From bells to choirs, different ‘timbres’ ring in the Christmas holiday season

Aidan McGartland and Linglan Zhu for The Conversation

Montreal: Concerts and radio stations at this time of the year are filled with both Christmas and winter holiday music.

It would be impossible to define “Christmas music” beyond the use of specific religious texts or winter narratives, yet many genres of western Christmas and winter holiday music have a “Christmas sound” — whether pop songs, classical works or traditional hymns.

A number of distinctive sounds in western musical traditions often evoke scenes and objects related to Christmas and the winter holiday season — such as sounds of bells, choirs and organs.

From a musical perspective, it is the “timbre” of these sounds — the quality of auditory sensations produced by the tone of a sound wave, carrying significant cultural meanings and evoking emotion and memory — that suggests particular associations and moods. Listening to sounds of Christmas and holiday music is one way to explore the meaning of timbre.

‘Tone colour’ While to music experts timbre is easily discernible, it is notoriously difficult to define. Timbre is a loan word from French meaning “tone colour.” It’s most readily understood as the “colour” or “quality” of a sound.

Hermann von Helmholtz, a prominent 19th-century German physicist, gave one of the earliest definitions of timbre: “The quality of a tone … which distinguishes … a violin from that of a flute or that of a clarinet, or that of the human voice, when all these instruments produce the same note at the same pitch.” Today, modern definitions of timbre tend to directly follow on from Helmholtz. However, such a definition is often criticised for its vagueness. As French composer Philippe Manoury put it: “Timbre is nothing but a name that we give to all those things that cannot be precisely named [for a sound].” Despite the difficulty of fully grasping its nature, there is no doubt that timbre underlies how people understand, appreciate and react to music.

Comparing sound qualities, identifying a source In most discussions about music, timbre is often neglected in favour of other aspects of music such as harmony and rhythm — even though timbre is nevertheless important for composers across genres.

The difficulty in defining timbre precisely need not stop listeners from recognising its ubiquitous presence.

Imagine your favourite tune sung by your favourite singer versus sung by a random amateur. Even if both are perfectly in tune and the rhythms are on time, you would likely be able to identify your favourite singer right away.

In this case, it is the timbre of the voice that allows you to do these seemingly trivial tasks. Timbre is the aspect of sound that allows people to compare sound qualities and identify the sound sources.

The timbre of Christmas One can find a number of distinctive timbres in western musical traditions that evoke scenes and objects related to Christmas and the winter holiday season.

1. Bells Bells are an integral part of the Christmas spirit, and feature beyond music in decorations and imagery. The timbre of bells are typified by a bright, ringing, metallic sound and encompasses both church bells and sleigh bells.

Sleigh bells are commonly used to signify Christmas aurally in pop songs, such as Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” Bells are also frequently used in advertising to aurally signify the winter festive season.

Some carols embed bells into the title, such as “Jingle Bells” and “Carol of the Bells.” “Jingle Bells” began as a popular 19th-century parlour song with a colourful past. In many versions, the Christmas theme is accentuated and vividly evoked by the use of bells to represent sleigh bells, showing how timbre is used to conjure up the image of a snowy winter.

Another example of bells is the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” from Russian composer Tchaikovsky’s 1892 Christmas ballet, The Nutcracker.

The excerpt is typified by the use of a celesta, a keyboard instrument (like a piano) that strikes a series of metal bars, creating a bell-like timbre. The delicate bell-like timbre in the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” reflects the character of the spritely fairies in the Land of the Sweets on Christmas Eve.

2. Choir The second timbre (or really timbres) is the sound of choirs, especially the clarity and high sounds of children’s choirs sometimes associated with carolling.

Choirs are linked to Christmas originally through the singing of Christian hymns, many of which are associated with the birth of Jesus as Messiah.

Carol services are a feature of the Christmas holiday season. One famous example from the United Kingdom, broadcast annually by the BBC and other radio stations, is the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, held at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge.

Many famous Christmas carols originated as hymns, such as “Silent Night,” composed by German composer Franz Xaver Gruber in 1818. Since then, it has been widely recorded and remains one of the most “covered” Christmas classics, ranging from traditional church choirs through to pop covers by Sinéad O’Connor and even Justin Bieber.

Despite being clearly different, each version has essentially the same harmony and rhythm, while the timbre changes. The timbre can either change by: (1) a change in instruments, or (2) the same instruments, but played by different musicians, leading to a subtler, but still significant change. In these different covers, it is timbre that is the biggest variable.

3. Organ Another timbre originating from church music is the rich and voluminous sounds of the pipe organ which is used to play both hymns or solo works that can be Christmas themed.

A particularly notable work for solo organ is a work by French 20th-century composer, Olivier Messiaen, entitled La Nativité du Seigneur (“The Birth of the Lord”). This work narrates the Christmas story from the birth of Jesus to the arrival of the wise men (magi or three kings) through a vast collage of colours, textures and ultimately timbres in Messiaen’s highly expressive setting.

The timbres of bells, choirs and organs resonate at Christmas. Timbre is the colour of sound, and at this time of year, it is part of the colour of Christmas.

Aidan McGartland is a PhD candidate, Music Theory at McGill University and Linglan Zhu is a PhD candidate in Music Technology at McGill University)