>Those are the tone syllables developed and used by Fred Waring. I learned >them from my mother, who learned them from Fred. He saw no reason to allow >the words in choral singing to be less than crystal clear, so his goal was >to have his singers pronounce every sound in every syllable and do it >simultaneously. That's a goal that all singers and choral conductors >should share, but obviously all do not. Fred simply worked out a phonetic >way of "coaching" singers who had not worked directly with him. The tone >syllables do the exact job they were intended to do, and do it very well, >although they do look rather strange to the uninitiated. I still use the >principles with my singers, although not the tone syllables themselves. >Robert Shaw insisted on the same degree of accuracy, although he did not >use the tone syllables either, and Shaw started as an assistant to Waring.
I haven't seen any recent music use them, but, once you got used to the odd look of them, they were actually very useful.
Phil Daley < AutoDesk > http://personal.monad.net/~p_daley
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