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Tone-color melody — a melody distributed across different instruments, so that the timbre changes with each note or group of notes.
Schoenberg coined this term for the technique of distributing a melody across instruments so that color, not pitch, becomes the primary dimension. Each instrument plays just one or two notes before handing off. Use it for kaleidoscopic, pointillistic textures.
Webern's orchestration of Bach's Ricercar from "The Musical Offering" — the six-voice fugue is recolored with constantly changing orchestral timbres.
Klangfarbenmelodie is one of 1760 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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