ABSTRACT
We have seen how the ear of the musician adapts itself to very approximate sound elements—aggregates of all sorts of impurities and of fluctuations of pitch, timbre, and loudness. Surely, compared with noise, musical sounds present a simple structure, but compared with the constant and pure sinusoids of tone generators, they are enormously complex. What is really essential in musical objects—and essential as well for aesthetic consciousness even at the most rudimentary levels—is not just their frequencies, but relationships of a certain type, not molecular but molar, not isolated but integrated into a system, not provided by nature but contrived by technology out of natural materials. The musical ear, constructed by the action of these relationships and constructing them in turn, is more a mental than a physical apparatus, governed by habits that guide the apprehension and production of sound materials. 1 The timbre of a musical sound is generated by the cluster of relationships of the frequencies and intensities of its harmonic components. This complex system presents itself to the ear as a simple perceptual quality with emotional power and intrinsic beauty. Yet everyone knows the conventional character of timbre judgments, expressed in spatial, dynamic, or temperature terms (for example, flat, soft, hot, and their analogs and opposites). Our western ears accustom themselves only with difficulty to the singing of the best Japanese artists, to their instruments, and to the patterns of sound in their orchestras and accompaniments. And even within a particular culture, vocal and instrumental timbres are differently appreciated in different periods and schools. 2 Finally, there are typical timbres that are colored by association with their source, their mythology, and their historical and social context; for example, the sound of the accordion seems “vulgar” to many, the sound of the organ mysterious to some; to others, the flute is bucolic, the horn evokes the forest.
