At 6:10 AM 06/18/03, David H. Bailey wrote: >And where the dictionaries themselves don't agree, what should we do?
Pick one that you like and follow it, of course, just as you would for any sort of style editing. This is elementary practice, not unique to music. You may as well make the same complaint about all writing. -- At 7:54 PM 06/17/03, Daniel Dorff wrote: >On one hand that's the long and short of it, but some words are hyphenated >differently from one dictionary to another, and there are a few composers >who are rather uncomfortable with using this traditional approach rather >than breaking phonetically (i.e., fun-ny is correct although fu-nny is how >it's sung). Singers may not all consciously notice, but they're >subconsciously used to the traditional breaks since that's what's almost >always seen. 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, eg, "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. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
