Episodes
Saturday Oct 15, 2016
Episode 84-SDU Tutorial (audio version)
Saturday Oct 15, 2016
Saturday Oct 15, 2016
'Tis just about the Messiah season, and time to start working on our diction for it! This week's Tutorial covers "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion", focusing on what happens when 't's and 'd's come together and how to deal with 'r's in English Diction with Jason Nedecky.
Saturday Oct 15, 2016
Episode 84-SDU Video Tutorial
Saturday Oct 15, 2016
Saturday Oct 15, 2016
'Tis just about the Messiah season, and time to start working on our diction for it! This week's Tutorial covers "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion", focusing on what happens when 't's and 'd's come together and how to deal with 'r's in English Diction with Jason Nedecky.
Saturday Sep 24, 2016
Diction Tip #6
Saturday Sep 24, 2016
Saturday Sep 24, 2016
Since the podcast comes out every two weeks, on the off-weeks we post Diction Tips--very short tutorials focusing on a specific topic in Lyric Diction.
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
Episode 80-SDU Tutorial (audio version)
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
We're back from summer vacation with all-new episodes! This week's episode is from The Diction Police's Special Diction Unit--this is the audio version, for people who want to listen on-the-go.
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
Episode 80-SDU Video Tutorial
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
We're back from summer vacation with all-new episodes! This week's episode is from The Diction Police's Special Diction Unit--no need to go looking for the text, because you can follow along with the text, IPA, and conversation on the video!
Wednesday Feb 27, 2013
Episode 67
Wednesday Feb 27, 2013
Wednesday Feb 27, 2013
We're sticking with Händel's Messiah this week, with soprano Amanda Majeski discussing "Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion" and the four short soprano recitatives before the chorus "Glory to God", followed by the rest of my conversation with Jan and Catherine McDaniel of the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University. This week's episode focuses on English diphthongs and triphthongs, implosion and explosion of final Ds and Ts before another T and the specific words "righteous" and "with" (which can be the voiced delta [δ] or the unvoiced theta [θ]). The libretto for the Messiah can be found here (the recitatives are Nos. 14a, 14b, 15 and 16, "Rejoice Greatly" is No. 18) and the score is available as a free download from the Petrucci Music Library. We talk quite a bit about Madeleine Marshall's book The Singer's Manual of English Diction, which is still one of the most important reference materials for English Diction. If you want a brush-up on the vowel shifts between American Standard and British Received Pronunciation, check out Jason Nedecky's worksheet and for more discussion of the diphthongs in English, check out Episode 17. I left one completely mispronounced word in there, just for fun, and Miss Kitty Fantastico makes a quick cameo at the beginning that I couldn't help leaving in :-) If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com NB: I found some new information that I needed to add into this episode, so I redid the episode, in case people are wondering why it's suddenly slightly longer. The word SHONE in British RP should be [ʃɒn] rather than the diphthong [ʃoʊn] that it would be in American Standard. The word SHOWN remains a diphthong in both British RP and American Standard.
Sunday Feb 17, 2013
Episode 66
Sunday Feb 17, 2013
Sunday Feb 17, 2013
As a belated Valentine's present, The Diction Police is back with all new episodes for 2013! Miss Kitty Fantastico and I are all settled in our new apartment and I have quite a few episodes already recorded, so we should be able to stay on track for this spring! This week and next we'll be talking about some arias from Händel's Messiah. On this episode, tenor Charles Reid goes through the text of "Comfort Ye... Ev'ry Valley", and then we discuss some of the problematic traditional misuse of diction with Jan and Catherine McDaniel, from the faculty of the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, focusing on the words COMFORT and SAITH (plus other words that tend to be mispronounced), rolling Rs in the combination CR and GR, the pronunciation of the letter X and a whole lot about schwas. The score for Händel's Messiah can be found as a free download at Petrucci Music Library (IMSLP) and you can find the libretto here ("Comfort Ye... Ev'ry Valley" begins the Messiah). We talk about the word COMFORT quite a bit on this episode and I promised to post YouTubes--I found one with Jerry Hadley singing, this one where tenor Howard Crook sings COMFORT correctly at least once :-) and a very interesting BBC TV show about Comfort Ye with Trevor Pinnock discussing it, Kurt Streit singing. There are, of course, a ton of YouTubes of this recit and aria, have fun listening to them and comparing the diction to what we talk about in the episode! Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Sunday Sep 09, 2012
Episode 62
Sunday Sep 09, 2012
Sunday Sep 09, 2012
Simon Neal is back with us this week discussing the text "The Vagabond". We go through the text, focusing on the problem with Ls and Rs in English, dealing with pianissimi and why we should sing pure Italianate vowels in every language. I'll also talk about a phonetic concept for unstressed I (between the closed [i] and open [I] sounds) that Jan & Catherine McDaniel (English diction teachers at the Bass School of Music, Oklahoma City University) sent me, the SCHWI. "The Vagabond" is the first poem in Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel, and the first song in Ralph Vaughan Williams' song cycle of the same name. I found some interesting youtube clips of this song, Thomas Allen with Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and a very early recording of Peter Dawson in 1923 (pianist isn't listed), with lots of rrrrrolled Rs. The Bryn Terfel CD is also quite good but I couldn't find a youtube with that version. The previous entries that I talk about are Episodes 48 and 49 for tongue exercises, and Jason Nedecky's Treatment of R and Pronunciation Shifts for the HAND and ASK words. Please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook Page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Thursday Aug 30, 2012
Episode 61
Thursday Aug 30, 2012
Thursday Aug 30, 2012
It's the time of year when opera seasons and school years start, so it's time for The Diction Police to get back on track, too! This week and next our topic is English Diction with British baritone Simon Neal, who is here in Dresden singing in Henze's opera We Come To The River. Our text for today is A. E. Housman's "Loveliest of Trees" and we concentrate on the multiple phonetic functions of the letter O in English, final Y in words like "twenty" and "fifty" and a little bit about legato singing and consonants. A. E. Housman was Professor of Latin at Cambridge famous for his studies and research in his field, but he was also a poet most famous to us for his book of poetry A Shropshire Lad from which we get "Loveliest of Trees". After being turned down by several publishers, he published it himself, and it has become a favorite source of texts for many composers, so you'll find many settings of "Loveliest of Trees": the Butterworth that Simon mentions I found on YouTube with John Shirley-Quirk and Martin Isepp plus many student performances of the John Duke version (which is the one I have in my ears, not Celius Dougherty as I thought!). For anyone who needs the visual since I didn't talk about what the letters look like, the phonetic letters that come up on this episode are:
- [ʌ] the stressed version of the English schwa--called an upside down V, but was originally an A without the crossbar
- [ə] a regular schwa, which in English is related to an A sound
- [ɑ] dark A (but I want you to sing them bright [a] !)
- [ɒ] the upside down dark A--this occurs in British English, not in American. For a refresher on this, check out Episode 57 and Jason Nedecky's worksheet on pronunciation shifts between British Received Pronunciation and American Standard specifically under "short O"
- [ɪ] open I
- [o] closed O, which is not as closed and round as German or French
- [ʊ] open U (which I keep calling the "cookie" vowel)
- [u] closed U, which is not as closed and round as German or French
Thursday Apr 26, 2012
Episode 58
Thursday Apr 26, 2012
Thursday Apr 26, 2012
We're sticking with English Diction and Jason Nedecky this week, discussing the text to "Music for a While". Our focus is on how to handle R's ([ʀ], [r], [ɾ] and the burred R [ɹ]), a little bit about glottals, a review of some of the topics from last week and voiced consonants at the ends of words. I also gave some tips on studying foreign languages, which I'll add to the 7 Steps to Learn Music page. Henry Purcell's "Music for a While" was written as incidental music to John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee's tragic play Oedipus. There are several different realizations of the continuo, including one by Benjamin Britten. Britten realized many of Purcell's songs, which have been recorded on Hyperion. Jason also included a worksheet on R's that is available in this post. He also introduces the concept of rhoticity on this episode! In the meantime, please free feel to contact me here, on the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any comments, questions or suggestions! NB--Just to be sure, in reading the text be careful that the word "wond'ring" doesn't come out sounding like "wand'ring". The first syllable of this word should be phoneticized [wʌn-], NOT [wɒn-].