Evangeline has been asking me to sing a lot lately.

[conuly]

Today I came out with "You Take The High Road" and "Bonnie George Campbell" and... oh, some other songs which, in retrospect, were all Scottish.

She's been paying attention recently, and now she asks me questions about them. Like "So, the low road is shorter, that's why you'll get there before me, right?" and "But WHY did he never return? Did he get lost? He DIED? WHY DID HE DIE? How do you know he died?" and... oh, the other day she asked a very interesting one about "Who is it that is happy?" and I said it was me, and she wanted to know who it was in the song. She'd caught on to the idea that the person singing the song isn't necessarily the speaker in the song, which is a sophisticated idea, isn't it? It's disconcerting. Ana certainly never asked, and it took her until she was five to suddenly realize that Barbara Allen isn't exactly a laugh-a-minute. (Well, it is, but only once you realize how impossibly maudlin and absurd the whole scenario is.)

Here's a question for you. A lot of songs I sing aren't in exactly in the language I speak, either because they're old, or because they're from another part of the more-or-less-English-speaking world. Like Scotland. This leads to two problems:

1. Words that don't have meaning to me, or that have the *wrong* meaning to me, such as "resigned we may be to our greetin'", to me "greeting" doesn't in any way mean "weeping", even though I know that's what the song means.

2. Rhymes that don't. This is worse than the first category!

How does one deal with that? As I see it, I have a few options.

A. I can ignore it and sing it the way I'd say those words. This option hurts my ears.

B. I can fake the appropriate accent. This is not possible, and is patently absurd.

C. I can sing it the way I'd sing it, but say those words the way the rhyme and meter demand. This just sounds silly.

D. I can try for an appropriate (and poetic!) translation into my own dialect and sing that. This is what I generally do (folk process and all), but I get this vague feeling like it's wrong and if people heard me who knew the original they'd be shocked and horrified. And then my mind throws up phrases like "cultural appropriation" and, honestly, I feel ashamed to even say this, but I was happier when I didn't know what that meant (although I *still* had those guilty feelings about changing the words).

So mostly I go with E. which is "Do option D, but don't sing the songs where anybody can really hear you other than your family", which is unsatisfying.

What do you think?

Comments

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I fake the accent, but then, I was raised in England so it's not *that* weird for me. We have some australian kid's music and they rhyme Horse and Sauce, so I say "sauwss" and "hauwss" instead of "sahs" and "horss." Daniel suggests just not singing those songs at all, but I don't like that option. I guess he's for Option F: refrain from the songs altogether.

[conuly]

You normally say sahs, with the same ah as in father?

And Daniel's option is just no fun :(

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Yes, same "a" sound. Except when I'm trying to rhyme it with horse, and then it sounds about like the O in old.

[conuly]

It'd probably be easier to rhyme horse with sauce. Horse and sauce don't sound nearly alike in my dialect (sauce is said as it's spelled :P, or, rather, sawsss, and horse is also said like it's spelled, and I have got to learn to type IPA one day), but if I said sauce the way you do it'd rhyme, as marveen said, with hoss.

[siderea]

Well, there's option F', which is "Sing less problematic songs." :)

[conuly]

Again, no fun. The songs I really like all have those minor problems!

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Sounds like some backwoods American dialects, where their pronunciation of horse is rendered "hoss" in print. Which could indeed rhyme with our local version of sauce.

I'm one of those Westerners mentioned in The Egg and I: "...vulgar people who pronounced their r's and thought they were as good as anyone."

Welcome to Historically Informed Performance

[siderea]

There's a B': it's not a faked accent, it's a researched pronunciation. I can actually sing "Balulalow" with what I understand is a reasonably passable 16th century Scots pronunciation. I would not dream of singing it other wise, any more than I would try to read Chaucer with a modern English pronunciation.

There's no right answer. That's the challenge of Historically Informed Performance. There's more and less convincing answers, to more and less interesting questions. But you do what you can in an impossible situation.

Re: Welcome to Historically Informed Performance

[conuly]

A researched pronunciation I'd have to manage to reproduce. I'm not sure I can do it. Whatever people *outside* the city say, people *in* the city still don't even think I have my own accent. (Or, rather, they *do* think I have my own accent. They just don't think it's their accent!)

And to be honest, I'd rather read Chaucer translated as well, and Shakespeare too, if it made it more easily comprehensible. I don't think either one of them would really have preferred their works crystallized and accessible only with effort. Shakespeare especially wrote for the masses, and couldn't even consistently spell his own name right!

[siderea]

I don't think either one of them would really have preferred their works crystallized and accessible only with effort.

OK, you were doing great until you said this. It's perfectly cool to make whatever decisions bring out the aspect of a work you most prefer -- e.g. comprehensibility -- but making a bid for both knowing authorial preferences for disposition of his work 500 years later and having some sort of imprimatur based on them is an automatic 30yd penalty. In HIP, it's considered an illegitimate argument, and using it is considered to be trolling for a fight. As an argument it's:

1) Bogus -- you don't know because it's not knowable. Arguing that "because they did X they must have wanted Y" is arguing on circumstantial evidence. I could make a better argument to the contrary in a heartbeat (e.g. "They wrote in poetry and chose every word just so...") based on even more and better evidence that you did... and it would be just as baseless a speculation, because all we have is circumstantial evidence.

2) Irrelevant -- like we even care whether Shakespeare had an opinion one way or the other. We're not real worried about hurting his feelings. Do you think Branagh said, or felt any need to say, "Oh, yes, Shakespeare would have wanted us to do Hamlet set in 1920s Denmark, so that makes it all OK"?

3) Completely unnecessary -- "because I prefer it this way myself" is completely adequate reason to do it your way. You don't actually need to have Chaucer on your "side" to make your choice OK. Honest. It's OK just the way it is.

4) Moralistic and divisive -- You don't need to prove your choice of what to bring out in a work is somehow better and more blesséd than other people's choices of what to bring out. Arguing otherwise is just a recipe for a "less filling/tastes great" online holy war.

5) Inadequate -- there are better and worse choices in how to bring out which ever aspect of a work you choose, and they're based on how effective they are at what they're trying to do. If you aren't making an argument on artistic efficacy, you aren't justifying your choice. You aren't required to justify anything, but if you're so moved, a moment of thought reveals why people who get really into these questions -- e.g. people who've been around HIP at all -- cares only about specific efficacy. That is, if what you care about is comprehensibility, whether or not Chaucer cared about comprehensibility is irrelevant to justifying the changes you make toward the goal of comprehensibility. Arguing from what Chaucer would have wanted fails to make an adequate argument, if that's what you wanted to make, and is a red herring.

Heck, there are all sorts of arguments about which aspects of a piece it is best to prioritize when presenting it outside of its cultural context, and authorial preference isn't even considered a legitimate basis for argument even in that discourse. Shakespeare may have thought, "YES! Translate my work into every possible language -- more residuals for me!" but the director still has to ask themselves, "Is my aim to share the plot (which can be translated) or the poetics (which cannot)?" in picking whether to use a translation or not.

[conuly]

You've thought a lot more about this than I have.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I think you should watch Songcatcher.

[conuly]

What's it about?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

There are many songs that have "alternate" versions—I've heard "Loch Lomond" with "resigned we may be to our grieving" many times. Another common one is the saying (originally from a Robert Burns poem) "The best-laid plans of mice and man go oft awry," which was originally "... gang aft agley."

[conuly]

ALL these songs have alternate versions, but too often the version I really like right now fits into the troubled category :(

I mean, I know by heart some 4 versions of Cruel Sister, another 3 of Bonny Farday, 4 of Gypsy Lover, 2 or 3 of Auld Lang Syne (no, seriously), 2 of Loch Lomond, 4 of Froggie Went A-Courtin', 3 of Golden Vanity, 2 of I Gave My Love a Cherry... well, I can go on. And these are just the ones I have memorized and can think of in a few seconds.

*thinks*

Actually, come to think of it, I know a lot of different songs, don't I. Huh. *is proud*

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I fake the accent, but then, I was raised in England so it's not *that* weird for me. We have some australian kid's music and they rhyme Horse and Sauce, so I say "sauwss" and "hauwss" instead of "sahs" and "horss." Daniel suggests just not singing those songs at all, but I don't like that option. I guess he's for Option F: refrain from the songs altogether.

[conuly]

You normally say sahs, with the same ah as in father?

And Daniel's option is just no fun :(

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Yes, same "a" sound. Except when I'm trying to rhyme it with horse, and then it sounds about like the O in old.

[conuly]

It'd probably be easier to rhyme horse with sauce. Horse and sauce don't sound nearly alike in my dialect (sauce is said as it's spelled :P, or, rather, sawsss, and horse is also said like it's spelled, and I have got to learn to type IPA one day), but if I said sauce the way you do it'd rhyme, as marveen said, with hoss.

[siderea]

Well, there's option F', which is "Sing less problematic songs." :)

[conuly]

Again, no fun. The songs I really like all have those minor problems!

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Sounds like some backwoods American dialects, where their pronunciation of horse is rendered "hoss" in print. Which could indeed rhyme with our local version of sauce.

I'm one of those Westerners mentioned in The Egg and I: "...vulgar people who pronounced their r's and thought they were as good as anyone."

Welcome to Historically Informed Performance

[siderea]

There's a B': it's not a faked accent, it's a researched pronunciation. I can actually sing "Balulalow" with what I understand is a reasonably passable 16th century Scots pronunciation. I would not dream of singing it other wise, any more than I would try to read Chaucer with a modern English pronunciation.

There's no right answer. That's the challenge of Historically Informed Performance. There's more and less convincing answers, to more and less interesting questions. But you do what you can in an impossible situation.

Re: Welcome to Historically Informed Performance

[conuly]

A researched pronunciation I'd have to manage to reproduce. I'm not sure I can do it. Whatever people *outside* the city say, people *in* the city still don't even think I have my own accent. (Or, rather, they *do* think I have my own accent. They just don't think it's their accent!)

And to be honest, I'd rather read Chaucer translated as well, and Shakespeare too, if it made it more easily comprehensible. I don't think either one of them would really have preferred their works crystallized and accessible only with effort. Shakespeare especially wrote for the masses, and couldn't even consistently spell his own name right!

[siderea]

I don't think either one of them would really have preferred their works crystallized and accessible only with effort.

OK, you were doing great until you said this. It's perfectly cool to make whatever decisions bring out the aspect of a work you most prefer -- e.g. comprehensibility -- but making a bid for both knowing authorial preferences for disposition of his work 500 years later and having some sort of imprimatur based on them is an automatic 30yd penalty. In HIP, it's considered an illegitimate argument, and using it is considered to be trolling for a fight. As an argument it's:

1) Bogus -- you don't know because it's not knowable. Arguing that "because they did X they must have wanted Y" is arguing on circumstantial evidence. I could make a better argument to the contrary in a heartbeat (e.g. "They wrote in poetry and chose every word just so...") based on even more and better evidence that you did... and it would be just as baseless a speculation, because all we have is circumstantial evidence.

2) Irrelevant -- like we even care whether Shakespeare had an opinion one way or the other. We're not real worried about hurting his feelings. Do you think Branagh said, or felt any need to say, "Oh, yes, Shakespeare would have wanted us to do Hamlet set in 1920s Denmark, so that makes it all OK"?

3) Completely unnecessary -- "because I prefer it this way myself" is completely adequate reason to do it your way. You don't actually need to have Chaucer on your "side" to make your choice OK. Honest. It's OK just the way it is.

4) Moralistic and divisive -- You don't need to prove your choice of what to bring out in a work is somehow better and more blesséd than other people's choices of what to bring out. Arguing otherwise is just a recipe for a "less filling/tastes great" online holy war.

5) Inadequate -- there are better and worse choices in how to bring out which ever aspect of a work you choose, and they're based on how effective they are at what they're trying to do. If you aren't making an argument on artistic efficacy, you aren't justifying your choice. You aren't required to justify anything, but if you're so moved, a moment of thought reveals why people who get really into these questions -- e.g. people who've been around HIP at all -- cares only about specific efficacy. That is, if what you care about is comprehensibility, whether or not Chaucer cared about comprehensibility is irrelevant to justifying the changes you make toward the goal of comprehensibility. Arguing from what Chaucer would have wanted fails to make an adequate argument, if that's what you wanted to make, and is a red herring.

Heck, there are all sorts of arguments about which aspects of a piece it is best to prioritize when presenting it outside of its cultural context, and authorial preference isn't even considered a legitimate basis for argument even in that discourse. Shakespeare may have thought, "YES! Translate my work into every possible language -- more residuals for me!" but the director still has to ask themselves, "Is my aim to share the plot (which can be translated) or the poetics (which cannot)?" in picking whether to use a translation or not.

[conuly]

You've thought a lot more about this than I have.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I think you should watch Songcatcher.

[conuly]

What's it about?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

There are many songs that have "alternate" versions—I've heard "Loch Lomond" with "resigned we may be to our grieving" many times. Another common one is the saying (originally from a Robert Burns poem) "The best-laid plans of mice and man go oft awry," which was originally "... gang aft agley."

[conuly]

ALL these songs have alternate versions, but too often the version I really like right now fits into the troubled category :(

I mean, I know by heart some 4 versions of Cruel Sister, another 3 of Bonny Farday, 4 of Gypsy Lover, 2 or 3 of Auld Lang Syne (no, seriously), 2 of Loch Lomond, 4 of Froggie Went A-Courtin', 3 of Golden Vanity, 2 of I Gave My Love a Cherry... well, I can go on. And these are just the ones I have memorized and can think of in a few seconds.

*thinks*

Actually, come to think of it, I know a lot of different songs, don't I. Huh. *is proud*