Dear Martin,
Your examples of the Scottish song and French song illustrate well the
dilemma for the performer!
I cannot imagine performing a Gershwin or Cole Porter song without
employing an American accent. It's part of the aEUR~reception history'
and performance practice
of these early 20th century songs, especially since it qualifies as
aEUR~Early Music' as far as Musical Theatre is concerned.
The accent is called for by the music itself aEUR" it's practically
written in.
aEUR~Anything Goes' is a prime example aEUR" it's built from clever,
witty Americanisms that would simply sound wrong if sung in a kind of
aEUR~Julie Andrews', RP, clipped English.
The version of OP Early Modern English as practiced by David and Ben
Crystal is what I would call 'half strength', and has, I think,
deliberately been toned-down
from the kind of extreme 'full strength' OP that the Camerata of London
experimented with in the 80s.
They (Glenda Simpson and Paul Hillier) had sought out and been coached
by E J Dobson, whose ground-breaking
and exhaustive (it even covers early modern regional dialects) English
Pronunciation 1500-1700 is the foundation for all we know (or think we
know) about
how the Elizabethans spoke. Their 1980 disc (Hyperion CDA 66003) is now
long deleted. It was so extreme that there were few up-takers for this
interesting area, probably because it simply had to be marketed as a
aEUR~novelty', rather than a serious experiment.
aEUR~Floor moaEUR"ay tares' for example, is the aEUR~full strength'
version, as sung by Paul Hillier, but nowadays the Crystals would
probably simplify the almost bi-syllabic aEUR~mo-ay' into
aEUR~may', nowadays, and might even pronounce tears the modern way. If
you want to hear an example of aEUR~half strength' OP used to good
effect in lute song, the excellent 2007 Charles Daniels/Nigel North
recital on ATMA
(
[1]http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dclassica
l&field-keywords=Charles+Daniels%2FNigel+North&x&y )
is a very convincing argument indeed for it's application. If only all
lute songs were sung as intelligently as Daniels does here, the
argument would be overwhelming, because this is one of the finest lute
song discs ever.
In the full-strength E J Dobson pronunciation, nearly every syllable
seems to have been changed, rather like the extreme Middle English as
applied by Neville Coghill on his Argo recordings
of Chaucer in the 60s, whereas with the Crystal's version, OP sounds
very much more acceptable to our modern ears.
I would not wish to accuse the Crystals of aEUR~dumbing down' OP for
modern comprehension, but it certainly is much easier to employ and
understand than the Dobson.
In fact, I feel that the Crystal's version actually encourages the
listener to listen more attentively.
Their version sounds completely natural, whereas the Dobson
fundamentalist take comes across as very aEUR~affected'.
(It was the absurdity of my attempting to employ OP as a countertenor
(for which I repent me, and still flagellate) that finally made me
realise I was,
for my entire singing lifetime, completely in error as to how to
perform lute songs. Too many layers of interpretation).
Ben Crystal's CD: 'Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation' (
[2]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Original-Pronunciation-Performed-Shak
espeare/dp/0712351191/ref=wl_mb_hu_m_1_dp )is well worth investigating, and
will
tell would-be singers almost all they need to know, as does his Dad's
excellent aEUR~Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment', which
distils the essential bits you need to know at the end of the book.
But do listen to Charles Daniels for a treat. Probably up on YouTube by
now.
David Hill
-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Shepherd
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2012 9:44 PM
To: Lute List
Subject: [LUTE] Re: HIP Shakespeare
Yes, the Hilliard Ensemble did quite a bit of this, and for the most
part I think it was very successful. Some rhymes work (things like
"move" and "love"), and some of our awkwardness with musical setting of
words (three syllables for endings like "tion" or "cion", for instance)
disappears. There is also the colour - words like "darkness" seem to
gain in effect by having a "hard" A and a post-vocalic R and become
more
expressive.
For the singer of lute songs, this creates a dilemma. To sing in an
accent which is not your own is (though beloved of 20th/21st C British
pop musicians) rather strange, and perhaps not conducive to being taken
seriously. The problem arises in singing repertoire which is not your
own - an Englishman singing a Scottish song cannot use his own
pronunciation, because some of the words simply don't exist in his
"native" language, but if he attempts a Scottish pronunciation, is he
not (a) at risk of getting it wrong and (b) being open to accusations
of
not being "serious"? The flip side of that coin is that if, as an
Englishman, you sing a French song, surely your goal would be to
pronounce the French words as "accurately" as possible, so that a
listener would not know the native language of the singer? Having said
that, what is the "correct" accent for a French song? The same applies
to German lieder, of course (delicately opens large can of worms....).
In the end, perhaps it's all a matter of comprehensibility, and even
more important, the rapport established between the singer and the
audience. The late Robert Spencer, who coached lute song brilliantly,
was firmly on the side of "selling" the song and communicating its
message, and was therefore somewhat distrustful of OP, both because it
might lessen comprehension and also because it might distract the
audience (e.g. they're so busy noticing the "funny" pronunciation of a
word they miss the overall meaning of the phrase). I have a lot of
sympathy with this view, but also a lot of sympathy with the benefits
of
OP in terms of making rhymes and puns work properly. Perhaps we could
come to accept that "old" songs are sung in a different accent from
modern ones, in the same way that we accept that a singer who is not
Scottish might adopt the necessary accent for singing a particular
song.
No easy answers, I'm afraid.
Martin
On 15/06/2012 16:50, William Samson wrote:
> The Hilliard Ensemble made an album in the late 70s, I think, of
> various songs, including lute songs with original pronounciation
-
> probably at the more extreme end of possibilities.
> To my ear, Dowland's "Now oh now I needs must part" sounded like
"Nay
> oh nay oi needs moost pairt" - a bit disconcerting but very
> interesting.
> Bill
>
__________________________________________________________________
>
> From: Guy Smith<guy_m_sm...@comcast.net>
> To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
> Sent: Friday, 15 June 2012, 16:19
> Subject: [LUTE] HIP Shakespeare
> Interesting video on how Shakespeare might have been pronounced
circa
> 1600. It would be interesting to see a similar approach to
English
> lute
> songs.
> [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
> Guy
> --
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
> --
>
> References
>
> 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
> 2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/%7Ewbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
--
References
1.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dclassical&field-keywords=Charles+Daniels%2FNigel+North&x&y
2.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Original-Pronunciation-Performed-Shakespeare/dp/0712351191/ref=wl_mb_hu_m_1_dp
