In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note which distinguishes different types of musical instrument. See also: formant of speech, singing, and musical instruments. This is why, with a little practice, you can pick out the saxophone from the trumpet in a jazz group or the flute from the violin in an orchestra, even if they are playing notes at the same pitch and amplitude. Timbre has been called the psychoacoustician's waste-basket as it can include so many factors.
Though the phrase tone color is often used as a synonym for timbre, colors of the optical spectrum are not generally explicitly associated with particular sounds. Rather, the sound of an instrument may be described with words like "warm" or "harsh" or other terms, perhaps suggesting that tone color has more in common with the sense of touch than of sight. People who experience synaesthesia, however, may see certain colors when they hear particular instruments.
The physical characteristics of sound which are used in the determination of timbre are spectrum and envelope, but psychoacoustics also plays an important and little-understood part.
Though modulation generally refers to changes of key, any parameter may be modulated, particularly in music of the 20th and 21st century.
Metric modulation (known also as tempo modulation) is the most common, while timbral modulation (gradual changes in tone color), and spatial modulation (changing the location from which sound occurs) are also used.
Modulation may also occur from a single tonality to a polytonality, often by beginning with a duplicated tonic chord and modulating the chords in contrary motion until the desired polytonality is reached.
As a controversial figure, Wagner influenced the musical establishment, such that affinities were aligned with him and the music of the future, or with more conservative trends that reached back to Beethoven.
Wagner's harmonic and timbral idiom was critical for the late romantic efflorescence at the end of the century that led to the so_called end of tonality as it was generally understood in the nineteenth century.
With Wagner, the dominance of the Austro-German tradition in nineteenth-century music became apparent.
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