Russian diction for singing

[Richard Sylvester]

Dear Professor Langston:

You are correct, Russian vowel reduction is modified in singing.
See Laurence Richter's critique of the Russian arias book in
SEEJ 38 no 2, Summer 1994, pp 401-04. 

Phonetic transcriptions will be found in Richter's 3 books published
by Leyerle Press of the Complete Song Texts of Tchaikovsky,
Rachmaninoff, and Musorgsky.

Transcriptions of Tchaikovsky's songs as sung will be found in my
book "Tchaikovsky's Complete Songs: A Companion with Texts and
Translations", published by Indiana UP in 2002, available in most
college libraries. A paperback edition of the book including the CD
of 22 songs performed by outstanding 20th-c Russian singers came 
out in January of 2004.



-----Original Message-----
From:   Charlotte Douglas [mailto:douglas at nyu.edu]
Sent:   Fri 6/18/2004 10:56 AM
To:     Richard Sylvester
Cc:	
Subject:        [SEELANGS] Russian diction for singing

>Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 09:45:53 -0400
>From: Keith Langston <langston at UGA.EDU>
>Subject: [SEELANGS] Russian diction for singing
>Sender: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
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>Dear SEELANGers,
>
> From what I have been told and from what I think I hear when listening
>to recordings of Russian vocalists, I was under the impression that in
>singing opera and art songs the vowel reduction is modified: unstressed
>e is pronounced [e] and unstressed o and a are pronounced [a],
>regardless of position.
>
>However, in the guide to singing in Russian by Jean Piatek and Regina
>Avrashov (Russian songs and arias, Dallas TX 1991) they give the exact
>same rules as for spoken Russian, with reduction of unstressed e and
>the reduction of unstressed o and a to [a] or schwa, depending on the
>position.
>
>Can anyone enlighten me about what is the standard practice here?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Keith
>
>***************************************************
>Keith Langston
>Department Head
>Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages
>University of Georgia
>201 Joseph E. Brown Hall
>Athens, GA 30602
>706.542.2448, fax 706.583.0349
>
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