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From:  Joel Figen <natural@f...>
Joel Figen <natural@f...>
Date:  Sat Nov 3, 2001  6:09 pm
Subject:  Russian choral diction, anyone?


I have been asked to assist an American church choir in Russian
pronunciation. I haven't seen the scores they will sing, and I
don't even know yet whether they'll be mainly folk, popular, or
classical. I plan to soften the blow to their North American
tongues by preparing some simple cheat sheets containing the
alphabet, approximate English sounds, and notations on how the
true pronunciations differ from the approximate english
equivalents. I'm pretty sure I'll also have 10 or 15 minutes to
demonstrate what it all sounds like. So far so good. The
problem is that while I'm fluent enough in spoken Russian, I
really don't have any idea what should happen to certain
non-Italianate vowel sounds when you try to sing them, and I'd
be not at all surprised to find that it's a matter of taste and
style that varies with the type of music being sung. The reason
for my sorry state in this matter is that 30 or so years ago
when I was learning Russian, I wasn't at all interested in
singing, and by the time I took up singing, I had lost my
interest in Russian. It goes that way sometimes. Anyway, there
must be information available on this, in English, in not too
much depth, possibly on the internet even. Any suggestions?


Best,
Joel Figen



  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
15104 Re: Russian choral diction, anyone? Craig Tompkins   Sun  11/4/2001   3 KB
15113 Re: Russian choral diction, anyone? Margaret Harrison   Sun  11/4/2001   2 KB
15114 Re: Russian choral diction, anyone? Kathryn Thickstun Leff   Sun  11/4/2001   3 KB

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