Re: World premiere

Thanks very much for your message. Very encouraging. Yes, you can see from
sloppy description of sound formation that I'm not a linguist by training!

>> h = preferably hard, like the Arabic h
>
> I don't understand what sound you mean - "hard" has no meaning for me in
> this context and Arabic has several throaty sounds. If it's not the
> voiceless glottal fricative English, what is it?
>
>> j = soft, as in the French jaune
>> r = preferably slightly rolled, as in the French rêve
>
> But standard French |r| in rêve is _not_ rolled, slightly or otherwise! Do
> you mean the /r/ rolled on the tongue tip that you hear from speakers from
> the Midi, or the /r/ rolled with the uvular which is still occasionally
> heard, tho now considered old-fashioned? I'm not clear.
The second - but then my chief 'model' is a Parisian in her 80s. Or perhaps
I have an embedded memory of speech heard many years ago when I last was in
France - aged 3! My sole reason for this admittedly vague description is the
knowledge that for at last some in the choir an 'l' and 'r' distinction
presents problems. I thought accentuating the difference would make things
easier for them.

Similarly with the 'h'. I have Italian (Bergamasque) friends whose English
'h' is a forceful but unvoiced glottal fricative - I guess over-compensation
for the lack of an aspirate in Italian? I thought this approach would work
for singers whose languages also lacked a straight 'h'. I'm actually not too
concerned about the detailed formation of the sounds - it can really be
anything from an English 'h' though a Spanish 'j' to a German 'ch' or an
Arabic 'kh' (quite a few Arabic speakers among this group apparently). The
choir will have less than a week to rehearse the piece together and I don't
want too much of the time taken up with minutiae of pronunciation. Maybe in
future I will go for greater precision - we'll see how it goes this time. At
any rate it's good to be forced to examine why you've done something a
certain way.

Thanks,

Chris

PS By the way I always thought the German 'ch' was described as a glottal
fricative and the English 'h' as an aspirate.....are my wires crossed?

--
Christopher Marshall - composer

vaiaata@ihug.co.nz

http://www.vaiaata.com

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