At the end of the 20th century, contemporary music overthrew the hegemony of the pitch parameter. The “post-Darmstadt” aesthetic has extended its thinking up to the level of timbre. However, this mutation occurred in a diverted way, without breaking the tight link between the note and the craft of classical instruments, to settle since the 1980s an actual instrumental notation of the complex sound. Hence, what does the pitch become as a rationalizing parameter of sound, and how does modernism evolve in its relationship to the material?This is all about building a genealogy of structuring functions, that pitch has acquired through a cumulative process of rationalizing the sound. The techniques of instrumental notation for complex sounds are then defined by timbral and harmonic densities, which bring down the concept of classical pitch. This pseudomorphosis of pitch eventually leads us to an aesthetical and philosophical question: going beyond the historical criterion of the material.