Diction considerations by Helen Dewey Reikofski,
DMA
Text: WH Auden (1907 – 1973)
Music: Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Let the florid music praise,
The flute and the trumpet,
Beauty's conquest of your face:
In that land of flesh and bone,
Where from citadels on high
Her imperial standards fly,
Let the hot sun
Shine on, shine on.
O but the unlov'd have had power,
The weeping and striking,
Always; time will bring their hour:
Their secretive children walk
Through your vigilance of breath
To unpardonable death,
And my vows break
Before his look.
Due to the neo-Baroque style of the music and the
elevated style of the poetry (not in the language of
common speech) singers and coaches are likely to
consider a more Historic RP.
The intervocalic <r> would often be tripped. – just
as classical singers are trained to do in Italian and
French songs.
Kathryn LaBouff, and Madeleine Marshall before
her, would advise to avoid rolling the <r> in TR
and DR constructions, but if done as an Historic
convention, then that is acceptable here, in
“trumpet.”
In elevated dialects, such as this Historic RP, the
<wh> of “where” will have the [hw] sound – also
transcribed with the Turned W [ ʍ ] .
BE CAREFUL to never sing the Ash sound [ æ ] as
“AH” The Ash sound in “hand, and, that land, man,
have, had “ should never be in [a] position. If [ æ ]
is a challenge for the singer, then explore Open E
as a substitute [ ɛ ].
This is a very easy vowel to sing, as we employ it in
Italian, French, German, and other languages, in
addition to English, and can be mid-open, not fully
open (just as Open O can be mid-open and not
overly opened) to sound appropriate for the sung
dialect, and indeed for spoken English. Avoid <r>
sounds for the lighter <r> endings of syllables
such as the second syllable in “unpardonable” and
employ Schwa [ ə ] (the unstressed “uh” ) -being
careful to not over open Schwa- in unstressed
words, such as “of” and “the.”
NOTE: the setting of “secretive” is [ sɪ.ˈkɹi.tɪv] with
the stress on the second syllable. This is rarely
heard now but was common in the UK in early and
mid 20th C.