Texture and Timbre in Barbara Kolbs Millefoglie for Chamber

Orchestra and computer Generated tape - Judith Lochhead

Rafael Ribeiro

The author presents the music details of the piece Millefoglies1 such as

instrumentation, the music score, the meaning of the title and the publish format. The

first information about the music does not sound useful at this point. However, as soon

as you start to understand the analytical process of this kind of music, it is notable that

each detail is very relevant and that is why she presented at the beginning. She also

focuses on the music score and she concludes that the score of Millefoglie is useful for

the performer, in order to provide cues for the conductor and player2. On the other

hand, the score does not offer tools for the analysis since the electronically generated

sound represents a schematic depiction of sound.

Without providing her angle yet, Lochhead intrigues us by leading a discussion

of texture and timbre. According to her, in order to analyze a piece that utilizes

electronically generated sound, the focus must change from the pitch toward texture and

timbre. By texture she means an overall effect made by the combination of the

different sounds and by timbre an overall effect made by the quality of sound of a

given sound source or a combination of sound sources3. She clarifies these concepts

giving examples and talking about her first angle, which is to use the combination of

timbre and texture as a tool for her analysis.

1 Italian word that means a thousand folds.

2 Debora Jane Stein, Engaging Music: Essays in Music Analysis (Oxford

University Press, 2005), 254.

3 Stein, Engaging Music, 256.

 This article has a very didactic system for the methodological process and it was

very useful in my opinion, since this kind of piece requires a different approach. She

divides her methodology in three aspects and explains each one. In addition she

compares her current analysis with traditional tonal music analysis. In her first topic,

she compares the traditional concept of texture for tonal music homophonic,

contrapuntal, monophonic, and heterophonic based on harmonic structure with a new

way to apply this term in Millefoglie. She will use texture in her analysis not as

technical terms but as metaphorical descriptions that refer to sound qualities4. Her

second point is about the score. As she said in the beginning, the score does not have

visual representation for the electronic sounds. Therefore, she suggests a transcription of

timbral and textural features as part of the analytical process. In the last topic, she

discusses about how the analysis have a tendency to focus on compositional techniques

and it does not apply to this kind of piece. She believes the analyst must be a good

listener because it is not possible to have all the information at the score.

After this great introduction, she focuses all the attention on Millefoglie. As she

had said previously, she will use the textural timbral concepts in order to define the

formal design of the piece and then she will focus on particular details of this design.

In her analysis, she starts by dealing with the timing of each section and

subsection. There are four sections: I, II, III and IV. There are subsections in section I

and II: Ia, Ib, IIa and IIb. By analyzing relation between time and structure, she

concludes, temporal symmetry is not a factor in the formal rhythm of the piece.5 In

the same graphic, she shows a category, which she calls T/T Type (Textural/Timbral

Type). There is another column (number 4 and 5) where it displays the timbral character
4 Stein, Engaging Music, 256.

5 Stein, Engaging Music, 258.

of each section (which instruments and what types of electronic sounds). As for the T/T

types subject she says they occur in all the sections of the piece, sometimes they serve

as a section marker and the entrance of electronic sounds marks, sometimes, the

beginning of a subsection.

She analyzes in details each four sections of Millefoglie. In section I, she

underlines that the big difference between A and B is the entrance of the electronic

components. There is a division that she calls a timbral articulation in Ib. In section II,

subsection IIa includes only computer-generated sounds and IIb, only instrumental.

There is an interesting issue in this section as it has a relation with section I (there is a

similar dialogue between two voices) and III (a repeated idea that will be the basis of a

formal strategy in section 3). She calls section III the culminant section, because there is

a repeated idea that continuously increases the dynamic. The section IV is called the

concluding section. There is a decrease of dynamic and some references to section I.

(the Buzzy thobs timbre). In her conclusion, she believes that the analysis of the

textural and timbral organizations of Kolbs Millefoglie has revealed aspects of formal

and aesthetic design.

This is a very clear and didactic article. I particularly liked the part where she

demonstrated her methodology since we mostly analyze pitch-notated music. I also like

how she clarified how she would use the concept of texture and timbre, since there are

some limitations when they apply this term in tonal music. Her schemes are very useful

for understanding her analysis, as well. However, there are some excerpts of the music

score that I didn`t understand. Most of the time she was using the seconds as a mark of

time and the goal was clear, but when she referred to the score, it was hard to identify.