French Diction

Catalog description

Singers sing in multiple languages and are expected to sound authentic and compelling in each, including the display of emotion. In this course, undergraduate singers will learn the sounds and spellings of French, French phonemes, French tonic stress, translation and communication, as well as how to make these clear in lyric diction. This course is exclusive to undergraduate voice majors and graduate-level collaborative pianists and fulfills part of the degree program. Singers engage with the various and many spellings of the French language, learn how to distill those into sound units called phonemes, and then how to express these sounds within a large space using lyric diction. Students will learn the basics of phonetic transcription using an online textbook, and prosody (including l'accent d'insistance) in the first half of the semester. During the second half of the semester, they will sing one selection of their choice in the classical genre to demonstrate an understanding of French lyric diction.