In their introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Timbre, Emily Dolan and Alexander Rehding recognize that “timbre’s slippery existence is lodged in the ‘in-between’” (Dolan and Rehding 2021: 8). Later chapters of that collection acknowledge that analyses of the “paradox of timbre” (Fales 2002) traditionally approach that “in-between”-ness from either side of a perceived binary: the nominative (Villegas Vélez 2021) and materialist (van Elferen 2021) approach originates in organology and prioritizes sound-source recognition, while empirical and idealist perspectives attend to timbre first as a perceptual phenomenon. Both are necessary—sound both is (ontology) and is heard (epistemology)—leaving timbre studies locked in an ideological embrace.

I propose a third approach to the timbral paradox: sound is made. Specifically, in this paper I (re)frame Adolphe Sax’s instrumental improvements and inventions as resulting from an iterative practice that centered timbre. By doing so, I foreground the role of the instrumentalist—anyone whose practice involves instruments—as mediator between composer and listener; if timbre is a medium, as Dolan and Rehding propose (2021: 8), those who serve as conduits for sound must be heard.

I trace three correlated paths through Sax’s life in order to understand his work as inherently timbral. First, I consider Sax’s own writings as they appeared in his patents as well as for the public. I then situate Sax among his timbrally-minded contemporaries; Jean-Georges Kastner and Hector Berlioz, for instance, were close friends of Sax and champions of his instruments. Finally, drawing on methodologies from the history of science (Rheinberger 1997; Baird 2004) and critical organology (Tresch and Dolan 2013), I read Sax’s oeuvre of musical instruments as reflective of his ideologies about music and sound.

This reading of Sax as a practitioner of timbre affords a new perspective on how an understanding of timbre emerges out of an iterative practice. Here, I suggest a variation on timbre as techne (see Rehding 2021) akin to “knowing-through,” building on Daphne Leong’s ways of knowing (2019). By recognizing that sound is made by instrumentalists and curated through their practice(s), I bring timbre studies into contact with both instrument manufacturing and performance and analysis.

In March 2012, Kaija Saariaho and flutist Camilla Hoitenga visited Houston’s Rothko Chapel, where fourteen late monochrome canvases surround visitors in a dim, tenebrous environment. This visit became a formative inspiration for Saariaho’s Sombre (2012), commissioned for the Da Camera ensemble, in which she translates the chapel’s spatiovisual conditions—its proportions, lighting, and subtle chromatic gradations—into timbre, texture, and form.

Drawing on archival materials, interviews with Hoitenga, and conceptual metaphor theory, this paper shows how Saariaho leveraged multimodal metaphors about timbre at several stages of Sombre’s compositional process. I outline three primary relationships: a spatial analogy between the design of the Rothko Chapel and the formal structure of Sombre; a luminescent metaphor linking the “darkness” of Rothko’s paintings to the bass flute’s extended techniques; and a coloristic metaphor between Rothko’s color field technique and the timbral blends of the bass flute with other instruments in the ensemble.

Building on Lawrence Zbikowski’s (2017, 2020) account of musical analogy as cross-domain relational mapping, I first examine how Saariaho aligns the chapel’s architectural organization with a three-part formal plan, inviting listeners to hear the work’s temporal unfolding as analogous to spatial movement through the chapel. I then turn to “darkness” as a guiding conceptual metaphor for timbre (Wallmark 2018, 2022; Saitis and Weinzierl 2019). Saariaho’s instrumentation choices and the bass flute’s extended techniques—developed collaboratively with Hoitenga through an improvisatory practice—produce a rich yet restrained timbral palette that mirrors the visual qualities of Rothko’s paintings. Finally, I implement a coloristic metaphor as an analytical heuristic for Saariaho’s orchestration, comparing Rothko’s subtle color gradations to the timbral “sonic bridges” that blend bass flute sounds with those of the ensemble (Oinas 2023).

By foregrounding metaphor and analogy as both compositional strategies and analytical tools, this paper demonstrates how Saariaho’s synaesthetic imagination shaped her translation of space, light, and color into sound, and contributes to broader conversations about metaphor, timbre, and intermedia aesthetics.

The genre-bending “cave music” of the three-piece band Moon Hooch (comprised of two saxophonists and a drummer) has repeatedly been described as sounding and feeling like a sort of non-electronic, more “natural” EDM. In this paper, I argue that this sound and feeling can be directly attributed to Moon Hooch’s relationship with and employment of certain acoustic properties of the saxophone itself, and that fostering an understanding of the saxophone as a “compositional instrument” (as described by De Souza) can provide unique insight into Moon Hooch’s musical vocabulary. All but one of the tracks on Moon Hooch’s self-titled first album (2013) prominently feature the lowest note playable on most saxophones, including Moon Hooch’s (written as B♭3). I suggest that the sound and feeling of B♭3—the richest, fullest, and most visceral note playable on the saxophone—directly shaped the group’s compositional decisions regarding form, key schemes, and bassline structure across their first album.