Timbre as a form-bearing element in music: Perceptual and cognitive issues

Teaching and Learning | Syllabi

TIMBRE AS A FORM-BEARING ELEMENT IN MUSIC: PERCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE ISSUES

Instructor: Prof. Stephen McAdams

Course Objectives: Over the course of this seminar, music theoretic, performance-related, psychophysical, and cognitive perspectives on musical timbre and its role as a bearer of musical form will be surveyed and discussed. The main aim is to lay the groundwork for a unified theory of musical timbre and a psychological foundation for a theory of orchestration practice. A transdisciplinary, inquiry-based learning approach is adopted in this course: students are expected to be proactive and to discover, create, and communicate knowledge on their own to the benefit of the whole class.

Content: The seminar covers a variety of interdisciplinary topics concerning the perceptual "representation" of timbre in the auditory system, multidimensional models of timbre as predictors of perceptual and musical effects of timbre, the role of timbre as a structuring force in music, the eventual limits imposed on this role by perception and memory for absolute timbre and timbral relations, and the use of timbre as an expressive device in musical performance.

Complete PDF of Syllabus with Weekly Topics here.