WAM's final consonant

[greenilex]

Where is it? His name surely never used to end in a glottal stop.

Grrr!

[french frank]

The generalised glottal stop has become an affectation of the upper middle classes. The rest of us try to sound posh.

[amateur51]

I think I'm right in saying that the Irish pronunciation puts the emphasis on the second syllable, which I find rather attractive

[salymap]

One of my Aunts was a professional pianist, [even, though she made her living playing in a cinema for a time]
she studied with a well known pianist of the early 20th century and drove me mad by pronouncing the name Mozaar as she was taught. Could it ever have been correct?

[LeMartinPecheur]

One of my Aunts was a professional pianist, [even, though she made her living playing in a cinema for a time]
she studied with a well known pianist of the early 20th century and drove me mad by pronouncing the name Mozaar as she was taught. Could it ever have been correct?

One of my great-aunts always called him "Mo's art". So perhaps there's only one 't' sound, and just a slight disagreement about which one has to go?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One of my Aunts ... drove me mad by pronouncing the name Mozaar as she was taught. Could it ever have been correct?

In France?

Someone I knew drove me up the wall by pronouncing "Beethoven" with the "th" as in "thin". When she realized how annoyed it made me, she then started pronouncing it with the first syllable rhyming with "see" AS WELL!

[Serial_Apologist]

One of my Aunts was a professional pianist, [even, though she made her living playing in a cinema for a time]
she studied with a well known pianist of the early 20th century and drove me mad by pronouncing the name Mozaar as she was taught. Could it ever have been correct?

My piano teacher, a certain Ms Yvonne de Rowen of Hove, no less, bought for me a book of Mozart sonatas. "I just LOVE this MUZZART", she insisted, "and thought you really cannot do without MUZZART". She can't have been your aunt, I don't think, saly!

[salymap]

My piano teacher, a certain Ms Yvonne de Rowen of Hove, no less, bought for me a book of Mozart sonatas. "I just LOVE this MUZZART", she insisted, "and thought you really cannot do without MUZZART". She can't have been your aunt, I don't think, saly!

S-A err no, It was as stated and she didn't teach. I was a bit snooty about the cinema but was told by two professional musicians [ex borders] that one has to be pretty good to accompany a film, and Muir Matheson
used to give very entertaining illustrated talks about film music. 'To the battle', 'From the battle.' Second piece reverse of the first, etc.

[vinteuil]

The generalised glottal stop has become an affectation of the upper middle classes...

"has become"? - I don't think this is recent: I think it has been so going back some while. I seem to recall my grander relations back in the 1950s referring to Moat-zar' '

[VodkaDilc]

In France?

Someone I knew drove me up the wall by pronouncing "Beethoven" with the "th" as in "thin". When she realized how annoyed it made me, she then started pronouncing it with the first syllable rhyming with "see" AS WELL!

Watching extracts from the Elgar film on the BBC2 documentary about Ken Russell, I was reminded that Huw Wheldon pronounced Elgar in a very clipped way (as he did everything else), making it sound more like Elga than ElgAR. Was that typical of that generation and class? I don't recall hearing it elsewhere.

[Pabmusic]

Watching extracts from the Elgar film on the BBC2 documentary about Ken Russell, I was reminded that Huw Wheldon pronounced Elgar in a very clipped way (as he did everything else), making it sound more like Elga than ElgAR. Was that typical of that generation and class? I don't recall hearing it elsewhere.

This is a really interesting point, and it shows how pronunciation changes over time without anyone noticing, or even realising it might ever have been different. Elgar's Anglo-Saxon name was pronounced El-gə, with the emphasis clearly on the first syllable and the second a schwa (the most common English vowel sound - the sound of the middle two syllables of 'alternative' for instance). Several people who knew Elgar have attested to this - Boult for one. We still pronounce the almost identical 'Edgar' and 'Algar' this way. That's what Huw Wheldon was doing.

Elgar suffers doubly because we now pronounce 'Edward' rather differently than in his day. It was pronounced more like the German Eduard - with the two syllables having almost equal stress, and the second rhyming with 'guard'. That's how Edward VII and the Edwardian age were known.

So we now say Ed-wəd Elg-ar, instead of Ed-ward El-gə.

[Dave2002]

My piano teacher, a certain Ms Yvonne de Rowen of Hove, no less, bought for me a book of Mozart sonatas. "I just LOVE this MUZZART", she insisted, "and thought you really cannot do without MUZZART". She can't have been your aunt, I don't think, saly!

Is that "muzz" similar to "buzz" as in "buzzing bees"?
I thought that the final 't' in Mozart should be pronounced (lightly), and that the 'z' should be pronounced as roughly English 'tss'. The vowels are slightly different from English too I think, but heck, don't we try to do our best?

Recently Sarah Walker was discussing Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. She pronounced the 's' in Mélisande as English "ss". Is this correct? I always thought it should be more like English 'z'.

[french frank]

When I say Mozart in my best German accent (I don't do Austrian), it's sort of like Maw-tsatt, but only if you pronounce it like I do, otherwise it just sounds silly (the tt at the end is to indicate a shorter 'a' in that syllable, not Moh-tsaht***. Yes, Mélisande has correctly the English 'z' sound.

*** But I say Moh-tsaht when I'm speaking English

[salymap]

Just remembered said aunt pronounced Schubert as Shoe-bear so perhaps her teacher was French, although I think he had an English sounding name, [which I can't remember, but she was proud to be his pupil]

[vinteuil]

*** But I say Moh-tsaht when I'm speaking English

Yes, I think I would too - when the word is at the end of a phrase.

But I am sure I am not alone in dropping the final T in rapid continuous speech - perhaps particularly before plosives - "IthinkthatMozar'believedindivineprovidence", "Bu'surelyMozar'preferredtheclarinettotheflute ". Insisting on a final T in that context makes one sound like a governess...