A Choral Perspective: Articulation and Diction

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From the course by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Fundamentals of Rehearsing Music Ensembles

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Fundamentals of Rehearsing Music Ensembles

231 ratings

Learn and practice the basic principles of running an effective music ensemble rehearsal. Techniques and strategies are applicable to a variety of ensembles, including bands, orchestras, choirs, and chamber groups.

From the lesson

Articulation, Balance, and Tone

Module 4 begins with perhaps the most crucial task a conductor undertakes: score study. Score study is the umbrella term for the process of thoroughly learning a score-- not just knowing how to sing the melody or memorizing phrases and meters--but learning every aspect of the music that may come to bear on our ability to interpret, conduct, rehearse, and perform it. Unlike many grammatical aspects of conducting, score study is a time-consuming, immersive activity for which it is normal to develop one’s own process, assuming the end result is a deep understanding of the work. After score study, Module 4 moves back to the grammar of conducting, particularly technique for conducting articulations. Please note that this week also contains a very brief introduction to the three types of fermatas. In Module 5 we’ll cover them in detail. These are topics for which regular practice and self-evaluation will be necessary to develop gestures that are clear to the ensemble and second-nature to the conductor. Finally, we will return to “The Rehearsal Toolkit” and explore strategies for rehearsing articulation, balance, and tone. This final topic includes a video on using the piano to demonstrate harmonies and other musical features to the ensemble. Particularly in educational settings, it is important for the conductor to do more than treat the ensemble as his personal musical instrument. Instead, find opportunities to lead ensembles to an understanding of the music it is performing, a goal that only score study makes possible.

19th-Century Style with 21st-Century Ensembles8:11

Additional Articulation Techniques10:22

A Choral Perspective: Articulation and Diction11:51

An Orchestral Perspective: String Articulation and Bowing16:19

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Evan Feldman
Associate Professor & Wind Ensemble Conductor
Music

[MUSIC]

For choral ensembles, articulation is really a matter of diction.

Here's Daniel Huff talking about the issue.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I Know here at Carolina, there are whole classes on diction.

So we're going to summarize it now in about five to ten minutes.

>> [LAUGH] Sure we are.

[LAUGH]

>> [LAUGH] Can you tell us some of the big issues

that we need to worry about, especially if we're a non-singer?

Or dealing with an amateur ensemble.

>> Well there's diction to singers means one thing, and

diction in the common sense of the term means another.

So we'll try and separate them.

Diction from the standpoint of clarity, that is, you can understand it.

The key aspect of diction in terms of how you understand it

is the way you manipulate the tone that we talked about previously.

Generated through the valves and the way we

rec, we regulate that, we interrupt that through

the consonants which may or may not carry

tone as voice consonants or as unvoice consonants.

So for instance one of the problems with the understandability side of diction is

that if the lagado is so extreme that people never hear the vowel being divided.

Then what you have is a massive one vowel whatever it is

with just a big massive maybe gorgeous sound, but nonetheless a big mass.

>> And in a in an instrumental point of

view we would say that the articulation is bad.

>> Exactly right.

>> We, we can't stand hear any articulation [CROSSTALK].

>> That's exactly right.

So, you would articulate.

In that sense of the term you would articulate for clarity and texture.

>> Okay.

>> And generally speaking, I'd say it's fair to say that the

larger the numbers, the more you have to work for greater articulation.

For instance, if you've got just four people singing an SATB piece as a chamber

piece, then they can be extremely legato and

it'll still be fairly understandable because they're going to

be so close to each other in proximity and they're so, they can have it's

easy for them to gain uniformity and precision

of articulation, and they'll still sound wonderfully legato.

In a large choral, like if you have a hundred

voices, you almost have to put gaps in between things,

because it takes time for that kind of sound to

dissipate so that you hear it as being a separate sound.

So there lots of people play all kinds of games, you know, doing that.

I ordinarily work in a choir of about 30 or 32 to 34, around in through there.

So, I'm primarily interested.

I'm, I'm in a fairly enviable position in the sense that I'm

lucky if I can get them to sing open sounds and flow.

And so, articulation isn't something that I worry

about except where I come back to it,

and I say, well that's a gorgeous sound, but I can't tell what you just said.

So there's that side.

Then, there's the diction side from the

singer's side, which is how you reproduce languages.

It's obvious that not everybody can be fluid in

all the languages that you might want to speak in or

sing in, especially if your goal is to explore all

of these alternative cultural practices, which we talked about earlier.

>> Yeah.

>> So, there's a system that singers

use called the International, International phonetic alphabet.

It's commonly available as a source.

It can be linked to the vowels that we were talking about.

So you can see how different vowels and different languages can

be represented in terms of how they're placed in your face.

It's called the vowel trapezoid.

And all of these things are commonly available on, on the internet.

You can Google search that, and find all that sort of stuff.

And I think it's important for anybody who's a working conductor to have

some familiarity with the international phonetic

alphabet so that they can represent the

sounds that they want across a broad culturally up, a broad spectrum of

different culturally iterations using a common language

so that they can produce the sounds.

For instance, there's a high case, there's a forward and a backward And, you

know, we would say the word father, for instance, that would be one thing.

And we would say God, that would be a very different thing, and

they're basically broadly conceived in 'a' about, or a variant of an 'a' about.

But they're placed completely differently in the face, you know?

The 'a' vowel is low and forward.

'A', as in father, 'a' vowel is low and back.

And you can say [SOUND].

Those are, that's a back vowel and a forward vowel at the top, all

the way back and all the forward and you can hear how it changes.

>> Yeah.

>> And that's the vowel envelope problem.

So, and one way when you talk about creating vowels and

tone, you're talking about the problem of diction from a singer's standpoint.

And in another way when you talk about diction, you're

talking about it in your sense of the term which is

articulation, which is how you, how you use the consonants

to divide those tones that you worked so hard to create.

Fairly different problems, but they're one and the same with the choir.

And like I said, size magnifies the problem.

>> Right.

>> If you have, if you go from 30 singers

to 60 singers your problems go up with the numbers.

>> Right, and it's just, almost the same in the, in the instrumental world

where the amount of players can determine

the kind of problems that we're dealing with.

>> Mm-hm.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

>> Dan I wonder if you can outline maybe the top

diction pitfalls that you encounter and that we might also encounter.

>> Well aside from misshapen bubbles which is

a common one, commonly people jut their chin

and click and close their mouth, and that

stops the vowel from forming where ever it is.

>> What would that sound like to us if we're.

>> Aaaah.

Aaaah.

>> As opposed to?

>> Aaaah.

Aaaah.

You can hear the basic geometry shift.

If you put your fingers right here on both sides of

your Larynx you can feel where the vowel is going to be shaped.

If you keep your chin forward and tilted up, you can feel that little stretch.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Now, you fundamentally changed, essentially, you're

taking a trumpet and holding it out straight.

You've got a straight tube, and tilted it off

axis, and that has a profound impact on the tongue.

>> So we can, we can, kind of analyse that by

both listening and by watching what our singers are doing.

>> Yeah, yes.

>> Okay.

>> Another thing that people do is they

tend to spread, so they'll take the vowels [SOUND]

or cover [SOUND], and they're changing the length

of the column of air by extending their lips.

But that isn't the same as actually changing the vowel,

where it needs to be changed, which is in the tongue.

A third thing that people will do

is they'll mis-time multiple combinations of vowels.

For instance, one of the things that you

always run into hear is classically called a diphthong.

>> Mm-hm.

>> A word, for instance, like well we, we talked about spacious earlier.

That's got an eh, e, spacious- >> Yeah.

>> Spacious, and you can, you have choices.

You can either spacious skies where you articulate them

both, that would be the closest to to, vernacular English.

>> Speak English.

>> Or you can in the Latin for instance you

can say In Te Domine where you In Te, In Te

you stop it short of it and you form the eh

sound but you don't eh ee it you don't diphthong it.

So you have a lot of people who will miss form

diphthongs there are even worse ones like ooh like the word down.

Is o, u.

So you have O and W, but you're pronouncing it an and o, and an u.

You have three vowels in there which form that, that word.

And if you go halfway to them in a choir, I mean, it wouldn't matter

if you said down or down or whatever, I wouldn't know what you were saying.

Particularly because we know each other and we would read the context broadly.

But if you and I say it together and you go further into

that diphthong than I go into it, then we have a different vowel envelope.

>> M-hm.

>> And different vowel envelopes mean we have colliding sets

of frequencies, which essentially can never be made to sound good.

Never can be made to sound unified.

>> Yeah.

>> The idea of being in a choir is that A, you have to train.

That's why I mentioned earlier about the vowels.

You train, you vocalize the concept of a vowel

into them, and then you apply it specifically in locations.

The problem of ensemble is managing how you choose to do it artistically.

In other words, are you going to use the

vernacular and sing the diphthong, and if so,

everybody has to change from the primary vowel

to the secondary vowel at precisely the same time.

And even if you don't, if you've decided

that you're not going to sing the secondary vowel,

then everybody has to go right up to it, cut it with the consonant and go on.

It's, it, that's, those are questions of,

advanced questions of ensembleness as opposed to vowels.

A third thing that, or another thing that people need to pay

specific attention to is consonants that affect the vowel that precedes them.

One of the most common ones is an R.

R is called the retroflexive, and it bends the vowel that precedes it back.

If you pinpoint your tongue and go [SOUND].

You see how your tongue shifts back?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay.

If we think, say the [SOUND], you feel that go back.

>> Yeah.

>> A way to get around that instead of

using an r in, in romance languages other than English,

non-English, then you can do either, you should flip

an R, one flip, intervocalic R is what it's called.

So you pop it.

In English, if you are singing in vernacular, you can raise it

to a neutral schwa, high case neutral schwa, so you say chair.

Chair, and it'll go forehead as it goes ba, instead of going backwards.

So, I'm saying chair, chair.

So I'm singing, heavy eh.

No diphthong.

No, no i, in that.

Chair, it's going forward, chair.

And at the last second, you toss it back.

Those are the most common, and annoying, things.

Secondly or lastly, I'd say that style kind of trumps everything.

So if you're singing any kind of vernacular, for instance,

a lot of people sing spirituals with very sharply voiced consonants.

Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho.

Joshua Fit The Battle, Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho.

Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho.

It, it changes, it mixes the, it mixes two totally different styles of

pronunciation and makes it impossible to, to become stylistic.

Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho, you stop all those T's and let them flow together.

The two T's in battle almost become D's.

Battle of, battle of, battle of and it'll carry pitch, and you

get the percussiveness in that kind of a sound comes, comes to

the J, Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho, Josh Fit The Battle

of Jericho, and falls right into the, falls right into the syncopation pattern.

Whereas if you go Joshua Fit The battle of Jericho then

you get [UNKNOWN] you know, feel like you're stuttering to yourself.

>> Yeah.

It's an incredibly complex sort of, and this video is not

going to be enough to teach anyone really how to do it,

but at least puts us on the right track and, and

kind of explores and reveals the issues that we have to do.

>> Yes, look up the IPA.

The IPA grabs all of that.

>> Great.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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