Subject: Re: origin of "timbre" From: Eckard Blumschein <Eckard.Blumschein(at)E-Technik.Uni-Magdeburg.DE> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:04:45 +0200Jim also asked: >Is there a good source that discusses ... how it came to take its modern meaning?" He already mentioned a translation of Helmholtz's 'Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik', Braunschweig: 1863. Perhaps it was the translator A.J. Ellis who introduced the term timbre. The reason for v. Helmholtz to use the term 'Klangfarbe' was certainly the tempting hypothesis by Müller and subsequently Ohm that the perceived 'Tonhöhe' = pitch of a tone corresponds to its 'fundamental frequency' according to Fourier's analysis of the 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 psycho-descriptive term timbre completes what I consider a still widesprespread illusion concerning the psychophysical measure pitch. It has still to be decided whether this sound quality largely depends on spectral or cepstral composition. We should ask why nobody so far managed to convincingly derive from spectral shape and physiology whether a tone sounds more sharp, more rough, or more harmonic. Having revealed the possiblility that the ordinaty event-related time-scale instead of the natural observer-bound one 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 closing the still wide gap between perception of timbre and physiology. At least, the phenomena unison, harmony, octave error, missing fundamental, audibility of click polarity, etc. are plausible now. I would like to suggest focussing on understanding rather than terminology. Schouten's residue pitch and Warren's infrapitch anyway deviate from the traditional notion of pitch and timbre. Eckard Blumschein