Dialects of poetry (Old Norse, Middle English, Shakespearean, etc.)

[Herb Stahlke]

I've raised similar questions in choral diction discussions.  Period
performance goes to great lengths to emulate not only the kinds of
instruments and styles of playing used but also the temperaments, the
ensemble sizes, and other details--except for pronunciation.  If an
authentic period performance of Messiah uses early 17th c.
instruments, a chorus no more than 16, and counter-tenors, then why
not also use early 17th c. Dublin pronunciation?  When I've raised
this question on choral conducting lists, the response was that I was
trying to parody period performance, which sometimes needs parody, as
with Joshua Rifkin's performance of the Mass in B minor with a vocal
quintet.  A couple of years ago I served on a doctoral committee in
music performance.  The candidate was doing a period performance
manual to Cantata 150.  He had taken a few linguistics courses, so in
the course of his research and writing I encouraged him to look into
the question of pronunciation.  He researched it and contacted a
number of conductors who all insisted that the only pronunciation
acceptable in singing Bach was Modern High German choral diction,
which differs from spoken pronunciation largely in the use of an
alveolar trill rather than a uvular fricative for /r/.

Oddly, while this is true for English and German texts, it's not for
Latin texts.  With a Latin text, the country of origin is important.
Carmina Burana is sung with Austro-German Latin pronunciation, the
Verdi Requiem with Roman, and contemporary Finnish compositions with
Latin texts in Finnish Latin pronunciation.  Choirs will be retrained
in Latin pronunciation for each variety.

Herb

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:09 AM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Dialects of poetry (Old Norse, Middle English, Shakespearean,
>              etc.)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Related questions could be raised in still broader terms, with even a synchronic dimension: To what extent, when we read poetry (or prose), are we obliged to emulate the dialect of the poet--or "hear" the poetry that way in our minds? Do Yeats's verses need to sound Irish, Dylan Thomas's Welsh? Do Eliot's poems gain from sounding British (what dialect of British?) or Midwestern-American? Should one not proficient in a poet's dialect refrain from reading the poem at all?! What does a reader owe to the author? How far can the author--or the author's biographical circumstances--control the finished text?
>
> --Charlie
>
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