Wednesday, November 26, 2014
In Other Words
Who knows, speaking in tongues may have inspired "Spoken Singing",
a musical technique pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg and significant others back in the 1910s.
"One never knows, do one?" - Fat Waller :)
Sprechgesang (German: [ˈʃpʀɛçɡəˌzaŋ], "spoken singing") and Sprechstimme (German: [ˈʃpʀɛçˌʃtɪmə], "spoken voice") are expressionist vocal techniques between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, Sprechgesang is directly related to the operatic recitative manner of singing (in which pitches are sung, but the articulation is rapid and loose like speech), whereas Sprechstimme is closer to speech itself (because it does not emphasise any particular pitches).[1]
The earliest compositional use of the technique was in the first version of Engelbert Humperdinck's 1897 melodrama Königskinder (in the 1910 version it was replaced by conventional singing), where it may have been intended to imitate a style already in use by singers of lieder and popular song,[3] but it is more closely associated with the composers of the Second Viennese School. Arnold Schoenberg asks for the technique in a number of pieces: the part of the Speaker in Gurre-Lieder (1911) is written in his notation for sprechstimme, but it was Pierrot Lunaire (1912) where he used it throughout and left a note attempting to explain the technique. Alban Berg adopted the technique and asked for it in parts of his operas Wozzeck and Lulu.
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