986: 65–8). Even when there is no clearly identifiable pitch to a sound, that sound still must have a timbre, as harmonic spectrum does not necessarily privilege one formant over other overtones. Loudness’s relation to timbre is similarly inconstant: as the human ear is unable to process very quiet or very loud sounds, changes in volume can distort timbral perception (Howard and Angus 2009: 91–100). Dynamic variants, in addition, alter the harmonic spectrum of a sound and thereby its timbre: the louder a sound is, the more high-frequency harmonics will be audible, and this shift in harmonic spectrum inevitably also shifts the perceived timbre of the sound (Parker 2009: 67). The relation between duration and timbre is possibly even more revealing of the instability of the concept of timbre as defined through sonorous difference. There are very few sounds that are absolutely constant over the course of their audible manifestation. Due to the material specificities of sound production, the onset of a sound comes with a different timbre than its steady-state and its offset phase: each of these phases in what is called the ‘spectral’ or ‘note envelope’ are marked by different harmonic spectrums and wave forms, and therefore by different timbres (Hajda et al. 1997: 256, 262; Howard and Angus 2009: 233–42; on note envelopes see below). Each sounding tone, moreover, has a different note envelope, even if two tones are produced by the same player on the same instrument in the same environment on the same day, which further complicates an objective quantification of timbral duration (Howard and Angus 2009: 237). If timbre is to be distinguished from duration, as the official definition demands, timbre judgements can only be made either on the most individually distinguished part of the envelope, which is note onset, or on a generalized ‘snapshot’ of the steady-state phase: the validity of either judgement is necessarily restricted, as they are based on a partial evaluation of the time span of a timbre (Hajda et al. 1997: 263; Howard and Angus 2009: 236). The production and perception of pitch, loudness and duration, thus, significantly interfere with that of timbre, and this interference is always subjective, so that it is very hard (if not impossible) to quantify timbre through cognitive or perception research.

These reservations notwithstanding, timbre can undeniably be defined as sonorous difference: every sound has a unique tone colour, regardless of whether it has an identifiable pitch, independent of loudness, and remaining recognizably constant despite durational development. A timbral definition based solely upon perceived tonal differentiation under identical circumstances pertaining to pitch, loudness and duration, however, is not entirely appropriate. If we wanted to define timbre as sonorous difference, we should amend McAdams’s definition: it is a subjectively identifiable but itself undescribed quality of sound that is not quite the same as pitch, volume or duration. Such a caveat-laden definition is hardly satisfying, and – as it is based on negatives – does not even begin to approach the sonic phenomenon that is timbre. How can we describe that evasive quality more positively than as the relative absence of certain variables?

Sound source

Containing no perceptive caveats and no cognitive uncertainties, organology offers a categorical taxonomy of musical instruments and their timbres based on the materials and practices of sonorous difference (cf. Bregman 1990: 93). A standard work in the field is Curt Sachs’s Handbuch der Musikinstrumentenkunde (1916), which, with his Reallexicon der Musikinstrumente (1913), is still widely used a century after its first publication. Both publications are based on what is known as the Hornbostel-Sachs method of musical instrument classification (Hornbostel and Sachs 1914). Sachs’s Handbuch offers a systematic overview of each of the instrumental categories, their history and subcategories, instrument design and materials (which he calls the instrument’s ‘Wesen’, its essence), playing techniques, nomenclature and timbre. The latter descriptions are kept to a minimum, with indications only of which harmonics are audible in the sound (‘Klang’) of the instrument – that is to say, descriptions of timbre are restricted to its objectively verifiable parameters. In rare cases, Sachs describes the ways in which an instrumental timbre is distinguishable from similar timbres. In these passages he uses strikingly subjective discourses rather than his usual scientific language: the sound of the natural horn, for instance, is ‘full, but mostly dark, and often lustreless verging on dull’ in comparison to other signalling horns, whereas the French hunting horn has a ‘soft, dreamy, warm, resounding tone that shines brightly in forte’ in comparison to other natural horns (1930: 252, 274). These sections stand out in Sachs’s otherwise strictly factual, efficiently written handbook, and illustrate the extent to which, on the one hand, the phenomenon of timbre exceeds the boundaries of the material facts that organology adheres to, and, on the other hand, that the description of this excess lacks objective discursive structures. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system, timbre was of secondary importance to instrument categorization into primary classes and subclasses. Tone colour in this system was straightforward and utilitarian, instrumental in both senses of the word: it pointed to the instrument that produced it, which was classified into clear strata, and it could be employed for specific sonorous effects in composition and orchestration. This physiological approach to instruments – in which timbre was conceived of as a subjectively interpreted effect caused by the objective material circumstances of sound production – followed organological traditions that had been in place since Michael Praetorius’s 1619 treatise Syntagma Musicum (cf. Dolan 2013: 31–6).

Organology was among the first branches of music criticism to adapt the term ‘timbre’, along with music aesthetics and – as a blend of both – orchestration. The term itself did not appear in music criticism until 1765, when Jean-Jacques Rousseau identified three dimensions of sound in Diderot’s Encyclopédie: the first two dimensions, so Rousseau argues, are pitch and loudness, and the third is timbre, which he derives from instrumental specificities. ‘No one I know has examined this aspect’, he comments, and he is only able to describe this third dimension by way of metaphors pertaining to a sound’s dullness, brightness, harshness and softness (Dolan 2013: 54–6). Emily Dolan’s book The Orchestral Revolution provides a wealth of evidence demonstrating a change in musical discourses heralded by the eighteenth-century turn towards timbre. Dolan argues that this turn signals a shift in critical attention towards the immediacy of musical perception (2013: 56–7): music criticism now turned its focus to music aesthetics, besides the building blocks of music practice that had been the main object of music theory in the early Modern age (on timbre in eighteenth-century music aesthetics cf. Chapter 3). Although instrumental and orchestrational treatises appearing after the Enlightenment discuss timbre primarily in relation to their instrumental or vocal sound source just like Rousseau did in the Encyclopédie – and therefore follow a fundamentally taxonomic outline – they do include subjective interpretations of the sounds they discuss. Instrumental and orchestrational sources of this period such as, most famously, C.P.E. Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753) and Johann Joachim Quantz’s Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte trasversiere zu spielen (1752) include flurries of timbral imagery of the kind that Sachs, too, occasionally dips into: the writers describe not only the material and technical detail required for organological overview but also indications of the expressiveness and aesthetic value of each of the timbres (Dolan 2013: 57–71).

From the Enlightenment turn towards timbre as a music critical concept, then, timbral discourses have been based upon an understanding of timbre as the aural marker of an instrumental sound source: but these discourses have steadily been supplemented, intensified and obscured by the use of non-musical imagery that was meant to sharpen the verbal representation of the quality of tone that was approached, but never entirely captured, through the identification of sound sources. The epitome of such metaphoric qualifications in timbral discourse can be found in Hector Berlioz’s 1844 Grand Traité d’Instrumentation et d’Orchestration Modernes, which explicitly had as its purpose not just to identify organological aspects of the instruments, but moreover to describe the expressive range and colour that each of the individual timbres could bring to composition, orchestration and performance (Berlioz 2002: 6). In his descriptions of timbre, Berlioz reaches for the most colourful imagery he can find. In the section on the middle register of the flute, for instance, he describes the ‘desolate, but also humble and resigned’ tone of the instrument, and he waxes lyrical about Gluck’s capacity to express the ‘thousand-fold sublime wailing of a suffering, despairing shade of the departed’ through the flute’s timbre (ibid.: 140). We are very far away from organology’s factual language here. The synaesthetic timbral metaphor ‘tone colour’, which still marks timbral discourses today, can be traced back at least to the seventeenth-century Jesuit and uomo universalis Athanasius Kircher, who maintained in his 1650 Musurgia Universalis that the effects of instrumental tone upon the mind was comparable to that of colour (quoted in Dolan 2013: 26). The term ‘tone colour’ or Klangfarbe started to emerge in German musical theory and aesthetics around the middle of the nineteenth century, having been saliently present in comparisons between tone and colour as early as Johann Leopold Hoffmann’s 1786 treatise Farbenharmonie (Dolan 2013: 47–9). Dolan argues that the timbral variety and nuance inherent to the term tone colour ‘implied the presence of a well-developed orchestral tradition, one that emerged only during the late eighteenth century’ (2013: 71). The sonically variegated orchestra in itself however, just like the sonorous richness implied in the concept of Klangfarbe, was a result of music-aesthetic interest in the immediacy of music perception that started with Rousseau.

Both traditional organology and Enlightenment music aesthetics based their definition of timbre primarily on the contingencies of its origin, albeit with the help of non-musical imagery to refine this material basis. Timbre, in these contexts, points to such factors as instrument design, material, vocal technique and body physiology. Naturally such factors have a large impact on the specifics of instrumental and orchestral timbral outcomes: the reason, for instance, that the traverso in the baroque orchestra was replaced by the metal flute in the symphonic orchestra was that the wooden traverso’s hushed, soft timbre as well as its meantone temperament was no longer sufficiently audible in the expanding orchestra of the eighteenth century, and so it was replaced by its metal, keyed equivalent, the flute with its bright, loud timbre and equal temperament. Loudness and pitch are clearly integral parts of an instrument’s tone colour and orchestral value, which demonstrates again that the negative definition of timbre is not always adequate. The positive identification of timbre through instrumental materiality – this timbre is a flute timbre – i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Ecologies of sonorous difference
• 2 Index, icon, grain
• 3 Excess, sublime, lure
• 4 Vibration and vitality
• 5 Aesthetics of vibration
• Threshold
• References
• Index
• Imprint