Pronunciation of Latin

[ardcarp]

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.

Latin is never far away even today. It is not wholly a myth that medical doctors 'write their prescriptions in Latin' and it's not just to confuse the patients. Prescribing (it was the word 'prescriptive' that set me off topic!) uses many dog-Latin abbreviatins which have a precise technical meaning for pharmacists:

http://thyroid.about.com/cs/thyroiddrugs/a/prescription.htm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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

Well, quite: but we can only surmise that what they expected was different from what they wanted by studying and interpreting the historical evidence as best we can.

[jean]

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?

I am going to call it the interface between the academic and the liturgical.

When the King's Scholars of Westminster School sang Vyvat Regyna in Parry's I was Glad at the last Coronation, their role was as scholars rather than choristers. Choirs were already using Iltalian pronunciation I think.

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.

Until recently I was satisfied with the explanation I'd worked out, which was that after Catholic Emancipation the Anglicans just did what the Catholics were doing.

But the more I thought about it, the more unlikely that seemed. Even the Oxford Movement - perhaps they especially, except for the ones who went over to Rome - wanted to keep their distance.

I remembered that in the C18, it became fashionable to attend services in the Embassy chapels in London, who put on ever more elaborate performances. I found this book, which makes clear the particular Italian influence of those performances - apparently, the solos in masses by Haydn or Mozart were often sung by Italian Catholics from the opera house.

I sense the beginning of a tradition.

[ardcarp]

Thanks for the book tip-off jean. The snag is, someone (who shall remain nameless) has just trodden on my little netbook (with which I can sneak off into private corners) so I shall have to sit and read it bolt upright on our old steam-driven PC with the family raging about. Wasn't S.Wesley organist at some London embassy when he wrote In Exitu Israel?

[yorks_bass]

Until recently I was satisfied with the explanation I'd worked out, which was that after Catholic Emancipation the Anglicans just did what the Catholics were doing.

But the more I thought about it, the more unlikely that seemed. Even the Oxford Movement - perhaps they especially, except for the ones who went over to Rome - wanted to keep their distance.

I remember reading about this in some book on changes in Latin usage that I still have somewhere from University days. I believe the gist was that the pronunciation favoured by English recusants and their descendants was firmly based on the principle of Latin being pronounced as English, in much the way legal Latin has been presented earlier in the thread. Said book went on to say that the Italianate (very ish) pronunciation was introduced by Anglicans, particularly Oxford Movement variety, and was resisted for some time by the 'old' Catholics.

Taking an earlier point, applying the HIPP argument to it (especially the 'I', having witnessed many such attempts by many such groups) seems a little pointless unless in a deliberate attempt to add a different flavour for contrast - French vowels, for example, or to distinguish between repertoire in concert or recording from different areas. Not really sure any of the ensembles mentioned go/went in for this particularly - my recollection of a radio interview with John Potter is that 'authentic' (horrid word) English was not Red Byrd's aim. There is now a convention in certain areas regarding English Latin in renaissance music - hard Js, soft Cs, etc. - but it can hardly be prescriptive. I don't think there's much point in so-called HIPP if it merely creates effects that jar with expectation: I imagine this was rarely (although admittedly not never) the composer's intention!

[ardcarp]

unless in a deliberate attempt to add a different flavour for contrast - French vowels, for example, or to distinguish between repertoire in concert or recording from different areas.

Oh definitely. Fun to do it the way the French do it now for Charpentier, etc (eg Day-u for Deus) or the way the Austrians do it now for Haydn/Moazart, etc (eg tsaylee for coeli).

[Simon]

When I was at school and a treble, there was complete consistency between what we were taught in class and what we were taught in choir. I suppose that was as well, really - when you're struggling with six cases, five declensions, multiple agreements and numerous tenses, not to mention the sodding subjunctive, the last thing you want to be thinking of is whether you have to pronounce the blasted stuff differently from the way you sang it the night before!

Having since learned Italian, I assume that by and large the pronunciation rules of this is what we knew as "church" Latin. It seems to be the norm in most of the cathedrals in which I have heard Latin sung, though some colleges do it differently.

[ardcarp]

That's quite unusual, Simon. I think most of us who did Latin in school and choir had to be bilingual.

[mangerton]

That's quite unusual, Simon. I think most of us who did Latin in school and choir had to be bilingual.

Agreed, certainly at my school.

[decantor]

That's quite unusual, Simon. I think most of us who did Latin in school and choir had to be bilingual.

Quite so - and ne'er the twain shall meet.

But there comes a very satisfying moment when one realises that some of the authorised translations have gone a bit wrong. Levavi oculos does not mean "I will lift up mine eyes", so someone screwed up somewhere on the tense. And (as I've said on this board before) how differently composers might have set the ending of the Te Deum if the translator had got it right with "I shall never be confounded", instead of the wimpish "Let me never......."!

[jean]

But there comes a very satisfying moment when one realises that some of the authorised translations have gone a bit wrong. Levavi oculos does not mean "I will lift up mine eyes", so someone screwed up somewhere on the tense.

Ah, but who screwed up?

The translators of the KJV boasted that they had made their translation out of the original tongues, so they were not (or so they claimed) translating from the Vulgate at all.

(Does anyone here know the Hebrew?)

As for the Te Deum, to translate confundar as a subjunctive may be wimpish, but since the first person endings of third conjugation verbs are the same for the future indicative and the present subjunctive, who's to say it's wrong?


.

[decantor]

Ah, but who screwed up? The translators of the KJV boasted that they had made their translation out of the original tongues, so they were not (or so they claimed) translating from the Vulgate at all.

As for the Te Deum, to translate confundar as a subjunctive may be wimpish, but since the first person endings of third conjugation verbs are the same in the future and the present subjunctive, who's to say it's wrong?
.

1) Ah yes - I deliberately left open the question whether Jerome or Andrewes erred.

2) The words are NON CONFUNDAR; if the verb were subjunctive expressing 'wish', the negative would be NE. The only alternative would be if CONFUNDAR were expressing a future hypothetical condition - which makes no sense in context. And, of course, this hymn began life in Latin.

Edit: The sense of the whole is also better if CONFUNDAR is future: "In God have I trusted - THEREFORE I shall never...."

[jean]

if the verb were subjunctive expressing 'wish', the negative would be NE.

I was forgetting that.

And yet:

NOTE 3.--Once in Cicero and occasionally in the poets and later writers the negative with the hortatory subjunctive is non...:

(I knew the Latin was the original of that one.)

[jean]

1)The sense of the whole is also better if CONFUNDAR is future: "In God have I trusted - THEREFORE I shall never...."

A bit presumptuous though, don't you think?

Surely it's up to God?

[decantor]

A bit presumptuous though, don't you think? Surely it's up to God?

A nice wriggle, jean! Yes, "please don't let me down" will work as an ending, but I still prefer something more confident that fits with the grammar.

NON & NE: I think a single instance in Cicero, together with verse-writers and later minor authors, is not quite justification for abandoning NE with wishes. After all, the Requiem says NE ME PERDAS ILLA DIE...... and there's no verbal confusibility there.