Dear John, thank you for your kind advice. What I learned about English is that its written form didn't follow the changing pronunciation over the centuries, and that around 1500 the sound of the vowels for example was quite the same as they were written. I understand that spelling in German for example kept more or less track to its spoken form, but I cannot judge for other languages. Choosing the right rhythm when reciting the poem seems to be quite helpful with regard to pronunciation, thank you for pointing me in that direction. So, would you for example speak/sing the words "showres" and "flowres" in Dowland's "Go crystall teares" more like single syllable words as the jambic rhythm would suggest? Maybe even with an open "o" like in "shores" and "floors" :-)
Go crystall teares, like to the morning showres, And sweetly weep into thy Ladies breast. And as the dewes revive the drooping flowers, so let your drops of pity be addrest, to quicken up the thoghts of my desert, which sleeps too sound, whilst I from her depart. And while we're at it: is it "desert" or "desart" (like in stanza two, where it is rhymed on "heart")? Or the other way round, kind of "depert" and "hert" :-) Sorry for going so much into detail, I simply no nothing about this, but I am curious on the musical quality of elizabethan pronunciation. I don't really care if an audience could understand it just from hearing, because in Germany very few people understand the song texts even in today's pronunciation the first time they hear them. Regards, Stephan Am 29 Sep 2003 um 23:07 hat Jon Murphy geschrieben: > Stephan, > > I'm already in this thread with comments on the topic, but I couldn't > resist coming in again now that I see the original message. For any > singer (and as you are asking for rhyming I assume you are singing > with the lute) it is less the rhyme than the phrasing. You can get > away with a lot by timing the beat on the right "sylaable". Also, > poetry has always taken liberties with pronounciation (wynd for wind). > Even the French (despite their strict academic interepretation of > their language take liberties in song - Frere Jaques in the song is > pronounced just as we do, with the "a" at the end to make it > melliflous, although it would be "Frear Jaques" in conversation. I'll > not add to my other comment on Shaksper's sounds, read the text and > fit it to the music - and you probably have a good approximation of > the way it was sung. The language was in flux at the time. > > Best, Jon > >
