Good points, Patrick.  I used to consider it one of the essential skills of a professional choral director - - the ability to make one's own IPA transcriptions. Some publishers regularly include IPA transcriptions.  Boosey & Hawkes has made quite an investment for years --- almost every title in the CME series has an IPA transcription in its front cover. As a composer/arranger, I almost always include an IPA in my new works if they are not in English or in Latin. We conductors should encourage music publishers to include pronunciation guides, with IPA preferred for most languages.

 

Lee Kesselman

www.kesselmanpress.com

We could start by not using jargon and acronyms when a simple three-word intro would make the subject perfectly clear.  NOwhere can I find the acronymically-obscured words y'all are using in this discussion.  I went to IPA source.com, and even THEY are stuck in  a acronymical catch-22 (oops! pardon the jargon).   Further, I suspect the inquirer means translation, not transcription. 

 

Sorry to disagree with some posters, but, personally, I have approached original compositions in «Foreign Languages» advisedly, and would eschew them rather than rely on some publishing company's «phonetics» most of which are unfathomably brain- and tongue-twisting anyway.   The only artistic way to perform works in languages in which we are not personally fluent is to find (as I have when the need arose) a person who is at least demonstrably conversant in that language if not (better) a native-speaker to rehearse these numbers with us.   Even then, we should consider that perhaps such a work is more trouble than it's worth.  What, exactly, are we trying to put across by performing a work foreign to our audience, foreign to our singers, and which in the end we may not perform particularly well considering our ignorance of the niceties of a language we really don't understand.  

 

Having spent 50+ years reading hilariously bad program translations, and having my ears assaulted by fractured French, garbled German, and laughable Latin — leaving aside more esoteric possibilities, I strongly advise some sober second thought, and a LOT of preparation before launching out into poorly-charted waters.   (a) It's not as though there isn't enough perfectly accessible repertoire out there; (b) Who are we trying to impress? and (c) Unless this esoteric work is world-class and destined to become a perennial classic, perhaps our audiences would be better served by thoughtfully consigning it to our never-never pile. 

Lots to think about here with a great question raised in the first place. Bravo to those who speak their mind and give us something to think about.

 

I come smack up against this problem every time I work with – either as arranger or conductor – World Music. John's point about the music actually being shaped by the sounds and accents of the text is so true, and is especially noted in the case of World Music repertoire. I have frequently taken delight in asking my French Canadian wife what she thinks of the accent in certain arrangements of mine (which she knows all too well!) sung in French by foreign choirs. With rare exception she has noted that French accents are very well handled, whether by South Americans or Asians, North Americans or Europeans. What a wonderful way to enter into a culture by singing its songs, its colours, its language! Yes, it takes effort, but what of value does not? And having sung something in French makes it easier to sing something in Spanish or Italian or vice versa. Having sung in German makes it easier to sing in Dutch, which then makes it easier to sing in Portuguese! And on it goes. One does not continually reinvent the wheel. Good advice, Sandra, that we not 'fall into the trap of believing that the only music worth giving (our) attention to is that of (our) own culture.'

 

Donald

Thank you especially to Sandra Keene, who saves me much time by writing what I would have written.  I will add one more point:

 

My students are no more challenged by a new language than they are by finding their pitches, counting their rhythms, and managing their vocal techniques; EVERYTHING is foreign to their prior experience, and ALL OF IT IS VERY DIFFICULT for them.  If I were to eliminate from consideration every piece in which they could not be projected to sound like experts, then we would be stuck singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb."  But they'll be the first to tell you how grateful they are to have experienced Carissimi's "Plorate filii Israel," Aulis Salinnen's "Sympaati," Oedon Partos's "Hamavdil," etc., and they are very excited for this weekend's trip to Chicago to sing music from the Republic of Georgia and to eat a traditional feast in a Georgian restaurant.  Our audience, too, comes to our concerts unexposed but goes away having decided that these repertoires -- in the end compellingly if not virtuosically performed -- are interesting and beautiful and worthy of study, exposure, and support.  It's my job, professing choral music in a unversity, to ensure that all of this happens.

 

 

 

My small choir, in a backwater of rural southerm France has no problem approaching music in French (naturally), Occitan, Spanish, Catalan, Russian, Hungarian, German, Irish, English, Italian, Latin, Church Slavonic,   English, Swedish, Norwegian - and probably one or two I have omitted - Oh yes, American!  :-)

 

Perhaps our geographical location makes us less intimidated by languages.  We generally need two to get by - In Perpignan, only 70 km away, Catalan is as likely to be spoken as French.  The older generation here, locally, speak Occitan among themselves, although for a foreigner like me they will courteously switch to French.  The US, though generally has only one language.  That may make approaching another tongue a bit daunting.  But it should be taken as a challenge and way to communicate and broaden horizons.  And who cares if we make mistakes.  We make mistakes in English too and no one bothers much.

 

Whilst I can see some value in I.P.A., I am not sure it is the panacea.  Better to find someone who knows whatever lanaguage is in question and get them to make a recording of the text.  But above all, get past the point where another language is something that seems a threat - or at least makes for lack of comfort.  Music and language are for enjoyment!  Can anyone imagine La Marseillaise in English, or The Star Spangled Banner sung in French?  Music is supposed to bring us together, not keep us apart.

Well, this thread has certainly stirred up a lot of passion!

 

Speaking on IPA and languages...

 

It may be mostly an American issue, but as David Monks said, Americans generally only learn American English.  If they are introduced to a language during their educational years, it's usually not adequate training to use in the choral field at a meaningful level. Will I ever become fluent in other languages? Perhaps and perhaps not, but does that mean that I should forego all pieces of music for a choir in which I don't have a complete mastery of the language?  I think not, it's too limiting. 
 

So here's the quandry. How does one learn pronunciation of a language, especially as an adult?  Yes, I completely agree that one should find an expert in the language to model it for them. However, I often find that my visual learning skills help to inform my auditory learning skills when it comes to learning new languages - hence, the IPA. Perhaps I'm the only one who functions like that, if so, I willl keep writing my IPA transcriptions.  But I find it hard to believe that I am the only person who learns in that manner.

 

I also understand that I is not the same in German as it is in English, along with countless other examples where IPA breaks down.  But, I have found that, for me, it is an excellent starting point when I'm learning a song in a foreign language.

Ideally, I would like to see all choral scores have IPA transcriptions (phenomes, syllabification, ect.), a word-for-word translation, and a poetic translation. It seems to me that such transcriptions and translations of the musical canon, at the very least, would of be great assistance to people who are coming up in the choral world.

 

As I said before, this may completely be an America issue. If it is, I'll recognize that and pursue IPA through other paths.

Do you know about the lyric diction website, SingersBabel (http://www.singersbabel.com)? This is exactly their business model - their website has IPA transcriptions and video/audio pronunciation guides by native speakers for choral and other texts, accessible on a subscription basis.  They are a young company and still in the process of growing their catalog of texts, but if you are a choir director and have specific texts that you want to see included, I'm sure they'd be happy to reach out to you and discuss the possibility.

Dear Patrick, 

 

    You have summed up much of the discussion very well. I agree with you completely and have used IPA for my own solo work for many years. I learned it originally when, as an American, I was studying English as a foreign language at a Dutch university. It really opened my eyes to the idiosyncracies of English for starters. If I may add my own two cents in favor of using IPA, here they are:

 

    I also direct a community choir in rural France, but in an area where other languages are not often heard. My choir's attitude to start was: if it isn't in French, we can't sing it. I am not above a little translating, certainly if it is important for the audience to understand the text. Slowly though I started introducing "foreign" music and always with a page showing the translation word for word as well as the IPA symbols. At the bottom I add a short list of symbols with French words that use the sound, at least where possible. At first I had a lot of blank looks, but now two years down the road, most people are referring to them. In fact a singer said to me just this morning that she thought she could negociate a song in Dutch if I put it down for her in that "what do you call it, IPA thing". 

 

  Of course, it is nice to have a native speaker model a text. I find, however, that the spoken word is not always the way I want it sung. You won't find many native speakers who are aware of that, and they often can't slow down enough to let the singers figure out how to mark their score word by word. So even though I use native speakers when possible, the IPA is useful. Furthermore, it allows me to point out what I want opposed to the spoken language. Just imagine that your choir sings the French word "il" like a Frenchman speaks it. It will be very wide, and believe me it doesn't sound good. We can now laugh about me correcting their French!

 

   I buy a lot of music in the states, and my pet peeve is a score, that comes with a so called phonetic pronunciation of the text. This is totally useless to someone who is not a native English speaker and means I have to write out the IPA anyway. If a French person sees "dee" he says "day" not /di/, and if he sees "doo", he will sing "doe" not /du/.

 

   When any choir sings in English, and I have directed English, Dutch, French, Chinese and even Portuguese speakers, there is always the diphthong problem. Firstly, which sounds are really in a word like "holy", secondly which sound is longest, and thirdly do I want them to sing both sounds. For a French choir I prefer /holi/ to /houli/. Using IPA they can see what I expect, and I am free to explain that they will hear the word differently when spoken.

 

   Finally I use gestures to reinforce the main vowels (idea from Timothy Seelig and many thanks to him). So, for example, if they see the word "awe" with the IPA /ɔ/, which corresponds to the word "mort" in French, I can also reinforce it by reminding them of the gesture we make for that sound. This works like a charm for me.

 

    I won't tell you my choir can sing perfect English, Russian, German or Spanish, but the IPA has helped them past their fear of foreign languages and allowed us to sing music they might never have enjoyed. 

 

   So my vote goes to IPA, and I too hope that more publishers include it.

 

Bonne journée,

Carol

 

 

In response to Patrick's original query, could Choralnet create a page where we could all submit our Word or other text files to? Those of us who create IPA transcriptions would benefit the most with a "share and share alike" philosophy, although allowing anyone to use what we create would benefit all choirs and singers.

 

Craig