dialect change?

[Tom Kysilko]

Was there sacred music in the Waring editions?  I remember anthems from
church choir in the '60s that had pronunciation notations below the lyrics
(and I mean English lyrics).  Seems to me that they came from one or
another of the directors of the St Olaf College Choir.  More to the point,
and this is really stretching my memory, I seem to recall that these
pronunciations involved systematic vowel shifts -- perhaps lowering of
front vowels, at least the higher ones.  30 or more people all singing
"eeee" can sound pretty awful.  Unfortunately, at the time I didn't know a
front vowel from a hole in the ground.  Anyway, there must be some
choristers on this list.  If not, I'll ask my daughter, the soprano.  If
there's a name for the practice, I don't know it.

At 09:01 PM 10/31/2002 -0500, Duane Campbell wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:27:53 -0500 joshua <nerd_core at EXCITE.COM> writes:
>
>> when people sing, they pronounce words differently (they drop
>> consonants, substitute phonemes, etc.)  doing this isn't technically
>> a dialect change, so what would we call it?
>
>Not directly on point, but related.
>
>Back in the 50s and 60s, Fred Waring (actually it was probably Roy
>Ringwald, his arranger) developed a phonetic notation for lyrics for
>choral music. All the published Fred Waring sheet music had the regular
>lyrics, but printed below them was a phonetic version.


  Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
  pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA