MAMuTh Workshop
Dear MuThs,
Next Thursday, November 19, 2020, from 9:30-11:00am, MAMuTh will be hosting its first-ever collaborative event with CIRMMT's ACTOR project. This Timbre Analysis Workshop will feature talks by two of CIRMMT's new post-docs, Matt Zeller and Lindsey Reymore. If you've been curious about the ACTOR project, what our colleagues at CIRMMT do, or timbre analysis as it relates to your own music theory research, you won't want to miss this event! Paper titles and abstracts can be found below, and the event will be held [on] Zoom. Looking forward to this event and seeing you all there!
Alex and Rachel
The semantics of instrumentation: Music analysis with Timbre Trait Profiles
Lindsey Reymore
The cognitive linguistics of timbre—that is, the study of the interactions among language, thought, and perception of timbre—has recently emerged as a promising sub-field in timbre studies. In this presentation, I address how study of the cognitive linguistics of musical instrument timbre can inform music theoretical discourse and provide a basis for music analysis. I describe a series of studies consisting of open-ended interviews and rating tasks that were used to derive a 20-dimensional model of musical instrument timbre qualia. Using this model, I developed a program which generates a semantic orchestration plot given a musical piece as input. I'll demonstrate how Timbre Trait Analysis can offer information on how the semantic dimensions of timbre evolve throughout a work through examples from Mahler's Symphony No.1. Theorists can interpret results of Timbre Trait Analysis to build readings of pieces that account for timbre as an organizing principle of composition and of listener experience; in particular, these analyses can address how musical meaning and narrative arise from the interaction of timbre and form.
Planal Analysis and Block Topography: Tools for Analyzing Timbral Function in Music
Matthew Zeller
Analyzing timbral function in music offers challenges unique from those of other parameters as well as from analyzing timbre itself. To penetrate this lacuna, planal analysis can be employed as a tool that facilitates new ways to study and understand musical structures and logic. The planes of planal analysis are analytical planes, suitable for any number or type of parameter. By placing elements in different analytical planes, results can be illustrated with a vast array analytical purposes in mind. Block topography analysis augments planal analysis. Musical blocks consist of one or more textural streams segmented into musically coherent parcels. Blocks are defined by both score-based analysis and auditory chunking. They are then organized into textures with varying block topographies such as monophonic, homophonic, and polyphonic. Examining repertory from Wagner to Webern, we will deploy planal analysis and block topography to elucidate different styles of timbre-based musical logic.