Timbre melody

Timbre melody is a term that Arnold Schönberg brought up at the end of his theory of harmony (Vienna 1911) to describe a sequence of “ timbres whose relationship to one another works with a kind of logic, quite equivalent to the logic that is sufficient for us in the melody of the pitch” design. In terms of composition, Schönberg realized a timbre melody in the third of his Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 (1909), originally entitled Colors .

Approaches to timbre melody can already be found in Wagner's Prelude to the Rheingold  (1869), where a static E flat major surface is enlivened solely by instrumentation , i.e. by changing timbre. In the orchestral treatment of Impressionism , timbre melody becomes a widespread design element.

In contrast to Schönberg's idea of ​​the independence of timbre, it clarifies the pitch structure of the composition in Webern's orchestration of Bach's “ Ricercar to 6 Voices ” from the Musical Offering (1935), which is thus also represented as a color structure.

In new music since the 1960s, timbre has definitely become an independent field of work without the term being named or analytically described.

literature

• Timbre melody . In: Hugo Riemann (first), Carl Dahlhaus (Hrsg.): Riemann Musiklexikon , Vol. 3: Sachteil . 12th edition 1967, p. 459.
• Rainer Schmusch: timbre melody . In: Concise Dictionary of Musical Terminology , 22nd delivery, 1994, 14 pp.
• Matthias Schmidt: timbre melody. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 2, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7001-3044-9 .