Ukrainian stress

[Chew G]

I'd broaden that out.  The prejudice that sung language should precisely match spoken language in stress (regardless of whether a folk tone is being evoked) is a product of specific 18th-century views about the relationship of music and language (cf. Rousseau). Composers took a while to take the idea on board, let alone to think that it was a measure of "composing well".  Schubert doesn't care too much; by the time of Wolf, later in the 19th century, some rather careful attention is at last being paid by some people.
 
So it was a real pity when composers did feel they had to take this prejudice seriously. For example, Dvorak's early song cycle "Cyprise", some of his most attractive songs, was withdrawn because of criticisms he'd had about the word setting of the Czech.  The cycle has still never been published in its original form.
 
Geoff
 
 Geoffrey Chew
 Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University, Brno
 chewg at seznam.cz
 
 Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London
 g.chew at rhul.ac.uk

________________________________

From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of Ralph Cleminson
Sent: Fri 2.5.08 12:05
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ukrainian stress



Since the sentence is Russian, the question of stress in Ukrainian (on what would anyway, in that case, be ????), does not really arise. 

What is relevant, however, is that Musorgskij, like other composers of the period, consciously drew on popular traditions, and that the metrical structure of folksong is frequently at odds with the normal spoken stress of the words (there are many examples in Russian and English as well).  This line is, moreover, very typical metrically of Ukrainian popular verse (trochaic heptameter with caesura after the fourth foot).  The music follows the notional metre rather than the stress of speech, and this is no doubt a deliberate element of "folk" colour in the opera.


>>> Dan Newton <danewton at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> 05/02/08 08:17 AM >>>
Dear all,

I have a question for anyone familiar with Ukrainian.

In Musorgskii's opera Soroschintsyi Fair, there is this line: "Razve 
mozhno s moei dochkoi takto obrashchat'sia?"  The musical line is 
such that the word "moei" is stressed on the first syllable, contrary 
to Russian speech.  I'm wondering whether this is a case of the late 
stages of alcoholism (i.e., bad composition) or simply a 
Ukrainianism.  Would Ukrainian stress the first syllable?

Thank you in advance.

Dan

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: msg-23314-2611.txt
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/seelang/attachments/20080502/d5d6e0ec/attachment.txt>