Subject: Re: origin of 'timbre' From: Eckard Blumschein <Eckard.Blumschein(at)E-Technik.Uni-Magdeburg.DE> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 08:46:00 +0200Jim also asked: >Is there a good source that discusses ... how it came to take its modern meaning?" He already mentioned Helmholtz's "Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik". Translator was A.J. Ellis. The reason for v. Helmholtz to use the term "Klangfarbe" was perhaps the tempting hypothesis by Müller and subsequently Ohm that there is a quality called "Tonhöhe" = pitch corresponding to fundamental frequency according to Fourier analysis of a tone. I quote Warren 1999: "Ohm (1844) had dismissed Seebeck's observation that a pitch could be heared corresponding to an absent or weak fundamental as merely an auditory illusion", and "Helmholtz (1877) backed Ohm's position in this controversy", and "He attributed the perception of a single pitch to the adoption by unskilled listeners of a "synthetic" mode of listening to the entire complex of components (resulting in a pitch corresponding to the fundamental frequency and having a timbre, or quality, reflecting the harmonic composition), rather than an "analytical" mode in which pitches of component harmonics could be abstracted." In other words, the physiomystical term timbre completes what I consider a still widesprespread illusion concerning the physiophysical measure pitch. Of course, it depends on the spectral composition of a tone whether it sounds e.g. more sharp, more rough, or more harmonic. However, we should wonder why nobody so far managed to find matching physiological correlates. Having revealed the possiblility that the ordinaty event-related time-scale inevitably led into many quarrels and mistakes, I am finding evidence after evidence for a cepstrum-like basis of pitch. Maybe, this will also provide the key for a physiological plausible understanding of what is contained in "timbre". Eckard Blumschein cepstrum