 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-07-27 19:43
The thread about composer pronunciations made me think of another question about composer names. I'll bet somebody knows the answer to this one:
If Pierre Boulez is French, why is it that everyone I've ever heard pronounce his name pronounces his surname "Boo-lezz" (with an audible "z" so it rhymes with "says")? It looks as if it ought to be pronounced "Boo-lay" (like the French word "voulez"). I've always wondered if he perhaps Anglicized the pronunciation or if that's actually how his name has been pronounced since childhood. A side question would be how is his name pronounced by Francophone music-lovers, for example.
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Author: Mark G Simon
Date: 2008-07-27 20:44
Boulez, like Berlioz, is properly pronounced with an audible "z" at the end.
Something to do with the part of France the name comes from. mrn wrote:
Clarinetist, composer, arranger of music for clarinet ensemble
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Author: Joseph Brenner, Jr.
Date: 2008-07-27 20:51
Don't ever expect language to be consistent. The people who developed Esperanto tried to achieve consistency. French is not as consistent as Spanish, but no language is internally consistent. English is wildly inconsistent. Do you how to pronounce ghoti? Well, it's pronounced "fish"! The gh is from rough, the o is from women, the ti is from motion.
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Author: srattle
Date: 2008-07-27 21:15
I have heard that Francaix is supposed to have the 'x' pronounced at the end, like Francaiks.
Any truth in that?
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-07-27 21:37
I've only heard Francaix pronounced as 'Fron'-say'.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-07-28 13:31
"Francaix was flemish, not french."
Was he?
He certainly wasn't born in Flanders.
Can you give a source for this statement?
Note also that the cedilla in Françaix means that the c sounds like an s, so the pronunciation might be Fransaiks, but certainly isn't Francaiks. Also, the cedilla is not used in Flemish, so even if the composer was Flemish, his name isn't.
..........
As for the pronunciation of Boulez and Berlioz - there are indeed many inconsistencies in French spelling. Final x and z are not necessarily silent. Consider the ski resort of l'Alpe d'Huez - the z is pronounced. Or Chamonix - the x is pronounced by those French people who pronounce the x, but is not pronounced by those who don't. (Bit like the two pronunciations of Shrewsbury in England.)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2008-07-28 22:21
Years ago announcers used to pronounce it "Boo-Lay" but recently they changed the second syllable to "lez". Go figure. How do you pronounce Marseilles? ...or laissez faire. or...
Bob Draznik
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Author: claaaaaarinet!!!!
Date: 2008-07-29 00:49
I might as well add to this list my own personal pet peeve:
The e in "Poulenc" should be pronounced with a "long a" sound (POO-laync), not "ah" (POO-lahnc) as it commonly is in the U.S. Mistakes of this sort (dropping the Z in Boulez, the S in Saint-Saens, the X in Francaix) are hyper-culturalisms. That is, people apply a limited knowledge of French, or whatever language, to a certain word in order to sound more cultured, when the word should in fact be correctly pronounced in the "less cultured" way.
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Author: DAVE
Date: 2008-07-29 02:12
Phillipe Cuper in the master class that got little attention on this BB, pronounced Francaix without the audible x. He was a friend of Francaix.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2008-07-29 02:24
Perhaps not the case with Francaix, but friends of mine pronounce my last name (Sramek) a handful of different ways (I use two myself, depending on whether I'm being authentic or saying it how my family generally does), and I rarely say anything about it unless they ask. I tend to be happy when they're in the general vicinity.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-07-29 18:54
claaaaaarinet!!!! wrote:
> That is, people apply a limited knowledge of French, or whatever
> language, to a certain word in order to sound more cultured, when the
> word should in fact be correctly pronounced in the "less cultured" way.
I think most of the time, people mispronounce these names not because they are trying to sound sophisticated, but because they are simply making their best guess based on what they know. If a non-native speaker of English (or even a native speaker, really) thinks the "Ralph" in "Ralph Vaughan Williams" is pronounced like "Ralph Lauren," it's not because they have some desire to sound more sophisticated than other people, it's simply because they don't know any better.
For another example, if one knows Alberto Ginastera was an Argentine composer, a reasonable assumption (in the absense of additional information) would be that his name would be pronounced (Hee-na-ste-ra), because that would be normal in Spanish. Turns out he pronounced it "Jee-na-ste-ra," which is the Catalan pronunciation.
"Poo-lonk" is wrong, but it is certainly better than "POH-link" or some other pronunciation that would be closer to English. Even "POO-laynk" is still an approximation, since the "en" is a nasalized vowel and in French all syllables usually have equal stress. (And in Poulenc's Gloria, all the wrong syllables are stressed....but that's another story.)
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-07-29 20:17
Ken - I'm very dubious about this story.
The name Françaix is not Flemish. The cedilla is not used in Flemish. It may be (I don't know) that the name Françaix is used in Flanders, but it is not Flemish. Patel is a common name in England, but it's not an English name in the sense of being native to the English language.
Françaix did not come from Flanders. He was born in Le Mans, which is in France. I find no mention on either of:
http://www.jeanfrancaix.org/
http://www.requiem-voices.com/jfrancaix/biograph.htm
of him having any connection whatever with any part of Belgium.
A possible explanation may lie in the fact that part of the historic area of Flanders now lies in France. I guess it is possible that the name Françaix originates from that region. Nowadays the language of that region is almost exclusively French, but historically both Flemish and Picard were spoken there. It would be interesting to know exactly what his letter to the radio announcer said; maybe Françaix wrote in inaccurate English, or maybe he wrote in French and the letter was misunderstood.
I'm perfectly prepared to believe that he pronounced the x.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-07-29 21:13
Norbert -
The announcer was Steve Post, who used to have a classical show all morning on WNYC, before they went to endless yakking all day and minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist garbage garbage garbage all night. He's still on the station from time to time. I heard him read the Françaix letter on the air.
After Françaix, we can argue about the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose ancestors came from Breton and who vigorously pronounced the final T (as well as the CH as in CHurch).
Ken Shaw
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Author: nahoj
Date: 2008-07-30 13:20
I'm Flemish and can confirm that "Françaix" is definitely not a Flemish name.
Only possibility is that it came from a Flemish name long time ago and has been transformed to a French version since it 'moved' to France or because the region became more and more French (in the case we're talking about French-Flanders (north-west of France)).
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Author: S. Friedland
Date: 2008-07-30 20:34
Well, what I've learned in a lifetime of pronouncing composers names and correcting others on their pronunciation, (a ghastly habit, I must admit), I can only say that there are many names which are not pronounced acccording to the custom of the language or Province. For instance, I know that Francaix is pronounced without the X. Well, How would I know? Because Claude Francaix, his daughter was my accompanist for three summers at Fontaineleau. She was it seemed to me, almost as good a player as was he, and she helped me with the language and we only spoke it(and not English) when we were together.
While many say in the case of Milhaud, you pronounce it Meeyo....I knew his wife and she told me it is Meelo.I have recently been told that all who knew the composer or his family pronounce it with the L and the rest do not. (I had a friend who had a cat which she named Darius Meeyow.)
So, best to meet the persone and ask. If not, there is no real authority.
Do you know this joke?
Punchline : 9W.
Question is , "do you spell your name with a V, Mr Beethoven"?
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Author: GBK
Date: 2008-07-30 20:54
Freshman year in college, Music Appreciation 101, a group of new music majors getting their first exposure to the classics.
Sitting next to me was a stunning blonde (sorry, she was really WAS a blonde), freshman voice major, from a small rural town in the Midwest.
As the professor delivered his speech about the Fauré Requiem and its significance, I looked over to the blonde who looked puzzled but was carefully taking notes.
On her paper she had written "the 4H Requiem"
I guess her farm roots ran deep...
BTW - 4 years later I had her join me in a recital performance of the "Shepherd on the Rock'.
I figured the audience would be too busy watching her ![[whoa]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie10.gif) , than to notice any errors in my playing.
...GBK
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