Timbre: Paradox, Materialism, Vibrational Aesthetics

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Timbre is among the most important and the most elusive aspects of music. Visceral and immediate in its sonic properties, yet also considered sublime and ineffable, timbre finds itself caught up in metaphors: tone color, wet acoustics, or in Schoenbergs words, the illusory stuff of our dreams. This multi-disciplinary approach to timbre assesses the acoustic, corporeal, performative, and aesthetic dimensions of tone color in Western music practice and philosophy. It develops a new theorization of timbre and its crucial role in the epistemology of musical materialism through a vital materialist aesthetics in which conventional binaries and dualisms are superseded by a vibrant continuum. As the aesthetic and epistemological questions foregrounded by timbre are not restricted to isolated periods in music history or individual genres, but have pervaded Western musical aesthetics since early Modernity, the book discusses musical examples taken from both classical and popular music. These range, in classical music, from the Middle Ages through the Baroque, the belcanto opera and electronic music to saturated music; and, in popular music, from indie through soul and ballad to dark industrial.

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In Timbre: Paradox, Materialism, Vibrational Aesthetics, Isabella van Elferen explores the manifold ways in which a wide range of thinkers have grappled with timbre in all of its thorniness. There is much to admire here, not least van Elferens joyous embrace of a tangle of musical genres. But the most powerful aspect of this volume is van Elferen's deft resistance to resolving any of timbres contradictions or dualities. Instead, this volume teaches us to be comfortable with, indeed to love, the inherently paradoxical nature of timbre. * Emily I. Dolan, Associate Professor of Music, Brown University, USA *
The word timbre may be familiar, but it is also emblematic of the inability of words to deal with sound. This fascinating exploration takes the reader through the various attempts to define and understand timbre, towards nothing less than a new aesthetics. It is an exhilarating and deeply considered journey. * Peter Nelson, Professor of Music and Technology, University of Edinburgh, UK *

Author Bio

Isabella van Elferenis Professor of Music, School Director of Research and Enterprise and Director of the Visconti Studio at Kingston University, UK. She is the author of Mystical Love in the German Baroque (2009), Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny (2012), Goth Music: From Sound to Subculture (with Jeffrey Weinstock, 2015), and editor of Nostalgia or Perversion Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day (2007).