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

[Charles Doyle]

And there's still no "authenticity" in the artistic experience, because what the audience will be responding to is quaint archaism or exotic foreignness.

--Charlie


---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:19:13 -0400
>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>)>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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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