Singers and phonetics
I was no little amused by this account of choristers learning to sing Sindarin as part of Howard Shore’s Fellowship orchestral/choral suite. I pointed it out to David, and he just groaned.
Yes, he is responsible for all that “awss-ghee-lee-ahth” garbage. It was extracted from him at the next best thing to gunpoint, however, and he hates it. The fact is, he wrote them a pronunciation guide, and he told them loud and clear (he went and shouted in their ear!) to look in the Lord of the Rings appendices for further hints. And every snippet he ever sent them is marked with its language.
Shore insisted that David give him the “awss-ghee-lee-ahth” garbage. There it is. David protested, grumbled, rolled his eyes—but eventually gave Shore what he asked for.
Shore, Shore’s assistants, whoever—all the useful ancillary stuff David wrote disappeared from the score. Stupid, but there it is. My personal private opinion (bolstered by a few rather dubious line-settings in the score) is that Shore doesn’t care much about language, which makes a certain amount of sense in a movie-score composer and conductor, but is frankly something less than fully appropriate in this case.
(It’s not just Shore. I’ve had a fair few orchestral conductors who thought of words as pesky annoying things the singers have to learn to cut off correctly. Choral conductors are better, generally, but even some of them fail to get it.)
If, as Language Log so often wishes aloud, we could get decent linguistics education in this country, Shore might not have had to resort to “awss-ghee-lee-ahth” garbage. This is what IPA is for.
I do have a cute story on that topic, though. Toward the end of the whole long Return of the King scoring ordeal, David got a request for a translation to be sung by Renée Fleming. And this time, please, could we have the transcription in IPA?
“Whoa!” I whoaed. “You’re writing lyrics for Renée Fleming? And she wants ‘em in IPA? Wow. That’s just cool.”
“Who’s Renée Fleming?”
“Argh! Philistine! Only, like, über-diva. And she knows IPA, too! Points for her. And you’re writing lyrics for her! Squee!” And I went on squee-ing until he believed me about her über-diva-dom.
So there it is. Singers are not brainless prats; they can handle smart transcriptions. I do wonder where Ms. Fleming learned IPA, though. Somehow I don’t think they teach it in music schools.