Reprints

In raising the question of form-bearing dimensions in music, we are trying to understand the possibilities and limits of the apprehension of musical form in terms of the psychological mechanisms that operate on a received acoustic structure.

This doctoral thesis presents how the orchestration of timbre is in- vestigated from a performer’s perspective as means to “unfold” im- provisational processes. It is grounded in my practice as a pianist in the realm of improvised music, in which I often use preparations and objects as extensions of the instrument.

An analysis of orchestration treatises and musical scores reveals an implicit understanding of auditory grouping principles by which many orchestration techniques give rise to predictable perceptual effects. We present a novel theory formalized in a taxonomy of devices related to auditory grouping principles that appear frequently in Western orchestration practices from a range of historical epochs.