• Research

    The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, sp…

    • Research Topics
    • The STMS Lab
    • Research Teams
    • Sound Systems and Signals: Audio/Acoustics, InstruMents
    • Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces
    • Perception and Sound Design
    • Sound Analysis-Synthesis
    • Sound Music Movement Interaction
    • Musical Representations
    • Analysis of Musical Practices
    • Projects
    • Sound Workshop
    • The Musical Body
    • Creative Dynamics
    • Musique/Sciences Collection
  • Creation

    IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

    • Composers & Artists in Studio
    • In Ex Machina
    • Jazz Ex Machina
    • Improvise cum machina 1/2
    • Improvise cum machina 2/2
    • Like Sound, Like Flesh
    • Silent Talks
    • Music-Fictions
    • Tablado
    • Musical creation around Outer Space
    • Campo Abierto
    • Musical creation around Dream Work
    • Biotope
    • EROR
    • IDEA
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 20.21
    • Season 2021.22
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2022
    • ManiFeste festival from 2012 to 2022
    • L’Étincelle, IRCAM’s journal of creation
  • Transmission

    In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

    • 2022.23 Training Courses
    • Max, Max for Live
    • OpenMusic
    • Modalys
    • TS2 and Partiels
    • Sound spatialization
    • From PureData to audio plugins
    • Sensors, Interfaces, and Interactive Machine Learning
    • Other training programs
    • Practical Information
    • Advanced Programs
    • Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music
    • Supersonic Chair
    • Master ATIAM
    • Sound Design Master's Program
    • Music Doctorate
    • AIMove Master
    • School Programs
    • Studios of Creation
    • Mixed-Music
    • Artistic and Cultural Education
    • Career Discovery Visit
    • Art School Reserach and Creation Workshop
    • Images of a Work Collection
    • ManiFeste-2022, the Academy
  • Innovations

    At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

    • The IRCAM Forum
    • Subscribe to the Forum
    • Softwares
    • Ircam Amplify
    • Industrial Applications
    • Industrial Licenses
    • Forum Vertigo
  • IRCAM
  • Careers & Job Offers
  • Calls for applications
  • Newsletter
  • Arrive
  • Boutique
  • Resource Center
  • Magazine
  • Medias
  • login
  • En
  • Fr
  • IRCAM
  • Careers & Job Offers
  • Calls for applications
  • Newsletter
  • Arrive
  • Boutique
  • Resource Center

Fr | En

  • login
  • Research

    The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, sp…

    • Research Topics
    • The STMS Lab
    • Research Teams
    • Sound Systems and Signals: Audio/Acoustics, InstruMents
    • Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces
    • Perception and Sound Design
    • Sound Analysis-Synthesis
    • Sound Music Movement Interaction
    • Musical Representations
    • Analysis of Musical Practices
    • Projects
    • Sound Workshop
    • The Musical Body
    • Creative Dynamics
    • Musique/Sciences Collection
  • Creation

    IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

    • Composers & Artists in Studio
    • In Ex Machina
    • Jazz Ex Machina
    • Improvise cum machina 1/2
    • Improvise cum machina 2/2
    • Like Sound, Like Flesh
    • Silent Talks
    • Music-Fictions
    • Tablado
    • Musical creation around Outer Space
    • Campo Abierto
    • Musical creation around Dream Work
    • Biotope
    • EROR
    • IDEA
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 20.21
    • Season 2021.22
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2022
    • ManiFeste festival from 2012 to 2022
    • L’Étincelle, IRCAM’s journal of creation
  • Transmission

    In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

    • 2022.23 Training Courses
    • Max, Max for Live
    • OpenMusic
    • Modalys
    • TS2 and Partiels
    • Sound spatialization
    • From PureData to audio plugins
    • Sensors, Interfaces, and Interactive Machine Learning
    • Other training programs
    • Practical Information
    • Advanced Programs
    • Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music
    • Supersonic Chair
    • Master ATIAM
    • Sound Design Master's Program
    • Music Doctorate
    • AIMove Master
    • School Programs
    • Studios of Creation
    • Mixed-Music
    • Artistic and Cultural Education
    • Career Discovery Visit
    • Art School Reserach and Creation Workshop
    • Images of a Work Collection
    • ManiFeste-2022, the Academy
  • Innovations

    At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

    • The IRCAM Forum
    • Subscribe to the Forum
    • Softwares
    • Ircam Amplify
    • Industrial Applications
    • Industrial Licenses
    • Forum Vertigo
  • Home
  • Judith Deschamps : Imitating Farinelli's Nightingale
Publish date


With Published chosen, won't be shown until this time





Jan. 4, 2022
Edit
Article
Creation
News






Judith Deschamps : Imitating Farinelli's Nightingale

Edit






Artistic Residencies: The Blog
Edit






Apart from the recurrent gender issues in her creative practice, nothing destined the artist Judith Deschamps to be interested in Farinelli. The artist has no medium of choice, but she is not a musician either. Moreover, it is only very recently that she discovered Farinelli - and not, as one might expect, thanks to Gérard Corbiau's famous film, for which IRCAM’s Analysis/Synthesis team had already worked by recreating the castrato's voice - but during her artistic research on the question of gender.

She was immediately fascinated, not only by this voice—hybrid in its sexual ambiguity, holding as much of the masculine as of the feminine, and by its timelessness, with a child's timbre projected by an adult's lung capacity— but also, and above all, by a particular element of his biography.

His career, in fact, was shortened, explains the artist. At the age of 30, while singing for the London Opera, the Queen of Spain invited him to court. King Philip V had been suffering from what we would probably call depression since his teens. But his passion for music led the queen to believe that the castrato's voice could help soothe the melancholic king. Farinelli agreed. The first concert he gave for the king was a surprise: he sang hidden behind a curtain. The king was flabbergasted and asked Farinelli to become his personal singer. Thus, in a nightly ritual, Farinelli sang his favourite arias to the king until the death of Philip V in 1746. Always the same every evening for ten years.

“I have often wondered why he stopped his career to devote himself to the king," says Judith Deschamps. One of the explanations is that his voice had evolved - like all voices. When you think of Farinelli's voice, you immediately think of an angelic, timeless, asexual voice. But even the castrati were getting older! Their larynxes continued to grow until they were thirty, and their tessituras necessarily diminished.”

Among the arias that Farinelli sang every evening to King Philip V, one in particular attracts the artist "Quell' usignolo che innamorato" by the Italian composer Geminiano Giacomelli (1662-1740), an aria in which the castrato imitates the song of the nightingale. It is this song, as sung by Farinelli himself, that she aspires to recreate, or at least to approach, as part of her artistic research residency at Ircam. However, instead of a 'simple' (a relative simplicity, of course) hybridisation between a soprano and a counter-tenor voice, as in Gérard Corbiau's film, Judith Deschamps' project brings together a multitude of other voices, and makes use of artificial intelligence. Or at least machine learning via a network of artificial neurons, fed by a series of recordings of the same tune by voices of various kinds.

"There was never any question for me of proceeding otherwise than by AI. Firstly, because the method used for Corbiau's film worked very well, so there would be no point in doing it again. Secondly, because of all the fantasies carried by the very concept of AI: there is an imagination, which we can sometimes find a little ridiculous, of a technology that would surpass the human body and compensate for its finitude. In reality, AI, as it is today, is limited. And, above all, AI only works well... thanks to humans! Without humans, the machine can do nothing. This is a type of paradox that I also want to highlight.

Judith Deschamps has been working on this project for a long time. In 2018, she sent an email to Nicolas Obin, a member of the Sound Analysis and Synthesis team whom she knew a little from his past collaborations with artists such as Marguerite Humeau and Philippe Parreno, to submit her idea. He put her in touch with Axel Roebel, head of the Sound Analysis and Synthesis team, but, according to him, the tools were not sufficiently developed to embark on the adventure.

Fortunately, less than two years later, the technology had caught up with the artistic dream...

 In the following episodes, we will meet the members of the Sound Analysis and Synthesis team and follow step by step the long process of recreating Farinelli's song by AI.

Edit

Also discover

News
Creation

Artistic research residences applications are now open

News
This program offers artists the opportunity to collaborate with one or more IRCAM research teams, within the framework of a residency of 2 to 6 months. Applications until August 15, 2020
Ircam

1, place Igor-Stravinsky
75004 Paris
T. +33 1 44 78 48 43
Opening times

Monday through Friday 9:30am-7pm Closed Saturday and Sunday
Subway access

Hôtel de Ville, Rambuteau, Châtelet, Les Halles
  • Jobs Offers & Internships
  • The IRCAM team
  • Partners
  • Support IRCAM
Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique

go to :
  • Centre Pompidou
  • Legal Notes
  • General Conditions
  • Espace Pro
Copyright © 2022 Ircam. All rights reserved.