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A step back in time: Diachronic insights into text-setting| old_uid | 4727 |
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| title | A step back in time: Diachronic insights into text-setting |
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| start_date | 2008/05/05 |
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| schedule | 10h-12h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In Rodríguez-Vázquez (2007), I carry out a comparative examination of the basic prosodic characteristics of English and Spanish in order to then explore the most relevant text-setting Optimality Theory constraints as applied to a corpus of twentieth-century English and Spanish folk songs.
As will be shown in the first part of the seminar, Rodríguez-Vázquez (2007) establishes the existence of clear mismatches between speech prosody, on the one hand, and verse and music rhythm, on the other. These inconsistencies work differently in a syllable-timed language like Spanish than in a stress-timed language like English. While the former show a natural counterpoint or dialogue between speech prosody and musical rhythm, in the latter this counterpoint tends to be considered arhythmic.
As it stands, the current approach to text-setting is incomplete. In order to check the universal validity of the theoretical assumptions and empirical observations made in Rodríguez-Vázquez (2007) and devise a comprehensive theory of text-setting – synchronic and diachronic –, it is crucial to analyse songs dating from previous stages in the history of the chosen language – in this case, English.
In the second part of the seminar, I engage in the exploration of text-tune correspondences in a small sample of English broadside ballads (seventeenth century). More, specifically, I focus on the correspondences between verse prosody and text-setting in these songs, which are characterised by the fact that the lyrics were written to pre-existing tunes. I examine whether the constraints applied to twentieth-century songs were at work – and ranked equally – in seventeenth-century songs. I also raise specific questions related to the interaction between prosody, text-setting and syntax in broadside ballads. |
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| responsibles | Aroui |
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