The Analysis, Creation and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Project and the Schulich School of Music invite you to a lecture about the the Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensemble (CORE) project presented by Professors Stephen McAdams (Music Technology) and Guillaume Bourgogne (Orchestral Conducting) on April 8 at 5:00pm EDT as part of the Research Alive Series.

The Analysis, Creation and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Project and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research is Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) co-host a hybrid (in person/virtual) symposium on orchestration research on Wednesday, November 17, 4:30-6:30pm (EDT). The event includes four presentations on the composer-performer collaboration based on work by Stephen McAdams, Eliot Britton, Keith Hamel, Roger Reynolds, Caroline Traube, Yuval Adler, Robert Hasegawa, Joshua Rosner, Justine Maillard, Lindsey Reymore, and Eliazer Kramer.

Throughout the CORE project, the creative processes of exploration, orchestrational problemsolving, and the realization of new music were recorded, documented, and archived for consideration. This presentation will describe the project’s goals, aims and methodological approaches at the five partner institutions, certain facets of which will be detailed in other presentations.

This paper discusses preliminary analyses of the data collected during the initiation phase in the Fall of 2019. Verbatim extracts from the interviews were manually coded on the basis of a qualitative research method inspired by grounded theory. The analyst assigns a “code” to each verbatim segment, thus attributing a significant evocative attribute to each portion of the verbal data.

Analyzing the Perceptual Effects of Orchestration through the Lens of Auditory Grouping Principles.

To provide a tool for researching the role of auditory grouping effects in orchestration practice and thereby the role of timbre as a structuring force in music, a first-of-its-kind online database was created, and an analysis taxonomy and methodology were established.

Recent developments in the field of computer-aided orchestration have provided interesting approaches for addressing some of the many orchestration challenges, supported by advances in computational capacities and artificial intelligence methods. Nevertheless, harnessing the many sides of this musical art, which involves combining the acoustic properties of a large ensemble of varied instruments, has not yet been achieved.

Timbre has been identified by music perception scholars as an important component in the communication of affect in music. While its function as a carrier of perceptually useful information about sound source mechanics has been established, studies of whether and how it functions as a carrier of information for communicating affect in music are still in their infancy.

Composer Fabien Lévy joins McGill researchers in music theory, composition, and music perception in a symposium co-sponsored by ACTOR (Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration) and CIRMMT Research Axes 3 and 4. Levy, author of Le compositeur, son oreille et ses machines à écrire: Déconstruire les grammatologies du musical pour mieux les composer, will present a morning lecture on “functional orchestration” followed in the afternoon by shorter presentations on aspects of analytical and orchestrational theory applied to the first movement of Franz Schubert’s Eighth Symphony and a hands-on analytical workshop. This workshop is co-sponsored by ACTOR, CIRMMT Research Axes 3 and 4, and the Schulich School of Music’s Composition and Music Technology Areas.

A glance through these proceedings testifies to a rising interest in musical timbre across a multitude of fields, as well as to its under-explored richness, at least until very recently. It also makes evident that timbre is many things to many people and has many functions.

Music psychologist Stephen McAdams talks about the role of perception in orchestration practice. He is joined on stage by conductor Alain Cazes and the full McGill Wind Symphony.