None of these practices, however, involves the manipulation of harmonics that characterizes the Altai-Sayan traditions.
The players finally picked up their bows for a finale of eerie, glassy harmonics that led to a melancholy chorale.
In its newly melted version (I cannot compare it with the first), "Qohelet" opened with airy, almost colorless, harmonics that gave way to elegiac, thick-flowing melodies.
The timbre of a sound depends on its wave form, which varies with the number of overtones, or harmonics, that are present, their frequencies, and their relative intensities.
Both works make tough coloristic demands; the Kurtag at times has the violin playing ghostly harmonics that make it sound almost like a flute, and the Lutoslawski frequently pulls the player toward brashness.
Enacting theories of acoustics and harmonics that relate as much to physics as to Western composition, his works can sound not just repetitive but almost mechanical to the casual ear.
A musical instrument, unlike a tuning fork, does not produce a pure note but rather an infinitely rich collection of harmonics that make, for example, a clarinet's sound different from a violin's.
The human vocal tract shapes the vibrations of the vocal cords into a set of harmonics that are more intense at some frequencies than others relative to the fundamental note.
They reveal a mastery in the brushwork, a sense of rhythm in composition and a sensitivity to color harmonics that set apart the 80-year-old master on the contemporary art scene.
The new results confirm the existence of higher "harmonics" (in other words, smaller ripples) and show that they have precisely the sizes predicted by inflation.But it is not only the existence of higher harmonics that has physicists singing to themselves.
This is the result both of harmonics that ripple out from the main tone, and from non-voiced elements used to utter consonants, which employ the tongue, teeth, cheeks and lips.
