Music analysis traditionally prioritizes melody, harmony, and form as primary metrics for uncovering musical structure and meaning. However, one of the most compelling, and often times, the most immediate reactions one has towards a musical composition is how it sounds— that is, the sound of a singer, instrument, ensemble, or sound object; the feeling of textural and/or rhythmic changes; the flow of a musical line, form, improvisation, rap, or soundtrack. This course surveys methods for analyzing various types of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, with a focus on sound organization, orchestration analysis, and the study of genre. The twentieth century features some of the most exciting and diverse music, sounds, and composers. By prioritizing sound advancements of this period alongside traditional analytical techniques, which traditionally teach students how to label melodic and harmonic events, we can develop a deeper understanding of how to discuss and analyze the most captivating, yet somewhat neglected parameters of sound.

In this seminar, we will explore how the idea of “timbre” is constructed across diverse disciplinary frames, including music research, composition, sound studies, media history, psychoacoustics, and the information sciences. Our emphasis here on cross- disciplinarity reflects timbre’s status as a multivalent sonic parameter that is notoriously difficult to define, and which has been theorized according to varying interpretive logics in different historical epochs. Today, it is often defined negatively as the characteristic quality of sound that is neither pitch nor loudness, and which allows listeners to distinguish two instruments playing the same note. But this definition only takes us so far, provoking more questions than answers: what exactly is timbre? What are its physical correlates and how do these features map onto auditory perception? What can such matters of scientific fact tell us about how timbre conveys meaning as an expressive musical element? And what might we gain by considering timbre through alternative lenses of embodiment, semantics, affect, and cultural identity?

The seminar covers a variety of interdisciplinary topics concerning the perceptual "representation" of timbre in the auditory system, multidimensional models of timbre as predictors of perceptual and musical effects of timbre, the role of timbre as a structuring force in music, the eventual limits imposed on this role by perception and memory for absolute timbre and timbral relations, and the use of timbre as an expressive device in musical performance.

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Timbre has emerged as the predominant organizing feature of much music composed or created since the middle years of the twentieth century in virtually all styles of music. But while timbre has become increasingly important as an organizing and expressive principle of musical works, an instrumental concept of timbre and a productive form of timbral analysis have proved resistant.

The seminar focuses on a broad range of readings that aim toward conceptualizing timbre as an operational concept, considering historical and present attempts to conceptualize and analyze timbre. Throughout the seminar, participants will explore the timbral logics of particular works (broadly conceived).

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Timbre is often described as a domain of music that is quite ineffable, with little standardized vocabulary to deal with it. Yet timbre might well be the most immediate aspect of sound that we as humans perceive. This course explores the ways in which musicologists have tackled the difficult task of analyzing timbre.

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