Pronunciation of Latin

[jean]

A few months ago, we had a discussion about 'authentic' pronunciation of Latin in early choral music, here:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?4216-Byrd-Andrew-Carwood-amp-the-Cardinall-s-Musick&highlight=pronunciation+Latin

This has never been generally adopted, and most choirs have just gone on pronouncing Latin in the Italian way, as they have done since...since when, exactly?

Presumably at the Reformation they were all using English pronunciation. And now we don't. What happened in the mean time? How did English choirs (those that sang it at all) pronounce Latin in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

How much did they follow the pronunciation the heard in performances they heard in the fashionbable Embassy catholic chapels in London in the pre-Catholic Emancipation period?

It has been pointed out that both Mozart and Handel studied in Italy and so they probably didn't expect to hear German pronunciation in their works.

Does anyone know?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I become increasingly confused by the different ways of pronouncing Latin. The conductor, Simon Wright, conducted Verdi's Requiem last weekend, and was insistent on the correct pronunciation as Verdi would have expected it, with flat vowel sounds.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It has been pointed out that ... Bach ... studied in Italy and so ... probably didn't expect to hear German pronunciation in their works.

Did he?? JS?

[ardcarp]

Presumably at the Reformation they were all using English pronunciation. And now we don't.

Erm, well, presumably, at the Reformation, the only people using Latin at all were the recusants (Byrd, the butler and his dog in country houses with priest-holes, etc, etc). We don't know how Latin was pronounced in England in pre-Reformation times, though scholars come up with plausible theories. And why should we assume there was only one way of doing it? Papal legates were whizzing back and forth from Italy so I can't believe Italianate Latin was unknown amongst the higher echelons of the church. The 'common people' with their macaronic carols and so forth no doubt used various vernacular forms.

Learned tomes have been written, and fashions come and go. I detect a shift away from the recently fashionable soft 'c' and back to the Italianate. But as long as a choir all do the same thing, what the heck? It's useful for scratch choirs just to be able to agree to use our accepted English variety of Italianate Latin (as used by KCC circa 1960) as it saves a lot of messing about in rehearsals!

[decantor]

Latin was not the sole prerogative of the Roman church: it was strong in academia (Oxbridge entry still required O Level Latin in my day) and in the Law throughout the centuries of catholic suppression. However, it must be all but impossible to deduce how it was pronounced during those years. After all, we do not know clearly even how English was pronounced, and Dr Johnson refrained from giving hints about pronunciation in his Dictionary as he knew there were so many regional variations. If the vernacular could not be tied down, there is no reason to assume that Latin achieved a standard.

Today, the legal profession retains its thoroughly English pronunciation of Latin ('siny dye'), church musicians in UK have arrived at some vaguely Italianate consensus, and most schools teach a supposed reconstruction of Ciceronian speech (V as W, all Cs hard, etc). Presumably, something like this mish-mash has always been the case - a variety of pronunciations living cheek by jowl quite happily, since the written form was paramount and universal.

[teamsaint]

I was trying to remember how I was taught to sing and speak latin...but without any material to hand iIcan't remember !!
Anyway , it struck me that in the Latin speaking world during the empire, it would have been pronounced loads of different ways in any case.

[ardcarp]

I wholeheartedly agree with all that, Decantor. The tendency to be prescriptive about how things were done or should be done gets tedious.

[jean]

Did he?? JS?

O how embarrassing - I didn't mean Bach of course, I meant Mozart. Corrected now.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

O how embarrassing - I didn't mean Bach of course, I meant Mozart. Correected now.

Phew! For a minute there, I thought I'd missed a recent discovery about JSB's life!

[BasilHarwood]

The tendency to be prescriptive about how things were done or should be done gets tedious.

Uh, H.I.P.P.? Red Byrd? Stile Antico? Marian Consort? &c, &c...

[jean]

Erm, well, presumably, at the Reformation, the only people using Latin at all were the recusants (Byrd, the butler and his dog in country houses with priest-holes, etc, etc).

But since Latin was not used in the majority of places of worship because it was not understanded of the people, and since in the Universities it was, there was the possibility that it might be used liturgically there.

And if it was so used, then it's unlikely (as we see from the legal Latin that decantor quotes, and the pronunciation of the first Latin words of the Prayer Book canticles Benedicite, Venite, Te Deum,) that it sounded much like Italian, so a decision must have been taken at some point to break with this tradition, for as decantor says,

church musicians in UK have arrived at some vaguely Italianate consensus,

And the question I'm asking is when that happened, and why.

If nobody knows the answer, or if it's the wrong question, I'd like to know that, too.

(I don't think that's being prescriptive . I don't really think you can be prescriptive about something that's already happened.)

.

[decantor]

But since Latin was not used in the majority of places of worship because it was not understanded of the people, and since in the Universities it was, there was the possibility that it might be used liturgically there.

Yes, interesting. I have a copy of my College's statutes, dated 1844, and all in Latin. These statutes were drawn up by Elizabeth I in accordance with her father's wishes, and were reaffirmed by Queen Victoria - hence my copy. Within the statutes, the grace before meals is ordained: the usual "Benedic Domine nos et dona tua", together with some Greek (the Kyrie). Does this count as liturgical use? The pronunciation was always in old English fashion ("soom-us sumptur-eye"), and I assume was traditionally so over the previous 150 years or more.

And if it was so used, then it's unlikely (as we see from the legal Latin that decantor quotes, and the pronunciation of the first Latin words of the Prayer Book canticles Benedicite, Venite, Te Deum,) that it sounded much like Italian, so a decision must have been taken at some point to break with this tradition......

And the question I'm asking is when that happened, and why.
If nobody knows the answer, or if it's the wrong question, I'd like to know that, too.

Good questions, jean - I certainly don't know the answer. However, my guess would be that the answer might well be connected with the resumption of Anglican choral singing in Latin: the Italianate pronunciation in Britain is surely associated with the church. Do we look to the Oxford Movement? To Cardinal Newman? To an even more recent evolution? I think I'm right in saying that the earliest roll and shellac recordings of Anglican choirs reveal a pronunciation of Latin comparable with that in use today, but I shall check.

The whole matter will become yet more fascinating if your question 'why' can also be answered.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Uh, H.I.P.P.? Red Byrd? Stile Antico? Marian Consort? &c, &c...

I don't think any HIPP ensemble worth its salt can be described as "prescriptive", BH - merely (?"merely"?) finding what historical evidence there is and interpreting this in the best way they believe the composers expected/wanted their Music to sound?

[ardcarp]

Red Byrd?

I'm too thick to grasp the point you're making, BH, but Red Byrd's lovely recording of Gibbons and Byrd verse anthems and consort songs in Mummerset rather makes decantor's point that we can't even be sure how English was pronounced a mere 400 years ago.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

...finding what historical evidence there is and interpreting this in the best way they believe the composers expected/wanted their Music to sound?

It's the "expected/wanted" bit that's the rub here. They were not necessarily the same thing.