FUNCTIONS OF MUSICAL TIMBRE: TOWARDS AN ANALYTICAL GENERALIZATION

Abstract

The article investigates the functions of musical timbre as a multidimensional phenomenon that, in contemporary music thinking, transcends the traditional view of timbre as merely an acoustic characteristic. This shift is influenced by the emergence of electroacoustic music, the adoption of new compositional techniques (including spectral methods, electronics integration, and extended performance techniques), transformations in listening practices, and the growth of interdisciplinary research in psychoacoustics, neuroaesthetics (emotional impact of sound, brain responses), and cognitive musicology (perception mechanisms, memory, timbre identification, and neural processes linked to musical experience). These developments highlight the need to reassess timbre’s role in composition and analysis. The article aims to provide an analytical overview of timbre functions based on a comparative study of perspectives from 20th–21st century composers and musicologists, and to offer an original typology covering theoretical, practical, cognitive, and semantic dimensions. The functional, systemic, and comparative methods used in the study allow the tracing of timbre’s conceptual evolution across aesthetic paradigms. Works analyzed include those of E. Varèse [14], P. Boulez [6], K. Saariaho [10], Y. Ishchenko [3], D. Smalley [12], I. van Elferen [13], S. Korobetska [5], O. Zharkov [1; 2], R. Kashyrtsev [4], R. Pace [9], N. di Stefano [7], S. Liu [8], among others. The article highlights varied approaches to understanding timbre as a structural, emotional, semantic, spatial, and performative element. The proposed typology includes compositional-structural, generic, stylistic, emotional, cognitive, semantic, expressive, spatial, and processual functions.