Sprechgesang
Encyclopedia
Sprechgesang (ˈʃpʀɛçɡəˌzaŋ spoken singing) and Sprechstimme (ˈʃpʀɛçˌʃtɪmə, spoken voice) are musical terms used to refer to an expressionist
vocal technique between singing
and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, sprechgesang is a term directly related to the opera
tic 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).
or parlando than is sprechstimme. Where the term is employed in this way, it is usually in the context of the late Romantic
German opera
s or "music dramas" that were composed by Richard Wagner
and others in the 19th century.
Thus sprechgesang is often merely a German alternative to recitative.
Additionally, opera critics sometimes employ the term sprechgesang in a pejorative sense—using it to condemn a style of Wagnerian vocalism where the over-articulation of the words of an aria
(or some other type of sung musical passage) chops up the aria's smooth flow. This style of singing was prevalent at Germany's Bayreuth Festival
during the 1890s and early 1900s. It was spread by its adherents to other European opera centres where German opera was popular, and it soon acquired the unflattering nickname of the "Bayreuth bark". (Such a strenuously emphatic, anti-legato
method of Germanic vocalism is no-longer in favour with singers and pedagogues due to the "internationalisation" of operatic vocal styles after World War II
.)
Sprechgesang is not a word that was used by the 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg
, but it is still frequently appropriated by commentators to refer to the sprechstimme employed in some of his musical works. As such, the two terms have become interchangeable when used in this specific context.
Since the early 1990s in Germany, sprechgesang has gained a new pop-culture meaning of "German-language rap music".
, 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
.
(1912), Schoenberg explains how his sprechstimme should be achieved. He explains that the indicated rhythms should be adhered to, but that whereas in ordinary singing a constant pitch is maintained through a note, here the singer "immediately abandons it by falling or rising. The goal is certainly not at all a realistic, natural speech. On the contrary, the difference between ordinary speech and speech that collaborates in a musical form must be made plain. But it should not call singing to mind, either." For the first performances of Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenberg was able to work directly with the vocalist and obtain exactly the result he desired, but later performances were problematic. Schoenberg had written many subsequent letters attempting to clarify, but he was unable to leave a definitive explanation and there has been much disagreement as to what was actually intended. Pierre Boulez
would write, "the question arises whether it is actually possible to speak according to a notation devised for singing. This was the real problem at the root of all the controversies. Schoenberg's own remarks on the subject are not in fact clear." Schoenberg would later use a notation without a traditional clef in the Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte (1942), A Survivor from Warsaw
(1947) and his unfinished opera Moses und Aron
, which eliminated any reference to a specific pitch, but retained the relative slides and articulations.
, sprechstimme is usually indicated by small crosses through the stems of the notes, or with the note head itself being a small cross.
Schoenberg's later notation (first used in his Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, 1942) replaced the 5-line staff with a single line having no clef. The note stems no longer bear the x, as it is now clear that no specific pitch is intended, and instead relative pitches are specified by placing the notes above or below the single line (sometimes on ledger lines).
Berg notates several degrees of sprechstimme, e. g. in Wozzeck
, using single-line staff for rhythmic speaking, five-line staffs with x through the note stem, and a single stroke through the stem for close-to-singing sprechstimme.
In modern usage, it is most common to indicate sprechstimme by using "x"'s in place of conventional noteheads.
Kurt Weill
adopted sprechstimme to accommodate Lotte Lenya
's distinctive, though non-lyric, voice for her part as Jenny in Die Dreigroschenoper
. Macheath's part also employs the technique.
Expressionism (music)
,Expressionism as a musical genre is difficult to exactly define. It is, however, one of the most important movements of 20th Century music. The three central figures of musical expressionism are Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, the so-called Second Viennese...
vocal technique between singing
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, sprechgesang is a term directly related to the opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
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).
Sprechgesang: its various, evolving meanings
As stated above, the term sprechgesang is more closely aligned with the long-used musical techniques of recitativeRecitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
or parlando than is sprechstimme. Where the term is employed in this way, it is usually in the context of the late Romantic
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
German opera
German opera
Opera in German is the opera of the German-speaking countries, most notably Germany and Austria...
s or "music dramas" that were composed by Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and others in the 19th century.
Thus sprechgesang is often merely a German alternative to recitative.
Additionally, opera critics sometimes employ the term sprechgesang in a pejorative sense—using it to condemn a style of Wagnerian vocalism where the over-articulation of the words of an aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
(or some other type of sung musical passage) chops up the aria's smooth flow. This style of singing was prevalent at Germany's Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
during the 1890s and early 1900s. It was spread by its adherents to other European opera centres where German opera was popular, and it soon acquired the unflattering nickname of the "Bayreuth bark". (Such a strenuously emphatic, anti-legato
Legato
In musical notation the Italian word legato indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, in transitioning from note to note, there should be no intervening silence...
method of Germanic vocalism is no-longer in favour with singers and pedagogues due to the "internationalisation" of operatic vocal styles after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.)
Sprechgesang is not a word that was used by the 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, but it is still frequently appropriated by commentators to refer to the sprechstimme employed in some of his musical works. As such, the two terms have become interchangeable when used in this specific context.
Since the early 1990s in Germany, sprechgesang has gained a new pop-culture meaning of "German-language rap music".
Sprechstimme
The earliest known use of the technique appears to be in Engelbert Humperdinck's 1897 melodrama KönigskinderKönigskinder
Königskinder is a stage work by Engelbert Humperdinck that exists in two versions: as a melodrama and as an opera or more precisely a Märchenoper...
, but it is more closely associated with the composers of the Second Viennese School
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
. Arnold Schoenberg asks for the technique in a number of pieces: the part of the Speaker in Gurre-Lieder
Gurre-Lieder
Gurre-Lieder is a massive cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schoenberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen...
(1911) is written in his notation for sprechstimme, but it was Pierrot Lunaire
Pierrot Lunaire
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds 'Pierrot lunaire' , commonly known simply as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 , is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg...
(1912) where he used it throughout and left a note attempting to explain the technique. Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
adopted the technique and asked for it in parts of his operas Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
and Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...
.
History
In the foreword to Pierrot LunairePierrot Lunaire
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds 'Pierrot lunaire' , commonly known simply as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 , is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg...
(1912), Schoenberg explains how his sprechstimme should be achieved. He explains that the indicated rhythms should be adhered to, but that whereas in ordinary singing a constant pitch is maintained through a note, here the singer "immediately abandons it by falling or rising. The goal is certainly not at all a realistic, natural speech. On the contrary, the difference between ordinary speech and speech that collaborates in a musical form must be made plain. But it should not call singing to mind, either." For the first performances of Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenberg was able to work directly with the vocalist and obtain exactly the result he desired, but later performances were problematic. Schoenberg had written many subsequent letters attempting to clarify, but he was unable to leave a definitive explanation and there has been much disagreement as to what was actually intended. Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
would write, "the question arises whether it is actually possible to speak according to a notation devised for singing. This was the real problem at the root of all the controversies. Schoenberg's own remarks on the subject are not in fact clear." Schoenberg would later use a notation without a traditional clef in the Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte (1942), A Survivor from Warsaw
A Survivor from Warsaw
A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46, is a work for narrator, men's chorus, and orchestra written by the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg in 1947. The initial inspiration for the work was a suggestion from the Russian émigrée dancer Corinne Chochem for a work to pay tribute to the Holocaust victims of...
(1947) and his unfinished opera Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto was by the composer after the Book of Exodus.-Compositional history:...
, which eliminated any reference to a specific pitch, but retained the relative slides and articulations.
Notation
In Schoenberg's musical notationMusical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
, sprechstimme is usually indicated by small crosses through the stems of the notes, or with the note head itself being a small cross.
Schoenberg's later notation (first used in his Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, 1942) replaced the 5-line staff with a single line having no clef. The note stems no longer bear the x, as it is now clear that no specific pitch is intended, and instead relative pitches are specified by placing the notes above or below the single line (sometimes on ledger lines).
Berg notates several degrees of sprechstimme, e. g. in Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
, using single-line staff for rhythmic speaking, five-line staffs with x through the note stem, and a single stroke through the stem for close-to-singing sprechstimme.
In modern usage, it is most common to indicate sprechstimme by using "x"'s in place of conventional noteheads.
Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
adopted sprechstimme to accommodate Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs...
's distinctive, though non-lyric, voice for her part as Jenny in Die Dreigroschenoper
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
. Macheath's part also employs the technique.
External links
- Avior Byron, ‘The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting Pierrot lunaire: Sprechstimme Reconsidered’, Music Theory Online (MTO), 12/1 (February 2006)
- Avior Byron and Matthias Pasdzierny 'Sprechstimme Reconsidered Once Again: "... though Mrs. Stiedry is never in pitch"', Music Theory Online (MTO), 13/2 (June 2007)
- Avior Byron, 'Pierrot lunaire in studio and in broadcast: Sprechstimme, tempo and character', Journal of the Society of Musicology in Ireland (JSMI), 2 (2006-7)
- A translation of Schoenberg's foreword to Pierrot Lunaire