ABSTRACT
Until recently, the supremacy of pitch over other sound attributes prevailed in Western music theory. Time and timbre, for example, were considered to be of secondary importance. Today, however, this ideology is changing, and the tendency is now to consider that attributes such as pitch, time and timbre are all descriptors for the same phenomenon, but from different perspectives. For example, pitch may be considered as one aspect of the perception of timbre and timbre as one aspect of the perception of time. Pitch may, in turn, be considered as a quantifier to measure time. The music and theoretical work of composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, Jean-Claude Risset, Horacio Vaggione, Trevor Wishart and Jorge Antunes have helped to emancipate the role of time and timbre in Western music (Stockhausen, 1959; Schaeffer, 1966; Xenakis, 1971; Risset, 1992; Vaggione, 1993; Wishart, 1985, 1994; Antunes, 1995).
