music and pronunciation
The Christmas season is now over, even if you, like most Americans, pay no attention to the actual twelve days of Christmas, which ended January 6th. So, with the wall-to-wall soundtrack of Christmas music still dancing in our heads, what may we observe?
One thing is that your choir teacher was wrong. For some reason, vocal music professionals — singers, coaches, teachers, directors, ministers — keep passing on a powerful meme about the English language and singing: namely, that English is an ugly language not suited to singing, and that Italian, with its limited palate of vowel sounds, invariably called "pure," is far better.
And then they actually try to get you to sing English with an Italian accent. Really.
Remember? Yeesh. The only people that fare a little better, and only a little, are the directors of those showchoirs, whose scarf-necked version of pop and jazz is as close to the glory of the English language as any institution is likely to get. (A personal note to Duane Cottrell: Save us!)
Meanwhile, pop music itself is hardly any place to go. Who could hate the English language more than Alanis Morissette, who in every song uncorks all the bottled-up diphthongs of an entire school district?
Here's the deal. English is beautiful. It's a great language for singing. In the classical world, Renee Fleming proves this. In the pop and jazz worlds, Ella Fitzgerald proves it. You can pronounce clear, lovely English, with smoothly arching diphthongs, rowry American Rs, throaty Ls, and the whole bit, and sound like a million bucks doing it.
A friend responded that if English were such a good language for singing, then why are all the great operas Italian? Well, one reason might be that during the two golden ages of opera it was banned in England. (People often overlook the roles of politics and social history in things like this. Why do you think that such an overwhelming load of pop singers borrow their pronunciations from the American South?) But even then, let's remember that opera isn't the only music. One of the great works of art, of any kind, of all time, is Handel's Messiah. Granted, we often now hear it sung in what's supposed to sound like the Authenticke Queene's Englishe, but even then you can't get rid of the language entirely.
What a contrast, then, to hear the stilted, flat, false Italianate pronunciations of all those choirs at Cha-rrrrristmastime, and then, in every mall and boutique, to hear the grand American pop Winter canon. The jazz and pop of the twentieth century are America's great contribution to world art. Johnny Hartman, Karen Carpenter, Jeri Southern, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Ann Miller, Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, Jessica Simpson (who, you may recall, is a spine-chilling singer), Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Tony Bennett, K. D. Lang, Sarah Vaughn, Ella — all crystal-clear singers of American English. And that's just off the top of my head. The list of role models goes on and on.
English! It's your language. Pronounce it proudly.
(And, Alanis, responsibly.)
One thing is that your choir teacher was wrong. For some reason, vocal music professionals — singers, coaches, teachers, directors, ministers — keep passing on a powerful meme about the English language and singing: namely, that English is an ugly language not suited to singing, and that Italian, with its limited palate of vowel sounds, invariably called "pure," is far better.
And then they actually try to get you to sing English with an Italian accent. Really.
Remember? Yeesh. The only people that fare a little better, and only a little, are the directors of those showchoirs, whose scarf-necked version of pop and jazz is as close to the glory of the English language as any institution is likely to get. (A personal note to Duane Cottrell: Save us!)
Meanwhile, pop music itself is hardly any place to go. Who could hate the English language more than Alanis Morissette, who in every song uncorks all the bottled-up diphthongs of an entire school district?
Here's the deal. English is beautiful. It's a great language for singing. In the classical world, Renee Fleming proves this. In the pop and jazz worlds, Ella Fitzgerald proves it. You can pronounce clear, lovely English, with smoothly arching diphthongs, rowry American Rs, throaty Ls, and the whole bit, and sound like a million bucks doing it.
A friend responded that if English were such a good language for singing, then why are all the great operas Italian? Well, one reason might be that during the two golden ages of opera it was banned in England. (People often overlook the roles of politics and social history in things like this. Why do you think that such an overwhelming load of pop singers borrow their pronunciations from the American South?) But even then, let's remember that opera isn't the only music. One of the great works of art, of any kind, of all time, is Handel's Messiah. Granted, we often now hear it sung in what's supposed to sound like the Authenticke Queene's Englishe, but even then you can't get rid of the language entirely.
What a contrast, then, to hear the stilted, flat, false Italianate pronunciations of all those choirs at Cha-rrrrristmastime, and then, in every mall and boutique, to hear the grand American pop Winter canon. The jazz and pop of the twentieth century are America's great contribution to world art. Johnny Hartman, Karen Carpenter, Jeri Southern, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Ann Miller, Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, Jessica Simpson (who, you may recall, is a spine-chilling singer), Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Tony Bennett, K. D. Lang, Sarah Vaughn, Ella — all crystal-clear singers of American English. And that's just off the top of my head. The list of role models goes on and on.
English! It's your language. Pronounce it proudly.
(And, Alanis, responsibly.)
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