Klarinet Archive - Posting 000084.txt from 2005/11

From: "Joseph H. Fasel" <jhf@-----.gov>
Subj: Re: [kl] Fayrfax Carol and pronunciation
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 11:30:23 -0500

On Sat, 2005-11-05 at 18:00, Joseph Wakeling wrote:
> Hmm, I wouldn't call myself an amateur philologist; I just love words,

That's all I meant (and all I was claiming for myself): "philologist" as
literally a lover of words.

> Well, I think we're talking about two subtly different things here. On
> the one hand we have pronunciation of words in the langugage and that I
> would agree has been pretty stable for some time in most modern
> languages. If Shakespeare's actors were to perform today in front of
> us, we'd probably understand what they were saying pretty well, though
> their accent might be different from "received English". But in respect
> to the "Gran Partitta" we're not talking about pronunciation per se but
> about the relationship between spelling and punctuation. I don't think
> that relationship was anywhere near as rigorous as it is today. So, I
> don't see that whoever wrote "Gran Partitta" on Mozart's manuscript
> necessarily intended it to be pronounced differently from "Gran Partita".

Bene, Giuseppe. You're quite right. I hadn't caught on entirely that
the discussion was about orthography, rather than language change.
Considering the chances are good that whoever wrote that title on
Mozart's manuscript probably wasn't Italian, you're surely right that
the spelling probably doesn't mean much.

> On the other hand I certainly would not censure any pronunciation of
> this work's title that might be misunderstood as something along the
> lines of "Mozart's Big Pair of Bradleys". :-D

Cute.

And thanks again for the Fayrfax Carol. As an Anglican musician (and
former choirmaster), I have a few King's recordings but not that one.
I'll be sure to get it. By the way, I guess "early Tudor" could mean
very late 15th-century, so I wasn't completely off the mark, but looking
at the whole text and saying it aloud, I must admit that it is more
Modern English than Middle, closer to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer
than to Chaucer. It is amazing, isn't it, how much English had changed
in 150 years between Chaucer and Cranmer.

Cheers,
--Joe

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