Schaeffer, Pierre

Until recently, the supremacy of pitch over other sound attributes prevailed in Western music theory. Time and timbre, for example, were considered to be of secondary importance. Today, however, this ideology is changing, and the tendency is now to consider that attributes such as pitch, time and timbre are all descriptors for the same phenomenon, but from different perspectives. For example, pitch may be considered as one aspect of the perception of timbre and timbre as one aspect of the perception of time. Pitch may, in turn, be considered as a quantifier to measure time. The music and theoretical work of composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, Jean-Claude Risset, Horacio Vaggione, Trevor Wishart and Joi e Antunes have helped to emancipate the role of time and timbre in Western music (Stockhausen, 1959 Schaeffer, 1966 Xenakis, 1971 Risset, 1992 Vaggione, 1993 Wishart, 1985, 1994 Antunes, 1995). 

In his Traite des objets musicaux Pierre Schaeffer (1966) purports to define criteria for the identification and classification of sounds according to their general features. Although Schaeffer was not explicitly concerned with sound synthesis itself, his work provides an excellent insight into making sound categorisations. One of the most important aspects of his theoretical work is the concept of maintenance, which involves the relationship between both criteria discussed above the basic spectral formation and mode of excitation. 

Figure 6.1 The two-axis diagram inspired by Pierre Schaeffer s concept of sound maintenance is an exceiient exampie of a framework for sound categorisation...

The development of the alternative taxonomy departs from a framework for sound categorisation inspired by Pierre Schaeffer s (1966) concept of sound maintenance (Figure 6.1) and to some extent by an article written by Jean-Claude Risset in the book Le timbre ... 

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