The STMS laboratory is hosting the fourth session of the Timbre and Orchestration Seminar, co-organised with the IReMUS laboratory.
Participation is possible via videoconference:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86516784719?pwd=rp1L109ZiEpufK4oExAFYYTCpPyTgp.1
ID de réunion: 865 1678 4719 - Password: 856098
General presentation of the seminar
Studies on timbre and orchestration, which today constitute a relatively broad field of investigation, raise numerous and sometimes difficult research questions, but ones that are nonetheless essential for understanding the musical phenomenon in all its complexity. Covering a wide variety of musical repertoires, both in terms of historical periods and musical traditions, the question of timbre and orchestration also has a strong interdisciplinary dimension, at the crossroads of musicology, musical analysis and theory, psychology, acoustics, and even organology, not to mention its strong link with musical practice and creation. The aim of the “Timbre and Orchestration” seminar is to provide a forum for exchange and sharing based on the presentation of completed or ongoing work and projects, with a view to stimulating research and discussion in this rapidly expanding field. It is open to all interested researchers and musicians (including postdoctoral fellows, as well as Master's and PhD students).
Program
14h00 : Introduction by Nathalie Hérold, Jean-Jacques Velly and Patrick Susini
14h10 : Patrick Susini (IRCAM/STMS), “What do we hear when we listen to sounds? The words to describe them”
To explore our perception of sound, Michel Chion starts from a simple idea: “we hear as we speak” (Le Promeneur Écoutant, 1993, p. 11). Observation of speech shows that there are different strategies for describing sounds. The criteria depend on the expertise of the listeners as well as their ability to identify sounds. Other means of communication are naturally used, such as gestural and vocal imitations, which allow us to convey the salient features of sounds. However, non-expert listeners rarely talk spontaneously about the characteristics of sounds, mainly because they focus on other aspects associated with sound rather than on the sound itself. It is difficult to talk about the characteristics of sounds because we lack sound lexicons to facilitate communication about sounds. There is also a lack of shared definitions of words, as well as a lack of good sound examples to experiment with the relationship between words and sounds. With the SpeaK project, we offer a collaborative web platform for organizing, presenting, and sharing sound lexicons that combine words, definitions, and sound examples. The words4sounds lexicon is the first sound lexicon available on SpeaK. It provides a list of words frequently used to describe the perceived characteristics of sounds.
14h50 : Victor Rosi (University College London), “Quadrangulation: A semantically informed composition”
Quadrangulation is a musical work that aims to present four metaphorical attributes of timbre to an audience: brightness, warmth, roundness, and roughness. The piece is organized around the presentation of prototypical forms of these attributes, as well as the dynamic relationships between them. In this presentation, I will review the process of designing the work composed by Bertrand Plé, which is based on semantic definitions and acoustic portraits derived from interviews and perceptual evaluations I conducted with experts. I will then discuss the structure of the piece as conceived by the composer, before exploring experimental and educational perspectives for Quadrangulation.
15h30 : Break
16h00 : Joséphine Calandra (Université de Picardie Jules Verne/MIS), “Polyphonic analysis for orchestration through Cognitive Algorithms”
The Cognitive Algorithm builds on the semiological analysis and the cognitive musicology, formalized by Otto Laske, which aims to explore the relationships between mental processes related to music and the musical experience. This algorithm enables the multi-scale representation of a model of cognition during music listening. By automating it, we seek to better understand the music listening phenomena, particularly the classification, segmentation and attention phenomena over time. We are also interested in visualizing the representation obtained, called multi-scale formal diagram. We thus seek to analyze, based on a polyphonic modeling of the algorithm, how such a representation allows for a better understanding of the timbral elements that constitute the orchestration of a work from a perceptual point of view.
16h40 : General discussion and conclusion
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Related Activities
ACTOR (Analysis, Creation and Teaching of Orchestration, dir. Stephen McAdams, 2018-2025)
GRIMOIRE (Groupe de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur la Musique d’Orchestre, l’Instrumentation et le Répertoire orchestral en Europe, dir. Jean-Jacques Velly)
Nathalie Hérold, “Analyser le timbre, analyser l'orchestration”, Master Seminar, Sorbonne University, 2025-2026
Institutional Support
IReMus (Institut de recherche en Musicologie) - Équipe 3 : Langages musicaux
STMS (Sciences et Technologies de la Musique et du Son) - Équipe Perception et design sonores (for session 4)
Organizing Committeee
Nathalie Hérold (Sorbonne Université/IReMus)
Jean-Jacques Velly (Sorbonne Université/IReMus)
with the collaboration of Patrick Susini (IRCAM/STMS) for session 4