Timbre Can Do the Work We Give Harmony Credit For

A recording can return to the exact same chord and make the listener feel it has brought news. Sometimes the note relationships have remained stable while their surfaces have changed. Take a sound whose early attack lets the ear locate a pitch with confidence. Lengthen and thin the attack over several appearances. When the firm beginning finally returns, it can restore a tonal certainty the listener had not known they depended on. The notes have been doing one job and the listener’s access to them another.

This matters because an analysis that can name the chords with great clarity may end up giving them all the responsibility for an effect. A held note printed on a page can be easy to classify. Differences in the way people come to hear it can determine whether it feels like a third, a colour scattered across other tones or a persistent disturbance in the room. Timbre changes the confidence of some harmonic assignments.

A sound that changes its job

Think of noise entering gradually underneath a pitched ensemble. It can be heard first as part of the stroke on some instrument, then as an independent layer. The development of the piece may consist in that change of status. A new section begins when the listener starts giving the sound its own attention, even while the arrangement still appears to be inhabiting a familiar set of notes. You could replace the sound with a more pleasing one and lose the form.

The invitation to take timbre seriously can result in a reverence for interesting sounds. Some are very interesting for several seconds. A composition can still have no use for the attention they acquire. I would listen for the consequences of the sound when it remains, disappears or returns late. A strong timbral decision gives later events something to do. The composer may come to regret a superficially exciting texture if nothing else can survive its presence.

One kind of harmony tells an ear which pitched things belong together. One kind of timbral form tells it which parts of an event are worth following through time. These ways of hearing can help each other. They can also disagree. The chord says a familiar place has returned. The tone tells the listener the quality of the return will be difficult to account for. The future of that disagreement is one reason to keep listening.