Michel Bernays - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Michel Bernays
Timbre is an essential expressive feature in piano performance. Concert pianists use a vast palet... more Timbre is an essential expressive feature in piano performance. Concert pianists use a vast palette of timbral nuances to color their performances at the microstructural level. Although timbre is generally envisioned in the pianistic community as an abstract concept carried through an imaged vocabulary, performers may share some common strategies of timbral expression in piano performance. Yet there may remain further leeway for idiosyncratic processes in the production of piano timbre nuances. In this study, we examined the patterns of timbral expression in performances by four expert pianists. Each pianist performed four short pieces, each with five different timbral intentions (bright, dark, dry, round, and velvety). The performances were recorded with the high-accuracy Bösendorfer CEUS system. Fine-grained performance features of dynamics, touch, articulation and pedaling were extracted. Reduced PCA performance spaces and descriptive performance portraits confirmed that pianists exhibited unique, specific profiles for different timbral intentions, derived from underlying traits of general individuality, while sharing some broad commonalities of dynamics and articulation for each timbral intention. These results confirm that pianists' abstract notions of timbre correspond to reliable patterns of performance technique. Furthermore, these effects suggest that pianists can express individual styles while complying with specific timbral intentions.
We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a MATLAB toolbox for exploring the most subtle... more We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a
MATLAB toolbox for exploring the most subtle features
of piano touch and gesture. From high-sample-rate, highprecision
precision key, hammer and pedal tracking data
about a performance gathered thanks to the Bösendorfer
grand piano-embedded CEUS digital recording system,
the toolbox main functions can extract exhaustive features
detailing the pianist’s touch as a thorough account of nuances
in articulation, timing, dynamics, attack and pedalling.
Each performance and gestural control thereof is
thus described over each of its notes and chords. By comparing
several performances, it is possible to characterize
the gestural control of expression in piano performance, as
the correlations among piano touch features towards one
examined expressive parameter. The analytic functions
in the toolbox — with piano touch feature visualization
and comparison, chords and notes selection tools, scoreperformance
matching and advanced, automated statistical
analyses and visualization thereof — allow for rigorous,
quantitative exploration of expressive performance
and its gestural control, which here is especially applied
towards investigating the use of timbre as expressive device
in piano performance. With these tools, we thus intend
to build a gestural mapping of piano timbre.
Proceedings of the 10th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC), edited by R. Bresin. Stockholm, Sweden: KTH Royal Institute of Technology., 2013
Timbre is an essential expressive parameter in piano performance. Advanced-level pianists have in... more Timbre is an essential expressive parameter in piano performance. Advanced-level pianists have integrated the palette of timbres at their artistic disposal as abstract concepts and multimodal images. A correspondingly imaged vocabulary composed of various adjectival descriptors is used in discussing and designating precise timbral nuances. However, the actual means of production and control of timbral nuances at the piano are not always explicitly expressed. This study explores the precise performance parameters used in producing different timbral nuances. For this aim, four short pieces were composed. Each was performed by four pianists, who highlighted five timbral nuances most representative of the piano timbre-describing vocabulary: dry, bright, round, velvety and dark. The performances were recorded with the Bösendorfer CEUS system, a high-quality piano equipped with high-accuracy sensors and an embedded computer. Fine-grained performance features were extracted from the data collected. The features that significantly differed between different-timbre performances were identified. The performance space resulting from a principal component analysis revealed an average organization of timbral nuances along a circular arc. Thirteen essential, timbre-discriminating performance features were selected. Detailed descriptions were thus obtained for each timbral nuance, according to the fine characteristics of their production and control in piano performance.
Proceedings of Journées d’Informatique Musicale (JIM2012), Gestes, Virtuosité et Nouveaux Medias, edited by T. Dutoit, T. Todoroff, and N. d’Alessandro. Mons, Belgium: UMONS/numediart, 5–64., 2012
ABSTRACT We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a MATLAB toolbox for exploring the mos... more ABSTRACT We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a MATLAB toolbox for exploring the most subtle features of piano touch and gesture. From high-sample-rate, highprecision precision key, hammer and pedal tracking data about a performance gathered thanks to the Bösendorfer grand piano-embedded CEUS digital recording system, the toolbox main functions can extract exhaustive features detailing the pianist's touch as a thorough account of nuances in articulation, timing, dynamics, attack and pedalling.
Recherche en éducation musicale, 29:7–27., 2012
L’interprétation au piano, dans toute sa richesse expressive, conjugue facultés techniques et int... more L’interprétation au piano, dans toute sa richesse expressive, conjugue facultés techniques et intentions artistiques. Ces dernières se manifestent notamment dans l'affection du timbre, composante musicale éthérée mais indéniable et manifeste sur un instrument au son aussi riche que le piano. Les traités et autres écrits pianistiques abordent empiriquement la question du timbre. Sa nature est difficile à établir précisément. Elle peut être associée directement à l’instrument, dont les caractéristiques intrinsèques affectent le son de manière unique. Mais au-delà, le pianiste, par son geste et son toucher, possède l’outil de génération du timbre. L’expression du timbre trouve son origine dans la conception mentale, le sens musical, la « bonne oreille » et les images exprimables en métaphores par le professeur de piano. Ce processus permet alors au pianiste de canaliser le sens timbral invoqué par l’œuvre interprétée et l’exprimer conformément aux intentions musicales du compositeur, tout en y appliquant sa propre vision esthétique.
Proceedings of the In- ternational Symposium on Performance Science (ISPS2011), Toronto, ON, edited by A. Williamon, D. Edwards, and L. Bartel. Utrecht, Netherlands: European Association of Conservatoires (AEC), 299–304., 2011
High-level pianists refer to and can identify nuances in timbre by way of a wide and rich vocabul... more High-level pianists refer to and can identify nuances in timbre by way of a wide and rich vocabulary, whose abstract, imaged, and metaphoric terms acutely designate a variety of sounds. This timbre-describing lexicon is hereby studied quantitatively. The semantic proximity between pairs taken among 14 common piano timbre descriptors was evaluated in questionnaires distributed to 17 pianists. Ratings were analyzed with multidimensional scaling algorithms, yielding a four-dimensional space representing the semantic proximity between descriptors. Using cluster analyses, five main subsets were identified, within which the most familiar terms were selected. We thus obtained five descriptors which optimally describe the whole semantic space for the group of pianists taking part in this study: bright, dry, dark, round, and velvety.
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC11). Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 290–295., 2010
Timbre is a key to musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance, discussed amongst pro... more Timbre is a key to musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance, discussed amongst professionals through an extensive, yet very abstract and emotional, vocabulary. This study first aims to determine the degree of consensus of this vocabulary among pianists. Furthermore, timbre’s quantitative and functional characteristics are yet to be explored. We thus intend to identify timbre correlates in a performer’s gesture on the keyboard. A professional pianist was asked to play three short pieces, with eight different timbres as successive instructions to colour the performances. The audio recordings were used as stimuli for a timbre identification task, in which 17 other pianists had to label the timbre with the descriptor they deemed most fitting. The results, more than three times above chance, were significantly improved by taking into account the semantic proximity ratings between descriptors. This is thus indicative of a semantic consistency in the perception and description of piano timbre. Then, from key position and hammer velocity data collected in the performances through the computer-controlled recording grand piano Bösendorfer CEUS, we computed numerous gesture features as cues of dynamics, articulation, synchronism, key touch and attack and pedal use, among which several were significantly correlated with the timbre performed. This is a step towards a comprehensive gestural mapping of piano timbre that could yield significant improvements in piano pedagogy and software modelization.
La musique et ses instruments, edited by M. Castellengo and H. Genevois. Paris, France: Delatour., 2012
Le geste instrumental, vecteur de créativité pour l'interprète d'une composition, constitue une p... more Le geste instrumental, vecteur de créativité pour l'interprète d'une composition, constitue une préoccupation essentielle en pédagogie musicale avancée. Les pianistes abordent le contrôle gestuel du timbre de façon empirique, dans leur pratique régulière, et à travers méthodes pédagogiques et traités, où certains maîtres du XX e siècle comme Matthay [26], Neuhaus [28] et Kochevitski [23], ont souligné l'importance du geste dans le développement du « son » propre au pianiste. Le timbre s'avère ainsi un paramètre significatif pour les grands pianistes, qui ont su développer un contrôle très pointu de l'instrument grâce à leur dextérité exceptionnelle, ainsi qu'une sensibilité auditive accrue et formée aux plus subtiles variations. Cette perception fine du timbre se manifeste par un vocabulaire très détaillé décrivant une vaste palette de nuances [11] : le timbre est qualifié de rond, brillant, velouté,… [8]. Mais ces termes restent équivoques et conscrits par leur contexte de diffusion, de professeur à élève, oralement, en acquisition par essais et erreurs. Un timbre donné ne se retrouve alors pas toujours associé consciemment au geste qui le génère.
Actes du CIM09, Paris, France.., 2009
AIMS This study attempts to determine the parameters of instrumental gesture, acoustical and perc... more AIMS This study attempts to determine the parameters of instrumental gesture, acoustical and perceptive correlates and verbal description that relate to timbre in pianistic performance, as a performer-controlled, and not instrumentbound, entity. In detail, we wish to determine whether the timbre-describing vocabulary, its perceptual meaning and the sound-producing gesture form a consensus among the pianists' community, through the analysis of relations between timbre, articulation et dynamic register.
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2008
Musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance relies heavily on timbre and performers c... more Musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance relies heavily on timbre and performers call upon a vast vocabulary to describe the nature of their sound; examples of adjectives include velvety, metallic, bright, round and dark. The present study aims to determine whether this vocabulary, its perceptual meaning and the gesture applied to obtain the sounds it describes, stand as consensual among pianists. The relations between timbre, articulation, register and dynamics are also examined. Nearly 100 verbal descriptors were ...
Timbre is an essential expressive feature in piano performance. Concert pianists use a vast palet... more Timbre is an essential expressive feature in piano performance. Concert pianists use a vast palette of timbral nuances to color their performances at the microstructural level. Although timbre is generally envisioned in the pianistic community as an abstract concept carried through an imaged vocabulary, performers may share some common strategies of timbral expression in piano performance. Yet there may remain further leeway for idiosyncratic processes in the production of piano timbre nuances. In this study, we examined the patterns of timbral expression in performances by four expert pianists. Each pianist performed four short pieces, each with five different timbral intentions (bright, dark, dry, round, and velvety). The performances were recorded with the high-accuracy Bösendorfer CEUS system. Fine-grained performance features of dynamics, touch, articulation and pedaling were extracted. Reduced PCA performance spaces and descriptive performance portraits confirmed that pianists exhibited unique, specific profiles for different timbral intentions, derived from underlying traits of general individuality, while sharing some broad commonalities of dynamics and articulation for each timbral intention. These results confirm that pianists' abstract notions of timbre correspond to reliable patterns of performance technique. Furthermore, these effects suggest that pianists can express individual styles while complying with specific timbral intentions.
We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a MATLAB toolbox for exploring the most subtle... more We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a
MATLAB toolbox for exploring the most subtle features
of piano touch and gesture. From high-sample-rate, highprecision
precision key, hammer and pedal tracking data
about a performance gathered thanks to the Bösendorfer
grand piano-embedded CEUS digital recording system,
the toolbox main functions can extract exhaustive features
detailing the pianist’s touch as a thorough account of nuances
in articulation, timing, dynamics, attack and pedalling.
Each performance and gestural control thereof is
thus described over each of its notes and chords. By comparing
several performances, it is possible to characterize
the gestural control of expression in piano performance, as
the correlations among piano touch features towards one
examined expressive parameter. The analytic functions
in the toolbox — with piano touch feature visualization
and comparison, chords and notes selection tools, scoreperformance
matching and advanced, automated statistical
analyses and visualization thereof — allow for rigorous,
quantitative exploration of expressive performance
and its gestural control, which here is especially applied
towards investigating the use of timbre as expressive device
in piano performance. With these tools, we thus intend
to build a gestural mapping of piano timbre.
Proceedings of the 10th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC), edited by R. Bresin. Stockholm, Sweden: KTH Royal Institute of Technology., 2013
Timbre is an essential expressive parameter in piano performance. Advanced-level pianists have in... more Timbre is an essential expressive parameter in piano performance. Advanced-level pianists have integrated the palette of timbres at their artistic disposal as abstract concepts and multimodal images. A correspondingly imaged vocabulary composed of various adjectival descriptors is used in discussing and designating precise timbral nuances. However, the actual means of production and control of timbral nuances at the piano are not always explicitly expressed. This study explores the precise performance parameters used in producing different timbral nuances. For this aim, four short pieces were composed. Each was performed by four pianists, who highlighted five timbral nuances most representative of the piano timbre-describing vocabulary: dry, bright, round, velvety and dark. The performances were recorded with the Bösendorfer CEUS system, a high-quality piano equipped with high-accuracy sensors and an embedded computer. Fine-grained performance features were extracted from the data collected. The features that significantly differed between different-timbre performances were identified. The performance space resulting from a principal component analysis revealed an average organization of timbral nuances along a circular arc. Thirteen essential, timbre-discriminating performance features were selected. Detailed descriptions were thus obtained for each timbral nuance, according to the fine characteristics of their production and control in piano performance.
Proceedings of Journées d’Informatique Musicale (JIM2012), Gestes, Virtuosité et Nouveaux Medias, edited by T. Dutoit, T. Todoroff, and N. d’Alessandro. Mons, Belgium: UMONS/numediart, 5–64., 2012
ABSTRACT We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a MATLAB toolbox for exploring the mos... more ABSTRACT We hereby present the analytic tools developed as a MATLAB toolbox for exploring the most subtle features of piano touch and gesture. From high-sample-rate, highprecision precision key, hammer and pedal tracking data about a performance gathered thanks to the Bösendorfer grand piano-embedded CEUS digital recording system, the toolbox main functions can extract exhaustive features detailing the pianist's touch as a thorough account of nuances in articulation, timing, dynamics, attack and pedalling.
Recherche en éducation musicale, 29:7–27., 2012
L’interprétation au piano, dans toute sa richesse expressive, conjugue facultés techniques et int... more L’interprétation au piano, dans toute sa richesse expressive, conjugue facultés techniques et intentions artistiques. Ces dernières se manifestent notamment dans l'affection du timbre, composante musicale éthérée mais indéniable et manifeste sur un instrument au son aussi riche que le piano. Les traités et autres écrits pianistiques abordent empiriquement la question du timbre. Sa nature est difficile à établir précisément. Elle peut être associée directement à l’instrument, dont les caractéristiques intrinsèques affectent le son de manière unique. Mais au-delà, le pianiste, par son geste et son toucher, possède l’outil de génération du timbre. L’expression du timbre trouve son origine dans la conception mentale, le sens musical, la « bonne oreille » et les images exprimables en métaphores par le professeur de piano. Ce processus permet alors au pianiste de canaliser le sens timbral invoqué par l’œuvre interprétée et l’exprimer conformément aux intentions musicales du compositeur, tout en y appliquant sa propre vision esthétique.
Proceedings of the In- ternational Symposium on Performance Science (ISPS2011), Toronto, ON, edited by A. Williamon, D. Edwards, and L. Bartel. Utrecht, Netherlands: European Association of Conservatoires (AEC), 299–304., 2011
High-level pianists refer to and can identify nuances in timbre by way of a wide and rich vocabul... more High-level pianists refer to and can identify nuances in timbre by way of a wide and rich vocabulary, whose abstract, imaged, and metaphoric terms acutely designate a variety of sounds. This timbre-describing lexicon is hereby studied quantitatively. The semantic proximity between pairs taken among 14 common piano timbre descriptors was evaluated in questionnaires distributed to 17 pianists. Ratings were analyzed with multidimensional scaling algorithms, yielding a four-dimensional space representing the semantic proximity between descriptors. Using cluster analyses, five main subsets were identified, within which the most familiar terms were selected. We thus obtained five descriptors which optimally describe the whole semantic space for the group of pianists taking part in this study: bright, dry, dark, round, and velvety.
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC11). Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 290–295., 2010
Timbre is a key to musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance, discussed amongst pro... more Timbre is a key to musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance, discussed amongst professionals through an extensive, yet very abstract and emotional, vocabulary. This study first aims to determine the degree of consensus of this vocabulary among pianists. Furthermore, timbre’s quantitative and functional characteristics are yet to be explored. We thus intend to identify timbre correlates in a performer’s gesture on the keyboard. A professional pianist was asked to play three short pieces, with eight different timbres as successive instructions to colour the performances. The audio recordings were used as stimuli for a timbre identification task, in which 17 other pianists had to label the timbre with the descriptor they deemed most fitting. The results, more than three times above chance, were significantly improved by taking into account the semantic proximity ratings between descriptors. This is thus indicative of a semantic consistency in the perception and description of piano timbre. Then, from key position and hammer velocity data collected in the performances through the computer-controlled recording grand piano Bösendorfer CEUS, we computed numerous gesture features as cues of dynamics, articulation, synchronism, key touch and attack and pedal use, among which several were significantly correlated with the timbre performed. This is a step towards a comprehensive gestural mapping of piano timbre that could yield significant improvements in piano pedagogy and software modelization.
La musique et ses instruments, edited by M. Castellengo and H. Genevois. Paris, France: Delatour., 2012
Le geste instrumental, vecteur de créativité pour l'interprète d'une composition, constitue une p... more Le geste instrumental, vecteur de créativité pour l'interprète d'une composition, constitue une préoccupation essentielle en pédagogie musicale avancée. Les pianistes abordent le contrôle gestuel du timbre de façon empirique, dans leur pratique régulière, et à travers méthodes pédagogiques et traités, où certains maîtres du XX e siècle comme Matthay [26], Neuhaus [28] et Kochevitski [23], ont souligné l'importance du geste dans le développement du « son » propre au pianiste. Le timbre s'avère ainsi un paramètre significatif pour les grands pianistes, qui ont su développer un contrôle très pointu de l'instrument grâce à leur dextérité exceptionnelle, ainsi qu'une sensibilité auditive accrue et formée aux plus subtiles variations. Cette perception fine du timbre se manifeste par un vocabulaire très détaillé décrivant une vaste palette de nuances [11] : le timbre est qualifié de rond, brillant, velouté,… [8]. Mais ces termes restent équivoques et conscrits par leur contexte de diffusion, de professeur à élève, oralement, en acquisition par essais et erreurs. Un timbre donné ne se retrouve alors pas toujours associé consciemment au geste qui le génère.
Actes du CIM09, Paris, France.., 2009
AIMS This study attempts to determine the parameters of instrumental gesture, acoustical and perc... more AIMS This study attempts to determine the parameters of instrumental gesture, acoustical and perceptive correlates and verbal description that relate to timbre in pianistic performance, as a performer-controlled, and not instrumentbound, entity. In detail, we wish to determine whether the timbre-describing vocabulary, its perceptual meaning and the sound-producing gesture form a consensus among the pianists' community, through the analysis of relations between timbre, articulation et dynamic register.
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2008
Musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance relies heavily on timbre and performers c... more Musical expressivity in virtuosic pianistic performance relies heavily on timbre and performers call upon a vast vocabulary to describe the nature of their sound; examples of adjectives include velvety, metallic, bright, round and dark. The present study aims to determine whether this vocabulary, its perceptual meaning and the gesture applied to obtain the sounds it describes, stand as consensual among pianists. The relations between timbre, articulation, register and dynamics are also examined. Nearly 100 verbal descriptors were ...