Singing with Accents

I was listening to an absolutely excellent interview with Veronica Lee of the UK’s Guardian on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio show “Q”, with host Jian Ghomeshi.  (The podcast for this interview is available here – search for the 2010-02-09 episode “Julie Powell” – Veronica Lee was the first interview on the program – so it’s easy to find – unfortunately, there is no direct link to this interview yet).  The accompanying article in the Guardian is found here.  Although, I highly recommend listening to the podcast for a fuller discussion of the subject.

 

The interview, which I admit has no great significance to choral music, had me thinking about the often pain staking process we go through as choral conductors to make our choirs sing with specific dialects of English or Latin.  (I once was taught to sing Poulenc with French Latin.  I was unconvinced at the start of the rehearsal process – and even more unconvinced after the project was over).  Now it seems common practice for us to use different versions of Austrian Latin for Haydn and Mozart – with differences of opinion of which is the correct way to do this.

 

Our desire to sing American spirituals with “southern” accents  (up here in Canada anyway) often have tragic results.  Is it important that we modify our dialect depending on the origin and era of the music?  Are you offended when you hear Shakespeare read with an American accent, or “Deep River” sung with a rolled “R”?