Klangfarbenmelodie (German for "sound-color melody") is a
musical technique that involves splitting a musical line or
melody between several
instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument (or set of instruments), thereby adding color (
timbre) and
texture to the melodic line. The technique is sometimes compared to "
pointillism",[1] a
neo-impressionist painting technique.
This may be compared with Bach's open score of the subject and the traditional homogeneous timbre used in arrangements:
Schoenberg himself employed the technique in his 1928 orchestration of the "St. Anne" organ Prelude BWV 552 from J. S. Bach's Clavier-Übung III.
Malcolm MacDonald says of this arrangement, "The gamut of colour—including harp, celesta and glockenspiel, six clarinets of various sizes, and a very agile bass tuba is brilliantly kaleidoscopic. The instrumentation has a serious purpose, however: it emphasizes structural divisions ... and, above all, brings out the individual contrapuntal lines."[3] A sequence of constantly changing timbres may be clearly heard in Schoenberg's rendering of the following passage:
Notable examples of such voice distribution that preceded the use of the term may be found in music of the 18th and 19th centuries.
John Eliot Gardiner says of the orchestral opening of
J. S. Bach's Cantata Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, BWV 39, "Bach sets out almost tentatively in an introductory sinfonia with repeated quavers tossed from paired recorders to paired oboes to the strings and back over stiffly disjointed quavers in the continuo.":[4]
In
Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, ("
Eroica"), first movement, according to
George Grove, we hear "a succession of phrases of three notes, repeated by different instruments one after another":[5]
Similarly, in the fourth movement of
Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, ("March to the Scaffold"), the melody first appears as a descending scale played on 'cellos and basses:
Later, this melodic line is passed between the strings and the winds several times:
There are further instances in the works of
Claude Debussy:
Regarding the latter, Samson writes: "To a marked degree the music of Debussy elevates timbre to an unprecedented structural status; already in Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune the color of
flute and
harp functions referentially."[6]
In the 1950s, the concept inspired a number of European composers including
Karlheinz Stockhausen to attempt systematization of timbre along
serial lines, especially in
electronic music.[7]
During the late 20th century, musicians within the progressive rock genre experimented with using this compositional technique, a notable example being
Gentle Giant. [citation needed]
^Schoenberg 1966, p. 503: Am Klang werden drei Eigenschaften erkannt: seine Höhe, Farbe und Stärke. [...] Die Bewertung der Klangfarbe, der zweiten Dimension des Tons, befindet sich also in einem noch viel unbebautern, ungeordetern Zustand [...]. Ist es nun möglich, aus Klangfarben, die sich der Höhen nach unterscheiden, Gebilde entstehen zu lassen, die wir Melodien nennen, Folgen, deren Zusammenhang eine gedankenänliche Wirkung hervorruft, dann muss es auch möglich sein, aus den Klangfarben der anderen Dimension, aus dem, was wir schlechtweg Klangfarben nennen, solche Folgen herzustellen, deren Beziehung untereinander mit einer Art Logik wirkt, ganz äquivalent jener Logik, die uns bei der Melodie der Klanghöhen genügt. ("In a musical sound (Klang) three characteristics are recognized: its pitch, color [timbre], and volume. [...] The evaluation of tone color (Klangfarbe), the second dimension of tone, is thus in a still much less cultivated, much less organized state [...]. Now, if it is possible to create patterns out of tone colors that are differentiated according to pitch, patterns we call 'melodies', progressions, whose coherence (Zusammenhang) evokes an effect analogous to thought processes, then it must also be possible to make such progressions out of the tone colors of the other dimension, out of that which we call simply 'tone color', progressions whose relations with one another work with a kind of logic entirely equivalent to that logic which satisfies us in the melody of pitches." English translation by Roy E. Carter in
Schoenberg 1978, p. 421.)