I really had not heard a spoken example until the early days of synthesized, electronic speech--DANGERWILLROBINSON! which comes out the same as the exhortation ENUNCIATE! spoken (yelled) over a choir which is not.

  I heard a recording of Sandberg reciting (droning) his Four Preludes on Pieces of the Wind in such a shocking undertoned presentation that I wondered if he was reading from flash cards on which was only one word at a time.

  This is simply not language. Singer is not language. Whether sung or spoken, all syllables are not created equal nor are all words. All linquistic elements in heightened, or communicative speech, lead to or from more important words or syllables which are particular to the syntax of the target language. Explosive consonants are useless if they draw attention to themselves out of context. As in this phrase--THe KWiK BRowN FoKS DJuMPT--the aural effect is similar to running your finger down the edge of a saw:  All (and only) the sharp parts stick out. I heard a performance by a nationally revered choir earlier this spring, religiously do this. Many have taken this as THE very definition of ENUNCIATION and CHORAL DICTION. I do not.
  Consider, instead the way English works. The less important words (syllables) lead to and away from more important words (syllable). What does the quick brown fox do? it JUMPS! Jumps is the high point, the stress of the utterance. And then we get to the LAzy dog. In increasing intensity, the quick brown fox JUMPS over the LAzy dog even were this statement notated in equal quarter notes. Or perhaps you prefer jumps Over the LAzy dog.
  Now visualize a circus tent. OV and LA are at the top of the supporting poles and the rest of the words on the tent follow the sloping lines of the tent to and from these stress areas.
  This is the way English works and, to greater degree, German. French and Italian not so much.
  Unlike that Girl from Nantucket imprisoned in metrical plexiglass, English poetry (musical text) should not be similarly imprisoned in unyeilding scansion. Find the poetry in prose and the prose in the poetry and find the way to justify poetry set to even regular quarter notes (Choose something like a Star, for instance) can be poetic in more natural linguistic stresses. Otherwise, the text is hypnotized and neither poetically or musically meaningful. If each word and every syllable is of the same weight, there is no language, just evenly apportioned utterances. THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPEDOVERTHELAZYDOG...the listener must decide where the breaks go to figure the message while it is moving, invisible in the air. Good Luck with that!
  To be understandable, language must be true to the song, the differences, of each language. French and Italian, when spoken, do not sound like English because they do not conform to the general meter of iambic pentameter, they are much more like prose utterences. German is somewhere between because the verb may appear as the very last word and there can be long stretches of flowing text before one actually knows what happens or in which tense.

  S