Stick Time: Vowel Uniformity

Comments

1. Daniel Sommer says

   June 18, 2012 at 9:48 am

   Brave! What a great performance and wonderful diction.  Bob Page once said in a rehearsal (and I paraphrase) that diction is not about singing the words; it’s about making sounds that the audience hears as the words.  And in Clara Kathleen Rogers’ “English Diction in Song and Speech” (1912) she discusses the importance of approaching one’s native language with the same diligence and attention as a foreign langugage.  In this performance it sounds like they really examined which sounds would work best within the ensemble and were very disciplined about doing it.  At the same time the words flowed naturally and the diction was not the focus, but rather contributed to the overall enjoyment of the piece.  

    

   Here were some things I heard

    

   The first parts of the diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ] are incredibly difficult for an ensemble to agree on.  Here the first parts were a little more closed than we would speak but everyone agreed on the vowel and it came just great (without being distracting). 

    

   Everyone consistantly supported the [ə]/[ɚ] and [ʌ]/[ɜ˞] sounds which have a tendency to fall out of the vocal line.  Supporting the open [ɛ] often presents challenges to solo singers and, in my experience, is very difficult to agree on in an ensemble setting.  Sometimes a quick fix is to close the vowel closer to [e] but this group did the work and produced a beautiful and true [ɛ].  

    

   The schwa sound at the end of words can usually morph or lean towards 2-3 other sounds (for example, “heaven” [hɛvən] – the final schwa is rarely a true “schwa” and can lean towards [hɛv(ɛ)n] or [hɛv(ɪ)n] or [hɛv(ʊ)n]).  All the options are going to be understood but the group needs to agree on which they’re going to do.  Here, it sounds like the group all agreed on “violets” [vaɪləts] to lean towards [vaɪl(ɛ)ts] or “radiant” [ɹeɪdɨət] consistently being [ɹeɪdɨ(ɛ)t]  

    

   There many other wonderful details that could be mentioned but the points mentioned above not always easy to accomplished.  The work and attention to detail on this piece really paid off.  Thank you for sharing this delightful performance.

    

   Dan Molkentin

    

    

    

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