Russian Lyric Diction: A practical guide with introduction and annotations and a bibliography with annotations on selected sources
Grayson, Craig M.
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University of Washington Abstract Russian Lyric Diction: a practical guide with preliminaries and annotations, and a bibliography with annotations on selected sources Craig M. Grayson The purpose of this dissertation is twofold -- to investigate, in brief, the available guides to Russian lyric diction and to present my own comprehensive guide, which gives singers the tools to prepare the pronunciation of Russian vocal pieces independently. The survey examines four guides to Russian lyric diction found in popular anthologies or diction manuals -- Anton Belov's Libretti of Russian Operas, Vol. 1, Laurence Richter's Complete Songs series of the most prominent Russian composers, Jean Piatak and Regina Avrashov's Russian Songs and Arias, and Richard Sheil's A Singer's Manual of Foreign Language Dictions -- and three dissertations -- "The Singer's Russian: a guide to the Russian operatic repertoire through a collection of texts of opera arias for all voice types, with phonetic transcriptions, word-for-word and idiomatic English" by Emilio Pons, "Solving Counterproductive Tensions Induced by Russian Diction in American Singers" by Sherri Moore Weiler, and "Russian Songs and Arias: an American Singer's Glasnost" by Rose Michelle Mills-Bell. The annotated guide introduces the sung sounds of Russian and the corresponding Cyrillic letters, advancing in difficulty and covering elements of articulation, phonological rules, and Cyrillic orthography. As the chapters advance, the most important elements of Russian phonological theory are explored in greater depth. The appendices supply additional information such as charts of the Cyrillic letters with their associated phonemes and allophones in IPA, the pronunciation of the most popular Russian composers' names, expanded discussions of historical and phonological topics, a lexicon of Russian words with exceptional pronunciations, and a concise guide to Russian grammar with tables of grammatical forms and their pronunciations. This guide should fulfill a broadly expressed need for detailed instruction in the formation of the Russian speech sounds and their application for singing.
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