Proper pronunciation of "Purcell"?
Brian Link
the first syllable.
However, when I was in England recently on a choir tour, our tour
guide had a different opinion. I don't know her background, but she
spoke with a mellifluous, aristocratic British accent.
She said, "dear boy, nobody here says PUR-cell. It's, of course,
pur-CELL".
Now, she's not a musician, but was obviously steeped in her culture
and history.
It's a trivial thing, but it's been bugging me so I thought I'd ask if
anyone here had an opinion.
Thanks!
BLink
--------------------------
"The worst thing about censorship is [redacted]"
John Howell
>Most of the folks I talk with pronounce the surname with the accent on
>the first syllable.
>
>However, when I was in England recently on a choir tour, our tour
>guide had a different opinion. I don't know her background, but she
>spoke with a mellifluous, aristocratic British accent.
>
>She said, "dear boy, nobody here says PUR-cell. It's, of course,
>pur-CELL".
England and America, two nations separated by a common language. And
pronunciation! I don't think there IS a "proper" pronunciation,
since it varies geographically, unless you assume that modern British
English is automatically the same pronunciation that Purcell would
have used. When it comes to Shakespeare, we do NOT make that
assumption. (The question has bugged me, too.) We also differ on
the pronunciation of the large feline for which a certain motor car
is named, and the very light metal used largely in aircraft
manufacturing.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:John....@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
Brian Link
wrote:
>At 9:37 PM -0600 3/4/09, Brian Link wrote:
>>Most of the folks I talk with pronounce the surname with the accent on
>>the first syllable.
>>
>>However, when I was in England recently on a choir tour, our tour
>>guide had a different opinion. I don't know her background, but she
>>spoke with a mellifluous, aristocratic British accent.
>>
>>She said, "dear boy, nobody here says PUR-cell. It's, of course,
>>pur-CELL".
>
>England and America, two nations separated by a common language. And
>pronunciation! I don't think there IS a "proper" pronunciation,
>since it varies geographically, unless you assume that modern British
>English is automatically the same pronunciation that Purcell would
>have used. When it comes to Shakespeare, we do NOT make that
>assumption. (The question has bugged me, too.) We also differ on
>the pronunciation of the large feline for which a certain motor car
>is named, and the very light metal used largely in aircraft
>manufacturing.
>
>John
I love the part about England and America being separated by a common
language! However, describing chemical, molecular or metallic
compounds it is important to add those errant vowels to the
description. For us laymen, "aluminum" and "aluminium" may seem
interchangeable, but those extra syllables could mean something to
chemists.
Thanks so much John for responding to my late-night, Lager-addled
posts.
BLink
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
- Richard Feynman
howard posner
On Mar 4, 2009, at 10:03 PM, Brian Link wrote:
> She said, "dear boy, nobody here says PUR-cell. It's, of course,
> pur-CELL".
Doubtless she meant "nobody on this bus." People in Britain more
knowledgeable than she pronounce it the way you do.
> I love the part about England and America being separated by a
> common language!
George Bernard Shaw said it. He also wrote (for Henry Higgins in
Pygmalion) "The English despise their language and will not teach
their children to speak it"
> For us laymen, "aluminum" and "aluminium" may seem
> interchangeable, but those extra syllables could mean something to
> chemists.
They mean the difference between an American and an Englishperson
Mic...@aol.com
Brtish musicians seem to be unaware. Purcell's great friend and pupil John Blow
wrote a marvellous piece on Purcell's death - Mark how the lark and linnet
sing, Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell, with a text by Dryden. The name of
the composer occurs in the text, and is very strongly stressed on the first
syllable:
Mark how the lark and linnet sing:
With rival notes
They strain their warbling throats
To welcome in the spring.
But in the close of night
When Philomel begins her heav'nly lay,
They cease their mutual spite,
Drink in her music with delight,
And list'ning and silent obey.
So ceas'd the rival crew when Purcell came:
They sung no more, or only sung his fame.
Struck dumb, they all admir'd the matchless man,
Alas, too soon retir'd,
As he too late began.
We beg not Hell our Orpheus to restore:
Had he been there,
Their sovereign's fear
Had sent him back before.
The pow'r of harmony too well they knew;
He long ere this had tun'd their jarring sphere,
And left no Hell below.
The heav'nly choir, who heard his notes from high,
Let down the scale of music from the sky;
They handed him along,
And all the way he taught, and all the way they sung.
Ye brethren of the lyre and tuneful voice,
Lament his lot, but at your own rejoice.
Now live secure, and linger out your days:
The gods are pleas'd alone with Purcell's lays,
Nor know to mend their choice.
It is a wonderful piece. for two countertenors, two recorders and continuo,
well worth doing.
All good wishes
Michael Procter
Oliver Webber
> In fact there is a definitive answer, of which most Brits and indeed most �
> Brtish musicians seem to be unaware. Purcell's great friend and pupil John Blow �
> wrote a marvellous piece on Purcell's death - Mark how the lark and linnet
> sing, �Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell, with a text by Dryden. The name of
> the �composer occurs in the text, and is very strongly stressed on the first �
> syllable:
Quite right. This is actually rather well known in the UK, at least
among early music specialists and radio announcers. I'm afraid the
tour guide has got it wrong.
There are plenty of folk here in the UK who still say PurCELL; I'm 39,
and was taught this pronunciation at school. It was only in the 90s
when, with the tercentenary and general upsurge in early music, the
historically correct pronunciation found favour; I'm very much part of
this movement, having been a professional baroque violinist for the
best part of 20 years, but occasionally I still have to stop myself
reverting to the old pronunciation. In short, it's a hard habit to
break!
I'm all for accepting a variety of forms, but when someone smugly
corrects you but is in fact wrong, I'm sorely tempted to point out
their error!
Regards
Oliver
Margo Schulter
> Quite right. This is actually rather well known in the UK, at least
> among early music specialists and radio announcers. I'm afraid the
> tour guide has got it wrong.
> There are plenty of folk here in the UK who still say PurCELL; I'm 39,
> and was taught this pronunciation at school. It was only in the 90s
> when, with the tercentenary and general upsurge in early music, the
> historically correct pronunciation found favour; I'm very much part of
> this movement, having been a professional baroque violinist for the
> best part of 20 years, but occasionally I still have to stop myself
> reverting to the old pronunciation. In short, it's a hard habit to
> break!
Please let me admit that on this far side of the Atlantic, there are
curious people like myself who tend also to say PurCELL, a name one
encounters among people here not necessarily involved in music; but
I must, of course, immediately concur that the meter of that ode
makes the historically correct pronunciation for the composer all
too obvious.
> I'm all for accepting a variety of forms, but when someone smugly
> corrects you but is in fact wrong, I'm sorely tempted to point out
> their error!
Yes, a most salutary corrective indeed!
> Regards
> Oliver
With many thanks,
Margo
Brian Link
<snip Blow Ode on the Death of Purcell reference>
THANK YOU!
That does in fact seal the deal for me. I've done the Ode several
times, but it never occurred that the answer to this question was
staring me in the face.
BLink
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest
exercises in moral philosophy; that is,
the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Brian Link
>On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 14:37:58 +1100, Brian Link wrote
>(in article <v1iuq411uirkfqqa6...@4ax.com>):
>You were right, and she is wrong.
>
>The proof is provided by Dr. John Blow, Purcell's teacher, contemporary and
>survivor. After Purcell's untimely death, he composed ³An Ode on the Death of
>Mr. Henry Purcell², for two recorders, two countertenors and continuo. The
>text underlay to the music allows for no pronunciation other than the one
>with the stress on the FIRST syllable, on the several occasions when the word
>³Purcell² is set.
>
>The words were the creation of Dryden, also a contemporary and friend of
>Purcell. The correct syllable stress is implicit in the text itself. Here are
>the two relevant verses:
>
>So ceas'd the rival crew when Purcell came,
>They sung no more, or only sung his fame.
>Struck dumb, they all admir'd the
>God-like man,
>The God-like man, alas, too soon retir'd
>As he too late began.
>
>Š
>
>Ye brethren of the lyre, and tuneful voice,
>Lament his lot: but at your own rejoice.
>Now live secure and linger out your days,
>The Gods are pleased alone with Purcell's lays,
>Nor know to mend their choice.
Thanks Terry - someone earlier in the thread had the same observation.
As I've sung the Blow Ode several times, it was a surprise to me to
realize the answer was right in front of me.
dgr...@ccwebster.net
>
> England and America, two nations separated by a common language.
>
That's a good one, but my favorite distinction between the two is
this:
In England, 100 miles is a long journey.
In America, 100 years is a long time.
--
don groves
billkilpatrick
> England and America, two nations separated by a common language.
who said that, please? ... i think it was george bernard shaw but last
time i looked, i couldn't find a source.
if you know, please tell me - it's been bothering me for years
- bill
Brian Link
>On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 10:37:57 +1100, Brian Link wrote
>(in article <mfo0r4pbov9brtbp0...@4ax.com>):
>For some reason, my newsreader programme has failed to join up messages into
>a thread. Therefore, I discovered, too late, that another correspondent had
>already answered your question fully. Sorry you had to sit through it again!
Don't apologize! It was a pretty obvious answer that my brain cells
failed to connect.
In church choir this week, we ran into a Blow anthem that placed the
accent for "acceptable" on the third syllable. When folks balked at
this obviously bad bit of text underlay, I was able to successfully
connect the dots on the fact that in Restoration England, the French
were quite important, and "acceptable" is a French cognate - like
"incorruptible" in the Trumpet bass aria in Handel's Messiah.
There are a few "renaissance men" that I know who hold vast libraries
of knowledge in their heads, which they have easy access to.
For me, I think my brain is full.
BLink
"God created all tribes of men, and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each"
- Geronimo
John Howell
>In church choir this week, we ran into a Blow anthem that placed the
>accent for "acceptable" on the third syllable. When folks balked at
>this obviously bad bit of text underlay, I was able to successfully
>connect the dots on the fact that in Restoration England, the French
>were quite important, and "acceptable" is a French cognate - like
>"incorruptible" in the Trumpet bass aria in Handel's Messiah.
As someone who has done a certain amount of working with early
manuscripts and prints (and who is having my class in Early Music
Literature work through transcriptions of chant notation, rhythmic
modal notation, Franconian mensural notation, and soon a rather nice
15th century chanson), i can state unequivocally that you can almost
NEVER trust the text underlay--or the apparent text underlay!--in
those primary sources. The composers almost NEVER oversaw the
copying, and the scribes or typesetters were very obviously not
musicians. In fact one of Josquin's student commented that the first
thing he did was to teach his singers how to set the words to the
notes.
The problem is that many editors are musicologists and not singers,
and feel that they have to at least TRY to follow the primary
sources. It takes an experienced singer to come up with decent text
underlay!
Brian Link
wrote:
>At 5:54 PM -0600 3/6/09, Brian Link wrote:
>>In church choir this week, we ran into a Blow anthem that placed the
>>accent for "acceptable" on the third syllable. When folks balked at
>>this obviously bad bit of text underlay, I was able to successfully
>>connect the dots on the fact that in Restoration England, the French
>>were quite important, and "acceptable" is a French cognate - like
>>"incorruptible" in the Trumpet bass aria in Handel's Messiah.
>
>As someone who has done a certain amount of working with early
>manuscripts and prints (and who is having my class in Early Music
>Literature work through transcriptions of chant notation, rhythmic
>modal notation, Franconian mensural notation, and soon a rather nice
>15th century chanson), i can state unequivocally that you can almost
>NEVER trust the text underlay--or the apparent text underlay!--in
>those primary sources. The composers almost NEVER oversaw the
>copying, and the scribes or typesetters were very obviously not
>musicians. In fact one of Josquin's student commented that the first
>thing he did was to teach his singers how to set the words to the
>notes.
>
>The problem is that many editors are musicologists and not singers,
>and feel that they have to at least TRY to follow the primary
>sources. It takes an experienced singer to come up with decent text
>underlay!
>
>John
This reminds me of the time Binkley set us through an Ockeghem mass.
He gave us our own parts on a single stave, and the text. It was up to
us to figure out the underlay, in real time.
He stated that this was how contemporaneous singers would have seen
the music, and I objected. His response was "you think those ancient
teenagers were smarter than you?". And then I figured out how to do
the underlay myself.
Eh, I was young.
Jerry
> At 5:54 PM -0600 3/6/09, Brian Link wrote:
>
> >In church choir this week, we ran into a Blow anthem that placed the
> >accent for "acceptable" on the third syllable. When folks balked at
> >this obviously bad bit of text underlay, I was able to successfully
> >connect the dots on the fact that in Restoration England, the French
> >were quite important, and "acceptable" is a French cognate - like
> >"incorruptible" in the Trumpet bass aria in Handel's Messiah.
>
> As someone who has done a certain amount of working with early
> manuscripts and prints (and who is having my class in Early Music
> Literature work through transcriptions of chant notation, rhythmic
> modal notation, Franconian mensural notation, and soon a rather nice
> 15th century chanson), i can state unequivocally that you can almost
> NEVER trust the text underlay--or the apparent text underlay!--in
> those primary sources. The composers almost NEVER oversaw the
> copying, and the scribes or typesetters were very obviously not
> musicians. In fact one of Josquin's student commented that the first
> thing he did was to teach his singers how to set the words to the
> notes.
>
> The problem is that many editors are musicologists and not singers,
> and feel that they have to at least TRY to follow the primary
> sources. It takes an experienced singer to come up with decent text
> underlay!
This is less of a problem with 17th and 18th century sources than with
the earlier repertory you mentioned. In this present instance, it is
important to know that there were two schools of thought in late-17th
and early 18th century England about the accentuation of words ending
in -able and -ible. This is gone into at length in Morris Halle and
Samuel Jay Keyser, English Stress: Its Form, Its Growth, and Its Roe
in Verse (New York, Evanston, London: Harper and Rowe, 1971), chapter
2, section 4. A famous musical example occurs in Handel's Messiah,
where he set the words "and he shall rise incorruptible" with the
accent in the last word on the penult rather than the antepenult.
Since this is a syllabic setting, there is no doubt whatever about the
accentuation, and for a long time editors believed that, as a German,
Handel's gasp of English was none too reliable, and altered the text
underlay accordingly. HIP performers became aware of this situation by
the mid-1970s, resulting in a certain number of Messiah recordings
(beginning with Christopher Hogwood's) restoring Handel's word-
underlay.
Things get more interesting as we go further back in history. Halle
and Keyser give examples (on p. 116) from a source from around
Shakespeare's time (Peter Levins's Manipulus Vocabulorum, 1570), where
words like "delectable", "acceptable", ""demonstrable", "detestable",
"dividable", "perdurable", and supportable" are all accented on the
*first* syllable.
--
Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net>
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."
D. Peters
In article <v1iuq411uirkfqqa6...@4ax.com>,
Brian Link <bl...@visi.com> wrote:
>Most of the folks I talk with pronounce the surname with the accent on
>the first syllable.
>
>However, when I was in England recently on a choir tour, our tour
>guide had a different opinion. I don't know her background, but she
>spoke with a mellifluous, aristocratic British accent.
>
>She said, "dear boy, nobody here says PUR-cell. It's, of course,
>pur-CELL".
IIRC, you and I had a [British] voice teacher in common at IU, and he
pronounced it PUR-cell (as I remember all too well, because he made me
sing too much PUR-cell for my tastes).
Just another data point--
D.Peters
--
"Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who
has the right information."
--Sen. Barack Obama, 6/27/05
John Howell
>
>This reminds me of the time Binkley set us through an Ockeghem mass.
>He gave us our own parts on a single stave, and the text. It was up to
>us to figure out the underlay, in real time.
>
>He stated that this was how contemporaneous singers would have seen
>the music, and I objected. His response was "you think those ancient
>teenagers were smarter than you?". And then I figured out how to do
>the underlay myself.
Sure. It's a dynamic process. The text pre-existed the music,
always. The composer set that text to music according to his
understanding of it and his creativity. But since music is a
re-creative art as well as a creative art, the performer must then
reverse and repeat the process, setting the composer's notes to the
text's syllables in a way that makes good vocal sense.
I've heard about Binkley's teaching methods, and while it must have
been something of a shock, the result seems to have been very
positive. The same thing happened with the group of students in
Basle who formed his medieval band at the Schola (which included such
"students" as Paul O'Dette and Alice Robbins), who came out of it
with an outstanding recording of the instrumental repertoire.
I never had a chance to work with Binkley. In fact when he came to
I.U. he took the faculty position that I had left at the end of '78
in order to move here. I've often wondered what he did to the
Madrigal Dinners that Pro Arte had made into a rather wonderful
entertainment throughout the '70s.
John Howell
>
>This is less of a problem with 17th and 18th century sources than with
>the earlier repertory you mentioned.
Granted, of course. Often quite clear, although often obscured by
the multiple repetitions of a single line of poetry.
>Things get more interesting as we go further back in history. Halle
>and Keyser give examples (on p. 116) from a source from around
>Shakespeare's time (Peter Levins's Manipulus Vocabulorum, 1570), where
>words like "delectable", "acceptable", ""demonstrable", "detestable",
>"dividable", "perdurable", and supportable" are all accented on the
>*first* syllable.
Ah, but according to whose underlay?!! The point of my earlier post
was that if we can't trust the primary sources--and we can't!--then
the secondary sources are just guess-work. Sometimes educated
guess-work, if the transcriber is an experienced singer, but still
guess-work.
And of course it also calls into question how valid our concept of
"accented syllables" are in relation to their placement within the
bars. True, by at least Purcell's time (although definitely NOT in
1570) there SEEMS to be a dependence on the bar lines to allocate
stress levels within each bar, and instrumentalists certainly appear
to have understood and followed that concept. On the other hand,
there was a VERY LONG period in which no bar lines were used in vocal
music and each line was free to discover its own articulation and
stress pattern, and I would hesitate to assume that THAT tradition,
passed down from one generation of singers to the next, was not still
in play. In other words, that the apparent conflict between word
stress and barline placement stress would not have been resolved in
favor of the words rather than the barlines.
In my editions of renaissance music I often take the extra trouble to
remove the modern bar lines (not all that easy in notation programs
designed around placement between barlines!), although I do print
them in score format rather than individual parts, for purely
practical reasons.
And then there's Poulenc!!! Or even Stravinsky.
Jerry
> At 9:35 PM -0700 3/8/09, Jerry wrote:
>
> >This is less of a problem with 17th and 18th century sources than with
> >the earlier repertory you mentioned.
>
> Granted, of course. Often quite clear, although often obscured by
> the multiple repetitions of a single line of poetry.
>
> >Things get more interesting as we go further back in history. Halle
> >and Keyser give examples (on p. 116) from a source from around
> >Shakespeare's time (Peter Levins's Manipulus Vocabulorum, 1570), where
> >words like "delectable", "acceptable", ""demonstrable", "detestable",
> >"dividable", "perdurable", and supportable" are all accented on the
> >*first* syllable.
>
> Ah, but according to whose underlay?!!
Perhaps I don't understand you correctly, but Levins is not a book on
music. The Latin title means "A Handfull of Words", i.e., a vocabulary
handbook.
> The point of my earlier post
> was that if we can't trust the primary sources--and we can't!--then
> the secondary sources are just guess-work. Sometimes educated
> guess-work, if the transcriber is an experienced singer, but still
> guess-work.
Sure. That was my point as well. If the singer, however so
experienced, doesn't understand the accent patterns in the context of
the period in which the text was set, he/she might as well be trying
to underlay French text using Hungarian rules of accent.
>
> And of course it also calls into question how valid our concept of
> "accented syllables" are in relation to their placement within the
> bars. True, by at least Purcell's time (although definitely NOT in
> 1570) there SEEMS to be a dependence on the bar lines to allocate
> stress levels within each bar, and instrumentalists certainly appear
> to have understood and followed that concept. On the other hand,
> there was a VERY LONG period in which no bar lines were used in vocal
> music and each line was free to discover its own articulation and
> stress pattern, and I would hesitate to assume that THAT tradition,
> passed down from one generation of singers to the next, was not still
> in play. In other words, that the apparent conflict between word
> stress and barline placement stress would not have been resolved in
> favor of the words rather than the barlines.
I think you are overstating the case. Just because there were no
barlines doesn't mean to say there were no rules for accented notes.
In fact, it doesn't even mean there was never any sense of *measure*.
Reflect for a moment on a piece from a decade of two later than 1570,
Dowland's Frog Galliard, also set as "Now, oh now, I needs must part".
Are you seriously going to tell me that the accents on the words
"Now", "now", "needs" and "part" are not set to notes that are already
musically accented in the dance? Going back to the middle of the 16th
century, isn't it much the same case with Jannequin's "Il etait une
fillete" or Ludwig Senfl's setting of "Wann ich des Morgens früh
aufsteh"? I'll grant you that in motet style things can be trickier on
this front than in secular music, but there are still principles to go
by, such as setting the strong syllables to the longer notes. (And
let's not get into the rules of setting vers mesurés à l'antique!)
> In my editions of renaissance music I often take the extra trouble to
> remove the modern bar lines (not all that easy in notation programs
> designed around placement between barlines!), although I do print
> them in score format rather than individual parts, for purely
> practical reasons.
>
> And then there's Poulenc!!! Or even Stravinsky.
Since Poulenc relied fairly heavily on Stravinsky for his rhythmic
ideas, I would say there is no "even" about it!
--
Jerry Kohl