Re: [Finale] Hyphenation (was Click Assignment)
On Dec 3, 2011, at 9:40 AM, John Howell wrote: I agree with Mark in principle, but in practice it can be a real can of worms! The problem he cites with English words in long melismas is a real one, simply because in English each vowel had a number of possible pronunciations, unlike several other common languages, and the singer has to decide which one to use right at the beginning of the word. True, but the majority of these vowel issues can be reduced to questions of short and long, and these are exactly the ones hyphenation rules address pretty well. (Indeed, English hyphenation is complicated precisely because of the existence of long and short vowels.) The general rule is that if a vowel is short, you should keep the following consonant with it, and if the vowel is long you should break after the vowel. This is logically tied to how English spelling and pronunciation evolved, and readers perceive it instinctively even if they don't consciously identify short and long vowels. Even if you've never thought about it explicitly, your entire reading experience tells you that a short vowel sound never comes at the end of a word, and that when a word ends in a consonant the vowel is almost never long. Thus the singer instinctively observes the same pattern with single syllables presented alone. The same principle covers most vowels -- even some that aren't strictly short or long but follow a similar pattern. I find the worst problems are with soft c's or g's that fall at the end of an accented syllable, (eg, pac-ify, dec-i-mate, reg-i-ster, log-i-cal). There's really no good answer to those. But it can create just as much confusion to creatively mis-hyphenate words in an ATTEMPT to write down what you think singers should sing. I run into this fairly often in my Vocal/Choral Arranging class, especially when the students are instrumentalists and not used to seeing vocal music or thinking about hyphenation. They try to write it the way it sounds, and end up with gobbledegook that would confound ANY singers trying to sightread it! I absolutely agree on this. We discussed it on this list once before. I think pedagogic schemes involving pseudo-phonetic spellings or pushing all the consonants to the next syllable as a vocal exercise make things worse. They're fine for lesson context where you're teaching specific skills to singers, but for regular music no. I also dislike phonetic schemes for languages with non-Latin alphabets, like Russian. If you're not going to learn the alphabet (which is best), it's still far better to have a transliteration system that accurately reflects the logic of the native alphabet. I've been writing vocal charts for upwards of 60 years, and I strongly advise using normal, dictionary hyphenation in ALMOST every case. It comes under better the devil you know ... I agree, but that implies there is a single normal, dictionary system, which isn't the case. British publishing has traditionally followed a derivation-based hyphenation system for word divisions, while American publishing follows a pronunciation-based system. The American system has gained ground even in Britain, but many reputable publications still consider the British system correct. I would say that the American system (ie, pronunciation-based) is always preferred for vocal music. (For non-musical prose, I personally prefer the British system, which, incidentally, would never break after a soft c or soft g.) And for anyone who hasn't worked with lyrics in other languages, guess what: the hyphenation rules are completely different!!! But there ARE rules. And I think my Mom knew them all. Of the languages frequently encountered in classical music, English is by far the hardest to hyphenate in (for the same reason it's hardest to spell in). Even French, which has some complicated spellings, is fairly easy to hyphenate, and other common languages in the classical repertoire are easier still. I'm pretty sure I could lay out a clear set of rules for hyphenating in French, German, Italian, Latin, or Spanish. Writing up a comprehensive set of rules for English would be a challenge. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Hyphenation (was Click Assignment)
On Sun Dec 4, at SundayDec 4 7:58 PM, Mark D Lew wrote: I'm pretty sure I could lay out a clear set of rules for hyphenating in French, German, Italian, Latin, or Spanish. Writing up a comprehensive set of rules for English would be a challenge. Yet, you have pretty much done that. I kept your long post from a few years back, and will add this last bit to it. I have never seen such a clearly laid-out presentation of the issues involved in lyric hyphenation. Thank you. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Hyphenation (was Click Assignment)
On Dec 4, 2011, at 5:10 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: Yet, you have pretty much done that. I kept your long post from a few years back, and will add this last bit to it. I have never seen such a clearly laid-out presentation of the issues involved in lyric hyphenation. Thanks for the compliment. I dimly remember that post. I tried googling for it, but I couldn't turn up anything. I'd be curious to see what I wrote, if you care to repost it. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Hyphenation (was Click Assignment)
On Sun Dec 4, at SundayDec 4 8:18 PM, Mark D Lew wrote: On Dec 4, 2011, at 5:10 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: Yet, you have pretty much done that. I kept your long post from a few years back, and will add this last bit to it. I have never seen such a clearly laid-out presentation of the issues involved in lyric hyphenation. Thanks for the compliment. I dimly remember that post. I tried googling for it, but I couldn't turn up anything. I'd be curious to see what I wrote, if you care to repost it. Here it is, complete. I think I remember editing lightly for typos (not many of yours!) and punctuation and removing a few paragraphs that I didn't think were germane. Some of the quoted replied are not clearly delineated in this formatting, but mostly you can follow it. I've sent it as an email attachment to a few students. I hope you approve. Christopher Hyphenation should be according to the way a good dictionary separates the syllables. Even though some dictionaries disagree on certain words (especially those that do not have traditional Latin, Greek, or German roots) you should choose a dictionary and stick to its interpretation consistently. Why not hyphenate according to the way singers are going to pronounce it, with the consonants delayed to the beginning of the next note? Like fu-nny instead of the traditional fun-ny? Other variations in hyphenation might go unnoticed, but something so obvious as fu-nny I expect would be consciously noticed by just about anyone. I've worked with scores using this practice, and my conclusion is that unless it's a special pedagogic edition, it's a bad idea. Singing on the vowel and placing the consonants at the beginning of the next note is a basic singing concept which needs to be learned separately anyway. The collection of singers who would be helped by such a reminder in the hyphenation is a rather small one, I think, sandwiched between those who already understand without extra help and those who wouldn't understand regardless. The more significant effect is to make the text confusing and less readable. If I'm singing a piece and I see fun-, I know that it's going to be a word like funny or fundamental and I'm ready to start singing fuh... as I continue on to see what's next. If I see fu-, then it looks like it will be a word like future or fugitive and I'm ready to start singing fyoo (In practice, all of this is probably happening reading a bar or two ahead, but the principle is the same.) Traditional hyphenation really is an indicator of pronunciation, albeit imperfect. The placement of consonants relative to the hyphen is a strong predictor of vowel pronunciation. Consider, e.g., dem-o-crat-ic vs de-moc-ra-cy. In questionable cases, a good guide to follow is to consider which hyphenation makes it easier to anticipate pronunciation of the first syllable alone. Thus, one would choose ev-er and e-ven, but o-ver and ov-en. On first glance, that looks inconsistent, but in fact it reflects the pronunciation perfectly. On Wednesday, December 17, 2003, at 07:34 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote: Is it still customary when entering lyrics to use an apostrophe and dropped vowel to indicate a merged syllable in English (i.e., where the word as sung has fewer syllables than the dictionary hyphenation)? Or is that an archaic practice? In other words, should a two-syllable opening be written o-pening or o-p'ning For this example, I would choose o-p'ning. I don't know that I'd generalize that as a rule to always use apostrophe, though. In other contexts it might be clearer to spell out what looks like two syllables but is pronounced as one. This is assuming that the melody is using the word in an ordinary way. If one is deliberately putting a space in the middle of the word with the p sound before the break -- as in another ope-ning, another show... -- then that's a special effect calling for a special hyphenation. In that case, I would use ope-ning -- or alternatively op'-ning, but definitely not op-'ning. I don't like op-'ning (as another poster recommended) under any circumstances, because I think it encourages the singer to pronounce the first syllable as one would in op-era, op-tion, or op-por-tu-ni-ty. An important function of hyphen placement in English -- the most important, I'd say -- is to indicate, by the presence or absence of a consonant at the end of a syllable, whether the syllable's vowel should be short or long. The comparison to ev-'ning makes no sense to me. Evening is a two-syllable word to begin with, so it is properly eve-ning or, if you insist on an apostrophe, ev'-ning. If you really are using a contraction of the less common three-syllable word (ie, the gerund or participle of the verb even), then it should indeed be e-v'ning. I can't think of any case in which ev-'ning is proper. -- To put it another way, which perhaps can serve as a general guideline, imagine
Re: [Finale] Hyphenation (was Click Assignment)
Here it is, complete. I think I remember editing lightly for typos (not many of yours!) and punctuation and removing a few paragraphs that I didn't think were germane. Some of the quoted replied are not clearly delineated in this formatting, but mostly you can follow it. I've sent it as an email attachment to a few students. I hope you approve. Thanks. Looks like that's a compilation of several discussions. The one thing I would say is unclear is where Darcy is quoted and it's not immediately obvious where his words stop and mine begin. Reading this reminded me of something. Earlier this year I wrote an arrangement of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear for SATB quartet. The last line in the second verse says, And ever over its Babel sounds, the blessed angels sing. For that verse I have the soprano on the melody, with the other voices mostly singing ooh and ah but occasionally some words. On Babel, I deliberately made it so that the soprano pronounces it like bay-bel and the tenor and alto (in slightly different rhythm) like bab-ble. If I were particular about this being observed I suppose I'd have to add a note, but as it's really more of a little easter-egg type surprise -- I find it poetically amusing that Babel would be a word where voices disagree on the pronunciation -- I just wrote it hyphenated Ba-bel in the one line and Bab-el in the others, and we'll see what the singers do with it. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Hyphenation (was Click Assignment)
On Sun Dec 4, at SundayDec 4 9:00 PM, Mark D Lew wrote: The one thing I would say is unclear is where Darcy is quoted and it's not immediately obvious where his words stop and mine begin. The quoted text is blue in my document, but that didn't get preserved when I copied and pasted. No worries! About your Ba-bel Bab-el thing, I would imagine that the singers would hear who sings it first, then pronounce it that way. Strangely, singers are very conformist that way. You might even have trouble getting them to sing it differently. So high in my lovely Ivory Tower of Babel high above the rabble (from the Prologue from Godspell) So they begat Cain And they begat Abel, Who begat the rabble At the Tow'r of Babel. (from The Begat from Finian's Rainbow) In both songs, the word is hypenated Ba-bel even though in the first instance it is clearly meant to rhyme with rabble, which I think is a typo. The title in the score is even Tower of Babble, another typo. Durned Broadway copyists! 8-) Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Hyphenation (was Click Assignment)
On Dec 4, 2011, at 6:31 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: In both songs, the word is hypenated Ba-bel even though in the first instance it is clearly meant to rhyme with rabble, which I think is a typo. A perfect example of being led astray by the dictionary! Clearly the copyist looked it up and found the hyphenation for the other pronunciation. Your lyrics with different pronunciations of Babel remind me of an old Espy verse: Behold now! By the Jordan dreameth That beast by scholars called behemoth; Though scholars of another cloth I understand say behemoth; While others still, rejecting both, Refer to him as behemoth. The beast is one, the sound trichotomous; The fact is, he's a hippopotamus. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
