Defining timbre — Refining timbre

Timbre is defined as the attribution of spectromorphological identity. Electroacoustic music experience, particularly acousmatic music, questions the viability of a notion of timbre. Of primary significance is the traditional linking of timbre to the source and cause of a sound: the concept of source-cause texture is introduced to define this link. The ambiguous relationship between pitch and timbre indicates that timbre cannot be defined as that part of the sound which is not pitch. Problems in establishing the existence of sonic identities within the musical context, and of maintaining the coherence of identities are discussed, opening up questions relating to musical discourse. Two types of discourse — transformational and typological — are defined, leading to the notion of generic timbre. In a spectromorphological music where defining identities becomes problematic it becomes impossible to disentangle timbre from discourse: here the notion of timbre has a limited viability.