Subject: Re: origin of 'timbre' From: Hugo de Paula <hugodepaula(at)GMX.NET> Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 14:04:17 -0300Sorry for the delayed answer. ------------------------------------------- Timbre definitions (history): http://silvertone.princeton.edu/~john/timbretimeline.htm Timbre Timeline: 1752 One says that the timbre is shrill not merely that the timbre of a sound is shrill - Dictionairre de Trevoux. 1758 Timbre functions to differentiate types of sounds - Diderot and D'alambert 1778 Rousseau used descriptive adjectives for different types of timbre (shrill, soft, dull, bright) - Dictionnaire de Music 1817 All sonorous bodies yield simultaneously an infinite number of sounds of gradually decreasing intensity. The phenomena is similar to that which obtains for the harmonics of strings; but the law for the series of harmonics is different for bodies of different forms. May it not be this difference which produced the particular character of sound called timbre, which distinguishes each form of body and which causes the sound of a string. - Biot 1849 Your voice has another timbre than that hard, deep organ of Miss Mann's - C. Bronte's Shirley. 1862 Klangfarbe depends primarily on sound spectrum. Helmholz also mentions the beginning and end as well as wind noise and bow noise - Helmholz 1899 Clang color, or timbre, refers to the different types of tones (clangs) of musical instruments which mainly result from the varied composition of the sounds or clangs - Rieman in Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Music 1913 Timbre is the quality which differentiates sounds of the same pitch and the same intensity - Riemann in Dictionnaire de Musique. 1922 Quality serves to distinguish between musical sound of the same pitch and intensity produced on different instruments - Barton 1929 Quality, timbre, or tone-color depends on the form of the tone-producing vibrations. The general motion to and fro is periodic, but the details within the period are usually highly complex and this complexity persists in tones of a given character. Differences of quality are due to the varying unions of partial tones - Pratt 1934 Timbre is frequently defined as that characteristic of the sensation which enables the listener to recognize the kind of musical instrument producing the tone, that is, whether it is a cornet, a flute, or a violin. Timbre depends principally upon the overtone structure, but large changes in the intensity and the frequency also produce changes in the timbre - Fletcher. One might use the other two characteristics (pitch and loudness) in such a definition and say that it is that characteristic which enables one to judge that two tones are dissimilar while still having the same loudness and pitch - Fletcher. 1937 By timbre is meant the distinguishing or characteristic quality of sound. It is by their timbre that we recognize an instrument, a voice, or the quality of an organ stop, regardless of the pitch or intensity of the note that is sound. Timbre depends only on the relative energies of the various harmonics and not on their phase differences - Sir Jean James. 1938 In general we may say that aside from accessory noises and inharmonic elements, the timbre of a tone depends upon: (i) the number of harmonic partials present, (ii) the relative location or locations of these partials in the range from the lowest to the highest, and (iii) the relative strength or dominance of each partial - Seashore in Psychology of Music 1942 The characteristic tone quality of an instrument is due entirely to the relationship among the fundamental upper partials which relationship is supposed to remain unchanged no matter what the fundamental is - Bartholomew's Harmonic Theory. Tone quality depends largely on the degree of complexity of the vibration. The quality of even a musical tone must be considered usually as a complex of both harmonic and inharmonic components - Bartholomew. The characteristic tone quality of an instrument is due to the relative strengthening of whatever partial lies within a fixed or relatively fixed region of the musical scale - Bartholomew's Formant Theory. 1952 Timbre may be said to be the characteristic which enables the listener to recognize the kind of musical instrument which produces the tone. There are six physical characteristics which determine the quality, namely: (i) the number of partials, (ii) the distribution of the partials, (iii) the relative intensity of the partials, (iv) the inharmonic partials, (v) the fundamental tone, (vi) the total intensity - Olson. Timbre is that characteristic of a tone which depends upon its harmonic structure. The timbre of a tone is expressed in the number, intensity, distribution, and phase relations of its components. Timbre, then, may be said to be the instantaneous cross section of the tone quality - Olson. 1954 Timbre, an expression for quality of sound, especially in orchestration - Groves Dictionary of Music. 1958 Timbre is defined as a subjective quality of sound which makes that sound seem pleasant or unpleasant to the ear. Timbre is dependent on harmonics as well as the nature of the attack and any formants which may be present - Encyclopedia de la musique. 1960 Timbre is that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which a listener can judge two sounds similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch are dissimilar - ASA. 1964 Harmonic Structure Theory (classical theory) - the acoustic spectrum of a tone is the primary determinant of musical quality. The physical correlate of timbre lies in the cross-sectional analysis of a tone represented by the momentary duration of one cycle - Saldanha and Corso. Formant Theory - the characteristic tone quality of an instrument is due to the relative strengthening of whatever partial lies within a fixed or relatively fixed region of the musical scale. In contrast with the classical theory that is based on a fixed spectrum of a tone, the formant theory relies upon changes in the spectrum of a tone to produce constancy in musical quality - Saldanha and Corso. 1964 Although spectrum, transient, phenomena, and quasi steady-state modulation processes may be the most important dimensions, each of these is characterized by a great many subparameters, and the definitions based upon Ohm\u2019s Law are inadequate for any definition of timbre which might be of musical value - Tenney. 1966 Timbre may be not too much more than one of these leftovers from a dead musical system - J.K. Randall. 1967 I would hope that we could soon find whatever further excuse we still need to quite talking about mellow timbres and edgy timbres and timbres altogether, in favor of contextual musical analysis of developing structures of vibrato, tremolo, spectral transformation, and all these various dimensions of sound which need no longer languish as inmates of some metaphor - J.K. Randall. Now vibrato is just one of many potentially structurable aspects of sound which have been too often written off as ingredients of something more vague - J.K. Randall. 1968 In the broad sense, timbre depends upon several parameters of the sound including the spectral envelope and its change in timbre, periodic fluctuations of the amplitude, and whether the sound is a tone or noise - Schouten in Aspects of Tone Sensation The five major acoustic parameters of timbre: (i) the range between tonal and noiselike character, (ii) the spectral envelope, (iii) the time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay, (iv) the changes in spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (microintonation), and (v) the prefix, the onset of a sound is quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration - Schouten. 1969 Helmholz showed that timbre depends principally upon the number and rela-tive intensity of the sounding partials of the fundamental - Cogan. 1969 Quality of tone - the characteristic of a tone that can distinguish it from others of the same frequency and loudness. The harmonic structure of a tone is quite inadequate to specify its quality. It was implied in the theory of quality outlined above that an instrument has a spectrum characterized by a particular harmonic structure, which would be the same for each note of the instrument. The number and positions of the formants determine the tone quality of an instrument - Formant Theory - Backus. 1970 The components of the harmonic content of sound which create its timbre: (i) the harmonic spectrum, (ii) which partials are present or absent, (iii) their relative intensities, (iv) the pattern which those that are present form - Honegger in Dictionnaire de la Musique. 1970 Timbre is tone quality -- coarse or smooth, ringing or more subtly penetrating, scarlet like that of the trumpet, rich brown like that of the cello, or silver like that of the flute. The one and only factor is sound production which conditions timbre is the presence or absence, or relative strength or weakness, of overtone - Scholes in the Oxford Companion to Music 1972 Acoustical - one tries to associate the variation of timbre to physical characteristics. Psychological - deals with descriptions proceeding from the listeners experience. The classical theory of von Helmholz holds that differences in the timbreof tones depends on the presence and strength of partial tones and are independent of the differences in phase under which these partial tones unite. The individual character of a certain instrument is its acoustic spectrum. The purpose is to study the structure of the perception of timbre (tone colour, musical quality) and try to find physical correlates in the acoustic spectrum. The most importance correlates to these perceptual factors may be found in the relative strength of the harmonic partial tones: (i) generally high level overtone richness, sonority, (ii) successively decreasing intensity of the upper partials - overtone poorness, dullness, (iii) low fundamental intensity and an increasing intensity of the first overtones - Wedin. 1975 The amount of work done toward specifying the physical qualities of timbre unfortunately has been much greater than the work done toward finding the corresponding psychological attributes. Factor analysis methods have been used to reveal a cognitive classification of instrument types into woodwind, brass, and string and a classification of the sounds of these instruments into groups determined by the relative amplitudes of a sound\u2019s partials. More recently, multidimensional scaling techniques have been developed by means of which judgements of similarity of stimuli can be interpreted as cognitive distances between these stimuli - Miller and Carterette. 1975 The timbre or tone quality of a musical instrument has been used to denote that property which enables a listener to identify the instrument - Howe. 1975 The chief function of timbre in most Western concert music of the past has been that of carrier of melodic functions. The differences of timbre at different pitches and in different registers of instruments has been treated as nuances. The approach to timbre from acoustic searches for invariants taking the view that if we are able to recognize and identify a clarinet under conditions of changing pitch and loudness, in different environments, and with different players, then, as David Luce says, the implication is that certain strong regularities in the acoustic waveform of the above instruments must exist which are invariant with respect to the above variables - Erickson. 1975 Timbre perception is just a stage of the operation of tone source recognition - in music the identification of the instrument - Roeder. 1976 Timbre is multidimensional. There is not a unidirectional scale for comparing the timbres of various sounds. The multidimensional nature of timbre has a physical counterpart in the many degrees of freedom of a complex tone - Plomp. 1979 Timbre refers to the color of quality of sounds and is typically divorced conceptually from pitch and loudness. Perceptual research on timbre has dem-onstrated that the spectral energy distribution provided the acoustical determinants of our perception of sound quality - Wessel. 1980 A term describing the tonal quality of a sound; a clarinet and an oboe sounding the same note are said to produce different timbres. It is usually reserved for descriptions of steady state notes and therefore the physical quantity with which it is most closely associated in the harmonic mixture, or the formant, or the spectrum - Groves. 1982 Timbre is an attribute of the subjective experience of musical tones. Timbre is coded as the function of the sound source or of the meaning of the sound. Sounds cannot be ordered on a single scale with respect to timbre. Timbre is a multidimensional attribute of the perception of sounds - Plomp. 1986 Timbre is the miscellaneous category for describing the psychological attributes of sound, gathering into one bundle whatever was left over after pitch, loudness, and duration had been accounted for. - Dowling and Harwood. 1989 Timbre is the subjective correlate of all those sound properties that do no directly influence pitch or loudness: sounds spectral power distribution, it's temporal envelope, rate and depth of amplitude and frequency modulation, and degree of its partials - Houtsma. 1989 Levels of timbre description include: (i) commonalities shared by all oboe tones, commonalities shared by all bowed tones, commonalities shared by all timpani tones, (ii) expressive variation available to performing musi-cians and(iii) broader family distinctions of method-of-production distinc-tions (i.e., blown and bowed instruments whose behavior is controlled continuously; percussive instruments whose behavior is determined completely at the instant when they are set into motion - Krumhansl. 1990 Until such time as the dimensions of timbre are clarified it is better to drop the term timbre. When we do find a characteristic of sound that can be obtained on different instruments, such as vibrato, the characteristic tends to be given a label and no longer falls into the nameless wastebasket of timbre - Bregman. 1990 Timbre or tone quality depends upon the frequency of a tone, it's time enve-lope, it's duration, and the sound level at which it is heard - Rossing. 1991 The character or quality of musical or vocal sound (distinct from its pitch and intensity) depending upon the particular voice or instrument producing it from sounds proceeding, from other sources; caused by the proportion in which the fundamental is combined with the harmonics or overtones \u2013 OED. 1992 Timbre is the subjective attribute of source (instrument) that is based on invariant properties that uniquely characterize the tones produced by the source. An adequate definition of timbre is both related to and dependent upon establishing which characteristics are important for perceptually determining an instrument's distinctive sound quality - Chi, Hall, and Pastore. 1994 A timbre is a simple perceptual object. Adjectives for constellation of overtones: bright, dark, mellow, hollow, pure. Noise content: raspy, breathy, hoarse. Attack: smooth, abrupt, sharp, gentle, easing. We attempt to categorize timbre mainly by relating what we hear to what we have seen and heard of other musical instruments. Timbre is the aggregate effect of the periodic and nonperiodic components of a sound and their envelopes - Pellman. 1995 Timbre is the perceptual quality of objects and events; that is, what it sounds like. Due to the interactive nature of sound production, there are many stable and time-varying acoustic properties. Timbre is an emergent property that is partly a function of the acoustic properties and partly a function of the perceptual process. Timbre generally has a certain constancy over large changes in the acoustical environment. Timbre is perceived in terms of the actions required to generate the event. Timbre is perceived in terms of the acoustic properties and that the connection between acoustic properties and object is learned by experience - Handel. 1996 Timbre groups fall into categories that are constrained by the underlying physic of the sound-generating systems and that it is the goal of the ear/ brain system to discover such commonalities in the sounding world. Parameters should be estimated in order to represent the articulatory aspect of timbre perception - Casey et. al. 1997 Timbre is not a thing. It is an abstraction. Timbre is not an object. It does not exists in the real world as an object. Timbre is an attribute of a musical tone that is abstracted from the entity that we call a musical tone Timbre is not even the only attribute of tone connected to tone quality: consider volume and density. Timbre does have a perceptual order \u2013 actually, as a multidimensional attribute, it has several. In general, instruments are ordered first along impulse vs. continuant characteristics (relating to the rms amplitude attack and overall envelope) and secondly along nasality or brightness (relating to the spectral centroid) - John Hadja 1997 Timbre is an emergent property of a stream \u2013 a grouping of the acoustic array influenced by acoustic context, and the attention and learning of the listener. - Stephen Malloch's summary of Albert Bregman Timbre can be defined as the primary aural information that is used in the perceptual task of assigning an identity to sound - Stephen Malloch 1997 Electroacoustic musicians/composers and people doing analysis/synthesis would tend to think of timbre as a gestalt that includes time variations. It is difficult to decide whether the whole thing is a timbre or whether timbre itself is varying with time - James Beauchamp 1997 Timbre becomes a rhetorical catch-all subsuming many diverse preoccupations - Born. > ------------------------------ > Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:36:20 -0400 > From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Claire_Pich=E9?= <clairepiche(at)VIF.COM> > Subject: Re: origin of 'timbre' > > Hello Jim > here is some cues so you can follow parts of the evolution of the word. > > TIMBRE : n.m. emprunté au grec byzantin /timbanon /(...) du grec > classique /tumpanon /"tambourin", (...) étant associé aux cultes > orgiaques de Cybèle et de Dyonisos, le mot serait d'origine > sémitique.(...) /Tympanum,/ d'où viennent la forme héritée disparue > /tympe /(v.1155) et l'emprunt /tympan. /(...)/ Timbre /s'est > progressivement éloigné de son sens d'emprunt /tambour de basque /propre > à l'ancien français; il s'appliquait à la cloche immobile que l'on > frappait avec un marteau (1374), qui est à l'origine du sens > métaphorique de "tête" (v.1450). De cette valeur procède la locution > /avoir le timbre fêlé. /(1606). De nos jours, le mot au sens concret > désigne une calotte de métal qui, frappée par un marteau ou un vibreur, > sert de sonnette (1858). Par métonymie, il désigne la qualité de > sonorité d'un timbre (1762; 1740, "son d'un timbre" et, plus > généralement, d'un instrument donné, valeur importante en musique./ /Il > est employé aussi en phonétique (1926; /timbre d'une voyelle/)./ Timbre > /a eu un autre développement sémantique fondé sur une analogie de forme > avec le tambour ou la cloche nommée /timbre /au moyen âge. (...) > > Rey, Alain, /Dictionnaire historique de la langue française. /Éditions > LeRobert: Paris, 1998 (1992). Tome 3. > > Claire > > > beaucham a écrit : > > >I would like to have a good historical reference for the word > >"timbre". One book (Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone) says it > >was the original word for timpani. Another source says "a sort > >of drum with stretched strings". A dictionary says both "bell > >struck by a hammer" and "tymbanon kettledrum". Is there a > >good source that discusses the original meaning of the word > >and how it came to take on its modern meaning? > > > >Jim > > > >James W. Beauchamp > >Professor Emeritus of Music and Electrical & Computer Engineering > >University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign > >2136 Music Bldg. MC-056 > >1114 W. Nevada, Urbana, IL 61801 USA > >email: jwbeauch(at)uiuc.edu (also: beaucham(at)manfred.music.uiuc.edu) > >phone: +1-217-344-3307 (also: 217-244-1207 and 217-333-3691) > >fax: +1-217-344-3723 (also: 217-244-4585) > >WWW: http://ems.music.uiuc.edu/beaucham > > > > > > > > ------------------------------