LITMIR.BIZ

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of composition (melodies in particular are entirely absent, as are familiar choices of orchestral instruments, and sometimes the harmony is very restricted as well), at first listen his music is not far from the sound of my washing machine on full cycle. His music is labelled ‘Minimalist’ because it uses subtle shifts in sound and texture to make us listen. Reich is deliberately making music for our time, based on the repetitive sound-world of modern cities, computers and industrial rhythms. Music for 18 Musicians [0] sounds to me like a late-night drive through half-lit and empty streets – but that’s just my feeling about it.

      Out of apparently meaningless repetition, music emerges. In fact, hidden within Reich’s work is a classical sense of structure; the changes are meticulously planned and can be very effective through subtle variation of pitch. Composers are able to make us listen and keep us interested by varying pitch and rhythm. But that’s not enough to keep the ear alert. If the sound quality doesn’t change enough then it’s like staring at a monochromatic picture – you want colour. In music we refer to colour as ‘timbre’.

      Timbre means tonal colour or the quality of a sound – a bit like the mix of flavours that makes up the individual taste of a wine or a particularly good cake. Our sensitivity to timbre is extremely developed. We can recognise the difference between relatively similar sounds: a champagne cork exploding and a gunshot, our own front door opening and that of our neighbour’s coming through the walls, and we can often recognise people on the telephone from the first ‘hello’.

      Timbre is what tells you that you are listening to a flute and not a trumpet – even though they may be playing the same note. The way that an instrument starts and ends a note can also give you clues: a trumpet, for example, has that distinctive brass ‘pa pa pa’ or ‘bbbbrr’ sound before the note fully sounds, and this is very different from the breathy ‘whhhoooo’ onset sound made by a flute. (Professional players aim to eliminate these sounds where possible and make a feature of them where necessary.) Timbre is one of those concepts that can’t really be adequately described in words, though you might say a sound is, for example, reedy, or breathy, or pure, or rasping, or bell-like [I and II].

      Creating interesting timbres is part of the point of classical music. Listening to the beautiful sound of the flute can be an uplifting experience in its own right and the combination of these ‘colours’ can be thrilling. Some composers exploit the difference in timbre between instruments; Ravel and Debussy in particular were masters of combining orchestral sounds as a painter might combine colours. The lush effects of timbre as the sound moves from dark to light can be heard in Debussy’s La Mer (‘The Sea’) and exquisite balancing of instrumental choices can be found in Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye (‘Mother Goose’).

      Timbre applies to voice as well, and in a blind test I reckon I could spot the difference between at least ten of the world’s tenors: Jussi Björling, Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo have such distinctive timbres that within the space of a single note I can tell who is singing. It’s the same for many experts with violins. Not only do the instruments themselves vary in sound but the playing style changes with the individual and that’s what gives it away. In the days before violins were ridiculously expensive (millions of pounds for the best instruments) a player might have owned many violins and chosen the most appropriate one for the piece in question. Fritz Kreisler, a stylish early-twentieth-century virtuoso from Austria who was world-famous for his effortless playing, owned many fine instruments until he had to get rid of the famous Guarnarius del Gesù violin to settle his tax bill. Owning two world-class instruments is no longer financially viable even at the very top end of the profession, which can help make it easier to identify a violinist by listening to the sound of their fiddle. (Even as I write, the police are trying to track down a Stradivarius that was stolen from a player at Euston Station in London.³ The instrument was valued at £1.2 million, the bow at £62,000. Imagine carrying something that valuable to work every day.)

      How could you possibly tell one violinist from another? Actually it’s simpler than you’d think and, like most things in music, practice makes perfect. First and foremost each violinist has a different personality, and that comes through clearly in the case of violin gods and goddesses such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Jascha Heifetz or Itzhak Perlman. In addition to this the violin’s sound is influenced by a number of physical factors: the type and quality of wood, the quality of the bow, the use of either metal or gut strings, the varnish used and tiny shifts in design from maker to maker. Spectrograph analysis reveals that each individual violin has an audio fingerprint unique to that instrument. The perception of these differences may be very subtle and only noticeable by professionals used to listening to violins all day long. But with practice it becomes possible to tell Maxim Vengerov from Nigel Kennedy with your eyes closed. I’m still practising.

      I can’t do justice to the difference between players but to my inexpert ear Anne-Sophie Mutter has a tone that gleams but then so does she when she steps on to the stage, Vengerov’s playing is smoother and darker, like well-matured single malt whisky, whereas Nikolaj Znaider plays in a lyrical way that sounds almost like a singer. This is of course a waste of prose – you need to hear them to appreciate the difference. A great violinist makes us listen by varying the tone that their instrument makes; application of more pressure, vibrating their arm to create vibrato and the amount of attack with which they begin a note can alter the tonal colour. This is why it’s worth checking out the same piece played by different players until you find the one that compels you to listen.

      The difference between a good violin and a top-class violin is in the resonance. Even a child’s starter violin has strings that vibrate when a bow is drawn across them which cause vibrations in the body of the violin. But a top-level violin creates more vibration and a greater range of colours. This means that a Stradivarius (the most expensive and famous violin) will make a sound that hits the ear in a more fulsome way than a cheaper and less resonant version. You can plot this resonance on a graph and prove its superiority scientifically, but the best judge is your ear, which in the presence of a live performance is able to ‘feel’ the difference in sound.

      You may well be thinking this is like those blindfold tests where TV wine connoisseurs are hoodwinked into admiring cheap plonk and rubbishing a Château Mouton Rothschild 2005 vintage (no, I’ve never tasted wine that good), but honestly, there is a huge difference in the quality of sound that I believe you would be able to notice in a test. A cheap student-level violin has an abrasive, nasal quality and doesn’t sound even throughout its range, whereas a truly great instrument has depth of colour, an even tone from top to bottom and, like a person with a fascinating speaking voice, the violin seems to have personality. There is a rich, creamy quality to some violins that is a million miles – and probably a million pounds – from the scratchings of a child practising on their first instrument. You’d know the difference; trust me.

      HARMONIC PENGUINS AND THE MUSIC OF BALI

      While humans are fairly adept at recognising each other through the timbre of our voices, we also have the assistance of other markers, such as snazzy dressing, distinctive noses and receding hairlines. Pity the poor penguin in an Antarctic blizzard who must recognise his mate by the timbre of her squawks. In fact they do this extremely effectively by making an extraordinary two-tone sound that varies from penguin to penguin.⁴ I know it’s unbelievable but a penguin (unlike a human being) can make two sounds at once which are very slightly out of tune with each other. This ‘out-of-tune-ness’ creates what musicians call ‘beats’ (not to be confused with drumbeats which are entirely separate from this definition of ‘beats’). Because in Western music we aim to eliminate music with ‘beats’, it’s actually very difficult to explain, although there is the example of honky-tonk pianos.

      A honky-tonk piano is created by de-tuning the three strings which are hit every time a note is played. In a normal piano these are tuned to sound as one note. A discrepancy in tuning between the different strings creates a sort of ghastly wobbly and out-of-tune noise. The effect on the British ear

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