diction in art songs...

[michael.pushkin]

At his request I forward an off-list reply I received from Larry Richter.

Mike Pushkin
CREES
ERI
University of Birmingham
UK
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Dear Mike,

Andy Durkin forwarded the exchange about Russian diction. I think I can
help. I've been coaching singers and doing phonetic transcriptions of
Russian operas and songs for over thirty years, and have written five books
for singers (Leyerle Publications) which include complete song texts,
phonetic transcriptions as the texts should be SUNG, literal translations,
and idiomatic translations. They are 1)Tchaikovsky, 2) Rachmaninov, 3)
Musorgsky, 4) Shostakovich, 5) Selected songs of other 19th century
composers. I'm just finishing up the sixth, which is Prokofiev.

Basically, classical sung Russian differs from the spoken language in that
unstressed o reduces to a everywhere, except in the unstressed ending -oj,
where schwa is sung - but only here. (In Old Church Slavonic, there is no
vowel reduction at all in singing, although Russian reading OCS texts tend
to reduce vowels po-russki.) Classical diction calls for a preceded by
softness before stress (jazyk, chasy, shchadit') to be sung as a, not i. It
is easy to find singers who reduce it, as in speech, or are inconsistent.
But this is just bad diction - a phenomenon common in all sung languages.

In classical singing, the e to i reduction of speech does not occur. So
every e is pronounced e in singing, and each can be either open or closed,
depending on what follows. The vowel e is sung close before i, j, or
palatalization, and open everywhere else. (Compare eto and eti; ppp odet and
inf. odet'.)

The vowel jery could well become much like i in a sustained note, but it
shouldn't. (Listen to Hvorostovsky sing Onegin's Act I aria, where he holds
the last syllable of the word mechty. It certainly doesn't become i.) In
linguistic terms, since jery is simply an allophone, a positional variant of
the phoneme i that is compatible with the hard consonant that always
precedes it (that means i and jery are in perfect complementary
distribution, a classic test for allophones), it is the hardness of the
preceding consonant that is distinctive, not the exact quality of the vowel
after it "leaves" the point of contact with the consonant.

The variable pronunciations of the ppp ending -ennyj vs. -onnyj is stylistic
and can vary. (Tiutchev's famous line "Mysl' izrechennaja jest lozh'"can be
pronounced either way.) The former is OCS and therefore higher style, older
fashioned. Modern Russian has only -onnyj. But a church word like
blagoslovennyj could never be pronounced with o. In Schnittke's Concerto for
Choir, whose text is a prayer, the rhyme determines which form is used, and
they alternate inconsistently.

Incidentally, it is a mistake even when discussing only speech to say that
unstressed ja reduces to i, even though some recent textbooks make this
erroneous statement. (Would you pronounce molnija or sidja with an i?) An
unstressed a, whether graphic a or ja [and this could be graphic e too, when
it represents structural o in a soft spelling] (see jazyk, etc., above),
when preceded by softness and before the stress, always reduces in speech to
i. Similarly, an a surrounded by softness after the stress always reduces to
i (ploshchad', sluchaja, tuchami). But a preceded by softness and final
always reduces to schwa (molcha, molnija); and a after the stress preceded
by softness and followed by a hard consonant could be either/or: the last
vowel in uchitelem could be pronounced either as i or as schwa.

I hope this will be of help. I'm always available to answer questions. And
now that I've retired, I have more time to do so.

Larry Richter

richterl at indiana.edu


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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Edwina Cruise" <ecruise at MTHOLYOKE.EDU>
To: <SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 1:17 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] diction in art songs...


> I did some pronunciatioin coaching for Russian opera singers in another
> life.  What got me the job was not my knowledge of Russian, but my
> experience as a choral and solo singer. The compromise is between what
> works well for the singer and what is perceived as language norms.
> Singing on a reduced vowel schwa, for example, doesn't project sound as
> well as a more strongly emphasized vowel.   The more vigorously the
> voice box is opened and stretched, the bigger the sound.  Therefore the
> preference for souinds of "a" and "o".  But it's the musical notes that
> the critical issue.  When Tanya sings "Ya l dozhdalas'" the 4 syllables
> are sung on a 1/4 note, 1/16, 1/16, and 1/4.  Therefore only the 1st and
> last syllables of the phrase are emphasized.   Diction is also a
> function of character....  I don't think this helps much. Edwina Cruise
>
> Michael Denner wrote:
>
> >Anyone have a good, practical, and efficient guide to Russian diction for
singers?
> >
> >
> >
> >I'm helping a couple of members of our conservatory. They're singing
романсы and art songs. I have seared on my brain Avanesov's Русское
литературное произношение from a grueling class with Larry Richter, but I
don't know how valid those norms are for contemporary performances of art
songs.
> >
> >
> >
> >For instance: Listening to a variety of interpretations of Rakhmaninov's
Сумерки, I hear very different pronunciations. One older version (Chanos,
Naoumenko), seems to follow Avanesov's directions: doesn't reduce the O
except word-initial and Naumenko pronounces the -E- in a participle as /ye/.
Восходят he sings /восходят/ and not /васходит/, etc...
> >
> >
> >
> >A newer version  (Atoll, Dodoka) - observes all the norms that I
associate with R1 speech, including a /yo/ in the past-passive participle
and all the non-word-initial O's and unstressed я --> /и/, etc.
> >
> >
> >
> >So, if this song were to be performed in Moscow, today, what model of
diction would one probably use? (I realize that this question is probably
not as simple as it's posed, but I guess I'm looking for popular
expectations.)
> >
> >~mad
> >~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
> >   Dr. Michael A. Denner
> >   Editor, Tolstoy Studies Journal
> >   Director, University Honors Program
> >
> >
> >   Contact Information:
> >      Russian Studies Program
> >      Stetson University
> >      Campus Box 8361
> >      DeLand, FL 32720-3756
> >      386.822.7381 (department)
> >      386.822.7265 (direct line)
> >      386.822.7380 (fax)
> >
> >      google talk michaeladenner
> >      www.stetson.edu/~mdenner
> >
> >
> >
> >
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