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
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References
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/%7Ewbc/lute-admin/index.html
