Dear Martin, Your examples of the Scottish song and French song illustrate well the dilemma for the performer! I cannot imagine performing a Gershwin or Cole Porter song without employing an American accent. It's part of the aEUR~reception history' and performance practice of these early 20th century songs, especially since it qualifies as aEUR~Early Music' as far as Musical Theatre is concerned. The accent is called for by the music itself aEUR" it's practically written in. aEUR~Anything Goes' is a prime example aEUR" it's built from clever, witty Americanisms that would simply sound wrong if sung in a kind of aEUR~Julie Andrews', RP, clipped English.
The version of OP Early Modern English as practiced by David and Ben Crystal is what I would call 'half strength', and has, I think, deliberately been toned-down from the kind of extreme 'full strength' OP that the Camerata of London experimented with in the 80s. They (Glenda Simpson and Paul Hillier) had sought out and been coached by E J Dobson, whose ground-breaking and exhaustive (it even covers early modern regional dialects) English Pronunciation 1500-1700 is the foundation for all we know (or think we know) about how the Elizabethans spoke. Their 1980 disc (Hyperion CDA 66003) is now long deleted. It was so extreme that there were few up-takers for this interesting area, probably because it simply had to be marketed as a aEUR~novelty', rather than a serious experiment. aEUR~Floor moaEUR"ay tares' for example, is the aEUR~full strength' version, as sung by Paul Hillier, but nowadays the Crystals would probably simplify the almost bi-syllabic aEUR~mo-ay' into aEUR~may', nowadays, and might even pronounce tears the modern way. If you want to hear an example of aEUR~half strength' OP used to good effect in lute song, the excellent 2007 Charles Daniels/Nigel North recital on ATMA ( [1]http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dclassica l&field-keywords=Charles+Daniels%2FNigel+North&x&y ) is a very convincing argument indeed for it's application. If only all lute songs were sung as intelligently as Daniels does here, the argument would be overwhelming, because this is one of the finest lute song discs ever. In the full-strength E J Dobson pronunciation, nearly every syllable seems to have been changed, rather like the extreme Middle English as applied by Neville Coghill on his Argo recordings of Chaucer in the 60s, whereas with the Crystal's version, OP sounds very much more acceptable to our modern ears. I would not wish to accuse the Crystals of aEUR~dumbing down' OP for modern comprehension, but it certainly is much easier to employ and understand than the Dobson. In fact, I feel that the Crystal's version actually encourages the listener to listen more attentively. Their version sounds completely natural, whereas the Dobson fundamentalist take comes across as very aEUR~affected'. (It was the absurdity of my attempting to employ OP as a countertenor (for which I repent me, and still flagellate) that finally made me realise I was, for my entire singing lifetime, completely in error as to how to perform lute songs. Too many layers of interpretation). Ben Crystal's CD: 'Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation' ( [2]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Original-Pronunciation-Performed-Shak espeare/dp/0712351191/ref=wl_mb_hu_m_1_dp )is well worth investigating, and will tell would-be singers almost all they need to know, as does his Dad's excellent aEUR~Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment', which distils the essential bits you need to know at the end of the book. But do listen to Charles Daniels for a treat. Probably up on YouTube by now. David Hill -----Original Message----- From: Martin Shepherd Sent: Friday, June 15, 2012 9:44 PM To: Lute List Subject: [LUTE] Re: HIP Shakespeare 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<[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > 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 > -- > To get on or off this list see list information at > [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > -- > > References > > 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s > 2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/%7Ewbc/lute-admin/index.html > -- References 1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dclassical&field-keywords=Charles+Daniels%2FNigel+North&x&y 2. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Original-Pronunciation-Performed-Shakespeare/dp/0712351191/ref=wl_mb_hu_m_1_dp
