The Diction Police

Episode 61

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

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or you can email me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 60

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

Episode 59

Russian Diction is back this week--Katja Sapega Klein discusses the texts to Olga's Aria from Евгений Онегин (Yevgeniy Onegin) and Tchaikovsky's "Нам звёзды кроткие сияли", the last song of his Opus 60. Our focus this time is on what happens when 2 vowels come together in Russian, the devoicing (or not!) of consonants and double soft consonant/vowel combinations. Olga's aria, "Ах, Таня, Таня! Всегда мечтаешь ты... Я не способна к грусти томной" can be found through an online libretto for Евгений Онегин, just scroll down to "page 16". If you want to check your homework after you've translated this aria :-) try Google translate--it does a pretty good job at quick translations from/to almost any language we would ever need and will even allow for alternate translations if you highlight a specific word. "Нам звёзды кроткие сияли" ("Nam zvjozdy krotkije sijali") is a text by Aleksey Pleshcheyev, a radical 19th Century Russian poet who was imprisoned and exiled. Be sure to look on the 7 Steps to Learn  Music/Language Learning Tips page for this week's tips on studying foreign languages. The podcasts that I mention at the beginning of this episode are also listed on the Resources page. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, through the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 58

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-].

Episode 57

The Diction Police is now officially in its third year! Thank you so much to all listeners around the world--the audience has more than doubled in its second year, and I'd love to say that again next year, so I'm asking everyone to please spread the word: share on Facebook, post and write comments on the Facebook page, tweet on Twitter, send the link to your singer/coach friends and post comments on iTunes so that more people can find The Diction Police and benefit from it! Thank you! This week and next our topic will be English Diction, concentrating on the differences between American Standard English (AS) and British Received Pronunciation (RP). Canadian baritone and diction specialist Jason Nedecky is with us to discuss the Thomas Hardy poem "Before Life and After", focusing on the initial WH whine/wine rule [w] vs. [ʍ], the prefixes RE-, PRE- and BE- and the vowel shifts that occur between AS and RP English, including when [æ] becomes [ɑ], when [ɑ] or [ʌ] become the upside down dark A [ɒ] and when the American dark A [ɑ] becomes open O [ɔ] in RP. "Before Life and After" is the final song in Benjamin Britten's song cycle Winter Words, a set of 8 Thomas Hardy poems. Hardy was a Victorian Realist author, probably most famous for his novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but he also wrote 947 poems--all of his works are available online at the Thomas Hardy Society. Jason was kind enough to allow me to post a worksheet that he uses in his course, entitled "English Diction: Pronunciation Shifts in Singing", which is posted in this blog entry. The dictionary that we mention is Longman Pronunciation Dictionary--from what I could tell online, it seems that the 2nd edition has phonetics but the 3rd edition has transcriptions. I've ordered the second edition, but if anyone has access to the 3rd edition, please report back as to its usefulness! And of course, we mention Madeleine Marshall's The Singer's Manual of English Diction. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, on the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com UPDATE: Jason has assured me that the 3rd edition of the Longman has phonetics!

Episode 56

This week Swedish soprano Gisela Stille is with us to discuss the texts "Längtan heter min arvedel" and "I drömmen du är mig nära". We concentrate on the fun rounded H [ɧ], what I keep calling the C that turns back in over itself (but is officially called C with a curl) [ɕ], some of the differences between colloquial speech and lyric diction and a reminder of some spelling rules. At the end of the episode, I also compare some of the sounds of Swedish and Norwegian. Both of our poets today were members of the Swedish Academy at the same time. "Längtan heter min arvedel" is by Erik Axel Karlfeldt, who was also a member of the Nobel Committee and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature posthumously in 1931. "I drömmen du är mig nära" was written by Tor Hedberg (Wikipedia doesn't have this article in English!) and set to music by Emil Sjögren. On the episode, I refer often to Anna Hersey's terrific article in the NATS Journal of Singing (Jan/Feb 2012 edition) "An Introduction to Swedish Diction." If you aren't a subscriber to the Journal, the online link to the article shows up incomplete and with phonetic letters defaulting to regular letters, so if you are really interested in this topic it's important to get a copy of the actual article. Back copies of the Journal of Singing are also available for purchase. A big thank you to Anna Hersey for letting me know about her article, and to the people who have recently written about their own diction books and dissertations! I'm always thrilled to have new resources and as I wade through all this material, I'll keep everyone posted on what I find! Please contact me with questions, comments and suggestions (or new diction resources! :-) ) here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 55

Episode 55 is the end of my interview on Czech diction with Lucie Ceralová, this time with the Janáček's "Letí, straka letí". We concentrate on the letter C [ts] (which maintains it's own sound when followed by K), consonants that need a j-glide when followed by ě and the voicing and devoicing of consonants, as well as consonant pairs. "Letí, straka letí" is No. 19 in Leoš Janáček's song cycle Zápisník zmizelého (The Diary of One Who Vanished). The texts were all published anonymously in the Brno newspaper 1916 and the poet remained unknown until 1998. I also mentioned a blog posting with links to an article about how posture affects the human endocrine system and the Alexander Technique (body learning). As always, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any comments, questions or suggestions!

Episode 54

Since I'm in rehearsals for a Czech opera right now, it only seems fair that we discuss Czech diction this week! Mezzo-soprano Lucie Ceralova is here with the text "Oblak a mrákota jest vůkol něho", focusing on devoicing consonants, vocalic L and R, the palatalized N [ɲ], D [ ɟ] or [d] and T [c] or [t] and a few ways to practice our favorite Czech consonant ř. "Oblak a mrákota jest vůkol něho" is the first song in Dvořak's Biblické Písně (Biblical Songs), taken from the Book of Psalms of the Kralice Bible, which is the Czech equivalent to the English King James Bible or the German Luther Bible. This text can also be found in Timothy Cheek's Singing in Czech, with a translation and the IPA. The tongue twisters that we talked about at the end are:

• Třista třicet tři stříbrných stříkaček stříkalo přes třista třicet tři stříbrných střech.
• Strč prst skrz krk.

Have fun with them :-) 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

Episode 53

This week, bass Ketil Hugaas talks us through the consonants and consonant clusters in Norwegian, through two songs by Edvard Grieg, "Sang til juletræet" and "En svane". The retroflex phonetic symbols that we talk about are RD [ɖ ], RL [ɭ], RN [ɳ] , RS [ʂ] and RT [ʈ], all with tails flaring off to the right. We also come across NG [ŋ] and GN [ŋn] as well as KJ and TJ [ç] (which I want to research more!). "Sang til juletræet" is a Christmas song, with a text by Johan Krohn. The text was also published set to a folk melody in the Norwegian First  Reading Book for Elementary School back in 1892. "En svane" is a poem by Henrik Ibsen, one of the founders of modernism in theater. There are many recordings of En svane--on YouTube, I found Håkan Hagegård and Warren Jones and a live performance of Jussi Björling with Frederick Schauwecker along with many others. As always, 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

Episode 52

Since the Swedish episodes were so popular, it's time to move next door in Scandinavia--for the next 2 weeks bass Ketil Hugaas discusses Norwegian Diction with us. This week we're focusing on vowels with the text "Mens jeg venter", a poem by Vilhelm Krag that was set by Edvard Grieg. Grieg's Opus 60 is a set of 5 songs to texts by Krag and is available on IMSLP along with links to purchase a copy. I found one YouTube of Birgit Nilsson singing this song, and it can also be found on iTunes on the recordings Edvard Grieg Complete Songs Vol 1 with various artists, Grieg: Complete Songs Vol. 2 with Monica Groop and Ilmo Ranta (the entire Opus 60) as well as Grieg: Songs and Lieder with Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg (just "Mens jeg venter"). Most of the information that I gathered in preparing for this episode came from Wikipedia's Norwegian Phonology page as well as Omniglot. The phonetic letters are mostly standard, except for the barred U [ʉ]. Otherwise, we find

• a [ɑ]
• å [ɔ]
• æ [æ]
• e [ɛ, ə] according to the websites, there is also a closed [e], but not as closed as the German sound
• i [i, I]
• o [u, o]
• ø [ø]
• u [ʉ]
• y [y]

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