At 12:36 AM -0700 4/30/07, Mark D Lew wrote:
In other examples where two or more notes are slurred over a single syllable of "fire", it does feel natural to make the first syllable "fye" and sing a sustained "er" over the second (so that it rhymes with "buyer"). An example of this is the first line of the 1940s song, "I don't want to set the world on fire". Absent any tradition of how one has heard it sung before, I would guess that some singers would choose to sing "fire" like "fye-er" but some others would sing it as a single syllable like in the first example.
A slur isn't just decorative for a singers. It means to sing one syllable to 2 or more notes. In your first example you would be instructing them to sing it as one syllable. (Historically other methods have been used to convey the same information, using ligatures or beaming, but today it is the function of slurs and they shoudl be used accurately.)
For this particular song, my personal choice would be to sing it like "fye-er". I think it's what the composer intended, and it's consistent with the style in which I would sing this song,
and I entirely agree. (Oh dear, 2 or 3 syllables in "entire"; 3 or 4 in "entirely"???)
which is a more colloquial pronunciation not at all like proper choral diction.
Ah, this is a very important point. Colloquial pronunciation is NEVER incorrect if colloquial is what you want!!! In that case, "proper" diction would be quite improper. There are times when colloquial (or dialect, if you prefer) simply must be indicated, and an enormous amount of popular music is properly sung with conversational diction, not oratorical diction.
Nevertheless, if I were editing the song I would not actually write out "fire" as two syllables. (Nor would I write "want to" as "wanna", even though I would surely sing it that way.)
Both of these I've noted above.
I would rather leave those choices for each singer's styling and instincts, and if some other singers choose to sing "fire" differently, so be it.
I have a feeling, Mark, that in your mind you are thinking solo singers, while in mine I am thinking ensemble singers. A great deal should be left to an (experienced!) solo vocalist's discretion, but a great deal absolutely has to be indicated to ensure unanimity in ensemble music.
As we all know from numerous examples, the same song can be successfully interpreted in drastically different styles and for someone else singing in a different style my two-syllable interpretation of "fye-er" might sound ridiculous.
Yup, you're thinking soloist.
I tend to believe a similar argument is going to cover almost any situation. Even if you intend "fire" to be sung as two syllables, you can notate it as one and leave it to the singer's instincts to agree or not agree. But I tend to like to give performers freedom to interpret, and I know that not all composers are like that, so I can see that a case might arise where one really does want to explicitly indicate two syllable.
Or a great many other things. John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
