This might have been a question for notat.io, but something has not been working there (I hope it’s not terminal) for a couple of days, and since this is a project to be realized in Dorico in due course, I hope it is acceptable (and useful) as a question here.
In a sung text, the rest of which is in English, a character with advanced dementia repeats ad nauseam a gibberish mantra. Ought that to be notated in the international phonetic alphabet, or as if it’s in English? (That might need the provision of some sort of a key, such are the irregularities of English phonetics.)
Is there anything special I need to know about using the phonetic alphabet with Dorico lyrics? (If I were to go for that option.)
Background: this is for a the central part of a loose commission for a collection of art songs. The song in question is c.15 minutes (very much the longest in the collection) for mezzo, baritone, actor and piano. It is set around a care home, most of whose residents have dementia. It originates from my own recent, ongoing, and decidedly harrowing experience of visiting and regularly telephoning an inmate in such a home. The words are my own, interspersed with various renderings and fragments of Thomas Hardy’s poem She, to Him, I.
I don’t know how well Dorico handles international phonetic symbols. I’ve never tried.
but speaking just for myself, I would probably avoid using them for the simple reason that I don’t know what 90% of the symbols mean or correspond to. I already speak fluently two languages and have a good pronunciation angle on at least 4 more languages, but I’d be really lost if I tried to use those symbols without actually hearing how each one is supposed to sound.
(and yes, Notat.io does seem to be down… it was forwarding to some cooking blog for a short while, now back to nothing. fingers crossed that will get worked out.)
If they are words or “word fragments”, I would just spell them normally. Though as you say, these could be misconstrued, due to the vagaries of English. I’d suggest writing the complete words in the notes. Or perhaps IPA as “Verse 2”, underneath…? (Singers who know IPA will likely write it in if they need a reminder.)
Times New Roman (on a Mac, at least) has IPA characters in both Roman and Italics.
The repeating ‘mantra’ really is gibberish in no definable language, although always the same over and over again. The woman from whom it comes in the real care home is given plastic babies to play with, which she moves around the table. (This is not my friend BTW: she is still speaking in sentences, despite catastrophic and galloping memory loss.) It reminds me of the Bedlam scene in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, which I’m currently finding almost unbearably and quite terrifyingly evocative.
I’m tempted to include as a motive on the piano a tiny quote from the Stravinsky, but I’m not sure what B & H would think of that…
David, just to chime in with my $0.02; I would much prefer to see the words or syllables spelled out in English even though the words are gibberish. “Bah-bah ju jung wal-la-gu” in English is pretty easy to discern but having to look up IPA sounds would take time. But then, if I didn’t bother and got it wrong would anyone care, besides the composer? After all, it’s just gibberish (unless it’s some spymasters code for nuclear secrets)!
It might go something just a bit like this: “debidibidiya bididbidiya bidiya bidiya-a-a” as a chromatically descending musical phrase starting in mid-voice and sounding infinitely sad.
The striking (chilling?) thing is that it’s identical, however many times it is repeated – sometimes ten or more times at a go, sometimes after a longish gap, or as just a single iteration seemingly out of nowhere: always the same. When I ring my friend, if she is sitting at a table shared with this women, I hear this ‘mantra’ repeating in the background.
Assuming you want mostly short vowels: Deb as in Deborah, Bid as in auction, Ya as in .. George Dubya, then this is perfectly clear to an English speaker. You’ll get DEE as a consequence of the Y, anyway.
Dont forget the vast majority of people do not know IPA. My goal in engraving is to strive for clarity, and IPA therefore obscures it. Unless you absolutely have to have rolled R’s and stuff that English may not have… Even [providing the full IPA table would not make it easy for singers, to learn a whole new area. But nothing stopping you from using a font with IPA in it in Dorico.
It had been off-line for several days, which was rather worrying for some of us. My post starting this thread began: “This might have been a question for notat.io, but something has not been working there”.
