She Rises (The Original)

On this episode, tenor Charles Reid goes through the text of "Comfort Ye... Ev'ry Valley", and then we discuss some of the problematic traditional misuse of diction with Jan and Catherine McDaniel, from the faculty of the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, focusing on the words COMFORT and SAITH (plus other words that tend to be mispronounced), rolling Rs in the combination CR and GR, the pronunciation of the letter X and a whole lot about schwas.

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Today's episode is in response to a request from the Facebook page, specifically for young coaches! Conductor Erik Nielsen, and singers Simon Neal, John Packard and Nadja Mchantaf talk about what they are looking for from a rehearsal pianist or a vocal coach and I share my experiences as a coach, including a few of my tricks and advice on practicing for auditions.

The audition repertoire for coaches that I mentioned:

Mozart--Le nozze di Figaro 2nd Act Finale; Così fan tutte 1st Act Finale

French--Carmen Smugglers Quintet

Strauss--Elektra opening through the Magd Scene; Der Rosenkavalier opening (including Wie du warst); Salome Jews Quintet

Chorus Scenes--La Bohème 2nd Act; Otello opening; Falstaff Fugue

If anyone has other repertoire that they have found useful, please feel free to post them in the comments section! One thing I didn't mention in the episode is Wolf Trap Opera's Aria Frequency List--they list the arias that were performed with the number of times they heard them. So if you're looking to prepare yourself to accompany audition season in New York City, start learning those arias :-)

I'm moving in a few days and not sure when my new DSL will be hooked up, but I'll be working on new episodes in the meantime so that once it's installed we can get back on track! Please feel free to contact me with requests, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at [email protected]

Olivier Bettens takes us through the pronunciation of French in the 17th Century with a scene from Armide. We talk about some exceptional words that are the same in modern pronunciation, alexandrines, the imperfect verb tense and a fifth nasal vowel. We got through as many rules as we could in the past 2 episodes, but there is a lot of information on this subject, so to find out more, check out Olivier's website, Chantez-vous francais?

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This week we focus on 16th Century French with specialist Olivier Bettens. Our text is "Mignonne allons voir si la rose" by Pierre de Ronsard, and we discuss the differences between 16th Century and Modern French pronunciation and spelling.

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Simon Neal is back with us this week discussing the text "The Vagabond". We go through the text, focusing on the problem with Ls and Rs in English, dealing with pianissimi and why we should sing pure Italianate vowels in every language. I'll also talk about a phonetic concept for unstressed I (between the closed [i] and open [I] sounds) that Jan & Catherine McDaniel (English diction teachers at the Bass School of Music, Oklahoma City University) sent me, the SCHWI.

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This week and next our topic is English Diction with British baritone Simon Neal. 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.

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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.

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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.

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@dictionpolice

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.

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@dictionpolice

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.

www.thedictionpolice.com

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