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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Because I am ignorant of opera, I was amused a long time ago to read an essay with the epigram "When music was married to immortal verse, she committed a horrible mesalliance.
With respect to these partners, opera may be less a marriage than a strained cohabitation. Still, it does have at least one happy, if neglected union of the two. I once studied a little of the first act recitative from Don Giovanni and was surprised to discover how lovely these simple bridges can be. While I might not pay to hear an entire evening of them, I've spent several pleasant hours beginning to understand what they are.
As to the different rhythms of languages, Wow, you might have fun comparing the German rendition of Dr. Bartolo's aria from The Marriage of Figaro with the Italian original. Seraphim has an old recording in German with Walter Berry, Hermann Prey, [Elizabeth Schwarzkopf], and Edith Mathis.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
A German friend, whose wife sang in various choirs back home in Germany, told me that the various foreign members of the choirs (I think he said Japanese but I may be wrong there) could sing in perfect unaccented German, but had very thick foreign accents whenever they were speaking. Has anyone had similar experiences with people singing in languages not their own?
Bingley
Bingley
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156 |
A German friend, whose wife sang in various choirs back home in Germany, told me that the various foreign members of the choirs (I think he said Japanese but I may be wrong there) could sing in perfect unaccented German, but had very thick foreign accents whenever they were speaking. Has anyone had similar experiences with people singing in languages not their own?
I have a friend who sings in the Newfoundland Symphony Choir, or something like that, and apparently the director is always giving them hell for singing with a Newfie accent. What I gather from this is that speakers of some languages are better able to cross over than others.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Just tossing this into the mix :
People who stutter when speaking can usually sing without any stutter at all.
There's an old joke about a stuttering sailor singing a message to the ship's Captain ....
Anyone able to dredge it up from memory?
wow
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
I don't know the joke wow, but your comment about stuttering relates back to the language acquisition and processing thread. Apparently, song lyrics are stored in or processed by the music center of the brain rather than the language center, permitting people like Mel Tillis to sing beautifully although they cannot utter three words in succession. I wonder whether poetry is similarly separated from general language processing. The tendency of early literature to be in poem suggests interesting possibilities regarding neurological development.
Speaking of which -- has anyone else read the fascinating The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? (Or something like that ... speaking of the breakdown of minds)
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Accents in singing vs. in speaking
Au contraire, mon frère; my experience is the opposite. I sing in the choir at my church (a cathedral). They do fairly well with Latin, and not too bad with German, but last year we sang the Cantique de Jean Racine (in French) and even after I wrote out the words in phonetic fashion and went over them several times, the way it came out would make a cow laugh (as far as the pronunciation is concerned -- the musical effect was divine.)
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