Drastic Allure: Timbre Between the Sublime and the Grain. Issue 6 (2nd November 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: van Elferen, Isabella
• Is Part Of: Contemporary music review. Volume 36:Issue 6(2017)
• Page Start: 614
• Page End: 632
• Publication Date: 2017-11-02
• Subjects: Timbre -- Aesthetics -- Idealism -- Materialism -- Sublime; Music -- 20th century -- Periodicals; 780.904
• DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2017.1452687
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0749-4467

Abstract

Abstract : This article analyses the binarism that pervades critical assessments of tone colour. In musicology, sound studies, and aesthetics alike, timbre is either considered in a materialist way as the manipulation of sound waves and instruments, or, in idealist fashion, as a sublime and unapproachable Thing that defies description. Exploring the timbral sublime and its friction with timbral materiality, I argue that a theorisation of tone colour must start with the acknowledgement of the timbral paradox: timbre undeniably has material as well as immaterial components. Timbre's paradoxical im/materiality engenders a sublime aesthetic experience that can be described as the aporia of being drawn into a void which appears to be real but which—the closer you get to it—flickers in and out of earshot and comprehension. The paradox of tone colour, thus, is precisely its allure.