Episodes
Saturday Jun 25, 2016
Episode 79-SDU Tutorial (audio version)
Saturday Jun 25, 2016
Saturday Jun 25, 2016
This week's episode is from The Diction Police's Special Diction Unit! This is the audio version of the SDU Video Tutorial, for people who want to listen on-the-go.
Saturday Jun 25, 2016
Episode 79-SDU Video Tutorial
Saturday Jun 25, 2016
Saturday Jun 25, 2016
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!
Saturday Jun 18, 2016
Diction Tip #3
Saturday Jun 18, 2016
Saturday Jun 18, 2016
Since the podcast will be coming out every two weeks, on the off-weeks we will be posting Diction Tips--very short tutorials focusing on a specific topic in Lyric Diction.
Tuesday Nov 12, 2013
Episode 74
Tuesday Nov 12, 2013
Tuesday Nov 12, 2013
In this episode we finish up our conversation with Martin Koch, with the text "Wenn sich zwei Herzen scheiden" and an exercise from Dr. Augustin Ulrich Nebert's article "Das einzigartige -IG". Obviously we are focusing on the ending -IG again as well as devoicing/unvoicing final consonants and the voiced initial S.
The text Wenn sich zwei Herzen scheiden was written by Emanuel von Geibel, a 19th century poet who was part of a linguistic society in Munich called Die Krokodile (the Crocodile Society). This text has been set by Mendelssohn and a plethora of other composers. For the exercise text, see Dr. Nebert's article "Das einzigartige -IG" and scroll down to page 10 under "Übungstext".
The resources and summer programs I talked about in the episode are:
- Dr. Nebert's Sprechatelier--based in Halle, Germany, they have classes in every kind of public speaking in German, from diction lessons to media related speaking to debate and rhetoric, from Hochdeutsch through to every dialect. Dr. Nebert also studied singing as well as speech science. Special thanks to Dr. Nebert for recording his Übungstext for us!
- University of Miami Frost School of Music's summer program in Salzburg, Austria--a 5-week program for young singers and pianists, with many opportunities to take advantage of being in Salzburg during the summer Opera Festival (Festspiel)
- IPAI (The International Performing Arts Institute)--in Kiefersfelden, Germany (near Munich, on the Austrian border), a 3-week program for young singers and pianists with divisions for Classical/Opera and Musical Theater
- IMFA (The International Music Festival of the Adriatic)--in Duino, Italy (near Trieste), a 3-week program for young singers and pianists as well as composers and string players, which makes for a very interesting possibility of vocal chamber music and modern music
- AIMS (American Institute of Musical Studies)--in Graz, Austria, a 6-week program that has been around for over 40 years, for singers and pianists, plus an orchestral program to create their own festival orchestra
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 29, 2013
Episode 73
Sunday Sep 29, 2013
Sunday Sep 29, 2013
This episode is the beginning of a conversation with German tenor Martin Koch. With the text to Mendelssohn's "Frage", we focus on the -IG suffix, whether to roll an R or to use the near-open central vowel [ɐ] (which I keep calling the upside down bright A) and a few notable exceptional words with long, closed vowels followed by two consonants.
Originally attributed to H. Voss, it appears that Mendelssohn himself wrote the text as well as the music to "Frage". This song also became the basis for his string quartet in a-minor, Op. 13.
Please note that Lydía Zervanos has allowed us the use of some of her texts with IPA and translation for Episode 71 on Greek diction, feel free to download them!
As always, please feel free to contact me here, through the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com (I'm trying something here, not sure if this link will work... if not, please cut and paste into your email program!)
Tuesday May 22, 2012
Episode 60
Tuesday May 22, 2012
Tuesday May 22, 2012
Since I just spent the weekend preparing for an upcoming Lieder recital with Mirko Roschkowski, of course I couldn't let him off the hook without talking some German Diction with us! This week's texts are two Schubert songs with mythological characters "Ganymed" (poem by Goethe) and "Der Atlas" (poem by Heinrich Heine). We concentrate on when NG is phonetically [ng] and not [ŋ], the prefixes UN- and AN- and review a few favorite topics like closed and open E's, glottals and the unvoiced genitive S. Ganymede was the cup-bearer to the Gods, and maybe a lot more. There are many different opinions on the story behind this mortal-turned-deity, including these links from Theoi dot com, this commentary by Oxford University Press and a German analysis of the Geothe poetry. Atlas was a second-generation Titan whose punishment for taking part in the Titan's war against the Olympian gods was having to support the heavens on his shoulders to keep the sky from crashing into the earth. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter (@dictionpolice) or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Wednesday Jan 25, 2012
Episode 51
Wednesday Jan 25, 2012
Wednesday Jan 25, 2012
We're sticking with German Diction again, with a crew of low-voiced men--basses Thorsten Grümbel and Georg Zeppenfeld, as well as baritone Christoph Pohl, return to discuss the texts to "Anakreons Grab" and "Wie Melodien zieht es mir". We concentrate on the long sentence structures in these poems, along with short unstressed closed Es and the vowel combination IE (which is usually [i:] but in these cases becomes [i:ə] or the transcription possibilities of [jə] or [iə]) at the end of a word. Goethe's "Anakreons Grab" refers to the ancient Greek poet, Anacreon--I also found a nice blog post entitled "What I like about this song". Klaus Groth's poem "Wie Melodien zieht es mir" is most famously set by Brahms (in fact, it's the opening music for the podcast!), but Charles Ives also set this poem, as well as 17 other German poems, several of which have been recorded by Thomas Hampson. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Tuesday Jan 17, 2012
Episode 50
Tuesday Jan 17, 2012
Tuesday Jan 17, 2012
Happy 2012! We're back from the holidays with German Diction. German actress Susanne Plassman discusses "Kennst du das Land" from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and bass Georg Zeppenfeld talks about König Heinrich's Aria from Lohengrin, "Mein Herr und Gott" (scroll down a little beyond halfway to find the aria). The basis for this episode came from bass Thorsten Grümbel, and at his suggestion, we focus on [ʃ], [ç] and [x], as well as when ZU- at the beginning of a word isn't stressed. If you haven't already heard Georg Zeppenfeld sing this role (because I posted it on the Facebook page several weeks ago), here is the YouTube link to the Bayreuth performance last summer--Mein Herr und Gott starts at 5:26. The entire production was broadcast on TV here in Europe, and it's posted on YouTube in it's entirety. There's also a little opera karaoke link, in case you would like to sing this aria yourself! I found some YouTube clips with 2 singers who connect Kennst du (Birgit Nilsson with John Wustman, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with Gerald Moore), as well as some who separate Kennst/du (Christa Ludwig with Erik Werba, Juliane Banse with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin). The blog Study Hacks has a few postings on Multitasking. There is also an article called The Myth of Multitasking at The New Atlantis. The Diction Police is now on Twitter! Look for me at @dictionpolice. As always, please feel free to leave comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, now on Twitter :-) or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Sunday Oct 23, 2011
Episode 46
Sunday Oct 23, 2011
Sunday Oct 23, 2011
We're back on German diction with bass Thorsten Grümbel and sopranos Netta Or and Karen Bandelow, focusing on glottals in German and some unstressed prefixes with open E (er-, her-, ver- and zer-), as well as reviewing a few things that we've talked about before, like the NG sound [ŋ], the unpronounced intervocalic H and some diphthongs. Our texts for this episode are "O Isis und Osiris" from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (I did not link this to the Opera Guide website because there are several typos there), and "In dem Schatten meiner Locken" from Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch. I dug through many YouTube clips in researching this episode, so I wanted to include them here. For "O Isis und Osiris" I found Rene Pape (who lives in Dresden and drops in on performances sometimes!), Kurt Moll, Gottlieb Frick and Hans-Peter König (an old colleague of mine from Düsseldorf who sings all over the world, especially the Wagner repertoire). For "In dem Schatten meiner Locken" Elisabeth Grümmer with Hertha Klust uses all of the glottals we talked about, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf has two posted clips, one with Gerald Moore and one with Wilhelm Furtwängler where she uses considerably more glottals than the other performance, and I also found a clip of Lotte Lehmann (with unknown pianist) who doesn't seem to use glottals at all. I also specifically looked for Fischer-Dieskau using glottals and found several examples--the most obvious were in Erlkönig when he says "den Erlkönig" and in "Die Forelle" when he says "Doch endlich". Enjoy this little study on glottals! I'll be in the States giving some master classes for the next few weeks, so the podcast will be back up mid-November for a few episodes before the holidays, but in the meantime, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Monday Aug 29, 2011
Episode 39
Monday Aug 29, 2011
Monday Aug 29, 2011
Happy neue Spielzeit! We're back from summer vacation discussing German diction, covering the texts to "Die Lotoblume" and "Liebst du um Schönheit" with tenor Mirko Roschkowski and coach Hans Sotin. We concentrate on the assimilation of consonants and also discuss and compare some common open and closed Es with soprano Karen Bandelow. "Die Lotosblume" is a Heinrich Heine poem set by many composers, the most familiar setting by Robert Schumann (part of Myrthen, Op. 25). The poem "Liebst du um Schönheit" was written by Friedrich Rückert, and also set by many composers--the ones by Gustav Mahler (as the 5th song in the cycle Rückert Lieder) and Clara Schumann are both performed very often. Following a fellow podcaster's advice, I'm trying something new with the audio format, to improve the quality but also lower the file size. I'm not very technologically adept, so hopefully it will work correctly this first time, please let me know if there's a problem! Feel free to contact me with comments or suggestions either here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com