One who listens to recorded examples of liturgical music can often determine the nationality of the choir by noting the hard or fricative consonants or modified vowels which are more related to French or German than to Italian. The absence of an internationally-accepted standard of pronunciation presents but few problems.
Most of us do not play German recordings to demonstrate Latin pronunciation, and few of us accept into our choirs students who learned their Latin in Germany or France.
We do, however, accept students into our choirs who were trained in other parts of our own country (I have students from twenty-one states in my sixty-five member group), and this makes it even more “beneficial and desirable to foster a uniform pronunciation based on the Italian usage,” as Dr. Trame writes. It hardly seems dilettantish to insist on “teh deh-oom” when “tay day-oom” implies something totally different in Alabama than it does in Wisconsin, in addition to introducing a diphthong where the rest of the world sees a pure vowel. I’ve got some kids who can stretch a diphthong a country mile.
Swabian German differs from Hochdeutsch. That variation would not justify our pronouncing a German text with American vowel sounds. Nor does the existence of national variants of Latin pronunciation lessen the desirability of our conforming to the Italianized Latin standard. If we allow ourselves to accept the “Tay Day-oom” because that pronunciation is natural to Americans, we’re going to find ourselves listening to the “How-Iay-Ioo-yuh Chorus” ere long.
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