Description
Despite its importance as a central feature of musical sounds, timbre has rarely stood in the limelight. First defined in the eighteenth century, denigrated during the nineteenth, the concept of timbre came into its own during the twentieth century and its fascination with synthesizers and electronic music-or so the story goes. But in fact, timbre cuts across all the boundaries that make up musical thought-combining scientific and artistic approaches to music, material and philosophical aspects, and historical and theoretical perspectives. Timbre challenges us to fundamentally reorganize the way we think about music.The twenty-five essays that make up this collection offer a variety of engagements with music from the perspective of timbre. The boundaries are set as broad as possible: from ancient Homeric sounds to contemporary sound installations, from birdsong to cochlear implants, from Tuvan overtone singing to the tv show The Voice, from violin mutes to Moog synthesizers. What unifies the essays across this vast diversity is the material starting point of the sounding object. This focus on the listening experience is radical departure from the musical work that has traditionally dominated musical discourse since its academic inception in late-nineteenth-century Europe.Timbre remains a slippery concept that has continuously demanded more, be it more precise vocabulary, a more systematic theory, or more rigorous analysis. Rooted in the psychology of listening, timbre consistently resists pinning complete down. This collection of essays provides an invitation for further engagement with the range of fascinating questions that timbre opens up.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION1. Timbre: Alternative Histories and Possible Futures for the Study of MusicEmily I. Dolan and Alexander RehdingPART I PHILOSOPHIES2. The Matter of Timbre: Listening, Genealogy, and SoundDaniel Villegas Vélez3. Deconstruction and TimbreNaomi Waltham-Smith4. Timbrality: The Vibrant Aesthetics of Tone ColorIsabella van Elferen5. Qur'an Alphabetics and the Timbre of RecitationPeter McMurray6. Translations: Adorno and Dahlhaus6.1. IntroductionThomas Patteson6.2. The Function of Timbre in Music (1966)Theodor W. Adorno, translated by Thomas Patteson6.3. On the Theory of Instrumentation (1985)Carl Dahlhaus, translated by Thomas PattesonPART II HISTORIES AND CULTURES7. Ethereal TimbresEmily I. Dolan and Thomas Patteson8. Timbre-Centered Listening in the Soundscape of TuvaTheodore Levin and Valentina Süzükei9. Tracing Timbre in Ancient GreeceNaomi Weiss10. Early Modern VoicesBettina Varwig11. Timbre Before Timbre: Listening to the Effects of Organ Stops, Violin Mutes, and Piano Pedals, c. 1650-1800Deirdre Loughridge12. Schoenberg as Sound Student: Pierrot's KlangJoseph Auner13. Futurist Timbres: Listening Failure in MilanGavin WilliamsPART III TECHNOLOGIES14. Timbral Thievery: Synthesizers and Sonic MaterialityJonathan De Souza15. Timbre/TechneAlexander Rehding16. Technology and Timbre: Features of the Changing Instrumental Soundscape of the Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1914)Elizabeth Bradley Strauchen-Scherer17. Don't Choose the Nightingale: Respighi, Mimesis, and the Limits of TimbreArman Schwartz18. The Naturalization of Timbre: Two Case StudiesAlexandra Hui19. Music for Cochlear ImplantsStefan HelmreichPART IV PERCEPTION AND ANALYSIS20. Perceptual Processes in OrchestrationMeghan Goodchild and Stephen McAdams21. Timbre as Harmony-Harmony as TimbreRobert Hasegawa22. Timbre and Polyphony in Balinese GamelanMichael Tenzer23. Describing Sound: the Cognitive Linguistics of TimbreZachary Wallmark and Roger A. Kendall24. Timbre, Komplexeindruck, and modernity: Klangfarbe as a Catalyst of Psychological Research in Carl Stumpf, 1890-1926Sebastian Klotz25. Pitch vs. TimbreDaniel K. S. Walden26. "Where Were You When You Found Out Singer Bobby Caldwell Was White?": Racialized Timbre as Narrative ArcNina Sun Eidsheim and Schuyler Whelden
