What is this song technique in theatre called?
April 10th, 2008 | by song |
Shadow Man asked:
In a musical, the actors will sometimes try to sing a song as fast as possible. The result is usually a song with strong beats and almost sounding like talking instead of singing. What is this type of singing called?
AL
In a musical, the actors will sometimes try to sing a song as fast as possible. The result is usually a song with strong beats and almost sounding like talking instead of singing. What is this type of singing called?
AL
3 Responses to “What is this song technique in theatre called?”
By JT on Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
isn’t it just opera
By barrych209 on Apr 13, 2008 | Reply
If they are talking rather than singing, it *sounds* like it might be something called sprechstimme. Strechstimme was “popular” in classical music of the early 20th century (I *think* — it’s been a while). Sprechstimme is where the singer talks on the approximate note pitch that’s on the score.
Hope that helps.
By brucebirchall on Apr 14, 2008 | Reply
The simple answer is recitative and many operas use it. But it is rarely a fast delivery technique.
There are songs that are intended to be sung very fast, like Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I am the Model of a Modern Major-General” (from the Pirates of Penzance) or the Lord Chancellor’s nightmare song (from Iolanthe). I would use the term “patter song”.
Excerpt of the nightmare song:
“When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire–the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you;”
Tom Lehrer’s The Elements song (to the same tune as Sullivan’s Modern Major General) is another such patter song with the added comic bonus that it is a tongue-twister too.
His delivery is more monotoned than in the comic opera and arguably he used a form of sprechstimme (see below)
Excerpt of the Elements Song:
There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (gasp)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium!
==
There are two terms and the difference between them, that need explaining:
Sprechgesang and sprechstimme (German for spoken-song and spoken-voice) are musical terms used to refer to a vocal technique that falls between singing and speaking.
Though sometimes used interchangeably, sprechgesang is a term more 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 (not having emphasis on particular pitches).
Sprechstimme is closely associated with the composers of the Second Viennese School. 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
Arnold Schoenberg used it in Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and Alban Berg adopted the technique and asked for it in parts of his operas Wozzeck +after the play by Buchner) and Lulu (after the play by Frank Wedekind).
The term sprechgesang is more closely aligned with the long used recitative or parlando techniques than sprechstimme. Where it is used in this way, it is usually in the context of the late Romantic German opera in the 19th and early 20th century. Thus sprechgesang is often simply a German alternative to recitative.