THE SEMANTIC CHARACTER OF STRESS

Stress is the only semantic element which connects the singer’s psychophysical sensation with the aesthetic meaning of the words he sings; through the use of stress, the singer transforms his concept of the meaning of a word to an audible declaration of its meaning.

Semantics, as a body of knowledge, is the study of meaning and is related to phonetics only through the acts of phonemic stress and pronunciation which convey meaning. However semantic awareness provides insight into the meaning of words that phonetics cannot give. “We think of meaning as the ideas, concepts, images and feelings which are associated in the mind with words.”¹

The interpretation of a vocal text requires that the singer organize, assemble, and transform a mass of raw information (ideas, images, concepts, feelings) into a persuasive, disciplined phonatory act which will convey aesthetic meaning, and unless the singer possesses a profound intellectual awareness of the words, much of the textual content of great poetry or prose within a song remains barren.

The singer’s sensitivity to text lifts his singing from mediocrity to inspired song; the words must not only be understood, they must become beloved. This aspect of diction falls within that part of semantics that embodies images and feelings. With these tools of expression the singer emotionalizes and intensifies speech sounds, and he enables the listener to realize the meaning of the text.

This work cannot include the study of feeling and aesthetic emotion in their complex psychological structure, but it does provide within this chapter information that is directed toward the reconciliation of the physiological and the psychophysical elements of diction. It provides a means of interpretation that will enable the singer to present his aesthetic awareness of the word in a disciplined and musical manner.

THE LINGUISTIC CHARACTER OF STRESS

Stress is the distinguishing feature of the English language. Important syllables in English are more prominent; less important syllables are less prominent than in any other language. Stress, then, is the key to the pronunciation of an English word; if stress is misplaced, understanding the singer is difficult. Its absence leads to the plodding vocal line and unimaginative performance; its presence gives life and vigor to the words and points the way to eloquence in diction and prosody (Record 5, Bands 1-14).

Prosody as defined by Webster is “The science or art of versification,” Such a definition embodies the systematic study of metrical structure of verse forms and stressed and unstressed syllables. Prosody in song is broadened to include the study of a preferred vowel sound (preferred for its aesthetic texture) upon a preferred pitch, for in song, melodic patterns or pitch variation substitute for intonation or inflection used in speech forms. Understandably, a rise in pitch will aid stressed points within the verbal syntax; at the same time, the pitch rise will create problems for unstressed points.

STRESSING AND UNSTRESSING IN SINGING

Stress is increased vocal force that emphasizes a phoneme^* within a word to bring out its meaning and aesthetic qualities. Stress is often used interchangeably with accent, yet stress and accent are not identical in song. Stress has duration and is used to emphasize vowels, since it is controlled by pitch and note value. Accent carries with it an abruptness that is not complimentary to the vocal line and is used to emphasize consonants, particularly stop plosives, voiced and unvoiced. The phonetic symbol [?] is used to indicate glottal stop accent in such words as oh, oh [^?o,^?o], at [^?ӕt], and each [^?itʃ].

The rhythm of the English language is formed by the alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables. “Unstressing” of the syllable is caused by a lethargy in respiration and articulation, which results in phonemic modifications. Singers of English attempt to pronounce stressed syllables with phonemic accuracy within the stable vowel position but do not feel that it is necessary to move the articulators, lips, and jaw into position for unstressed syllables. The result is a migration of each unaccented phoneme into the neutral vowel [ʌ] or the central schwa [ə].

Unstressing, a very old peculiarity of the English language, has developed through the communication habits of mankind. Wise describes unstressing as a corollary to stressing as follows:

Unstressing was a feature of Indo-European, the ancient parent language of most European tongues. From Indo-European it descended via primitive Germanic to West Germanic to old English to Middle-English to Modern English. By analogous paths it descended through West Germanic to old High German to Middle High German to Modern High German. From Indo-European, through Italic and Latin, it descended to French, and through old Slavic to Russian, in English and Russian and French usually only the sound of the vowel [e].²

Stressed and Unstressed Words

Words can be divided into two classes, content words and auxiliary words.

Content words—such as president, remember, and yesterday— have meaning in themselves and are usually stressed. Content words include nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and demonstratives (this, that, these, those).

If the singer stresses the subject, verb, direct object, adjective, and adverb within each sentence, he will be stressing the proper words most of the time.

Auxiliary words, usually unstressed, have little meaning in themselves and assist in expressing an idea. They include articles (a, an, the), prepositions (to, of, in), personal pronouns (I, me, you, him), possessive pronouns (my, his, your), relative pronouns (who, that, which), and conjunctions (and, but, that, as).

The group of unstressed words of one syllable includes most of the commonest words in the English language. The ten most frequently used words belong to this class: the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, and I. These ten words make up twenty-five percent of all that is spoken or written in English, and one out of every four words used is chosen from this group.

Monosyllables have only a primary stress, but all polysyllables have both primary and secondary stress. Primary stress is identified by a single accent mark above and to the left of the stressed phoneme [ˈ], and secondary stress by one accent mark below and to the left of the unstressed phoneme. Examples are cat [kˈӕt], me [mˈi], and up [ˈʌp]. Examples of polysyllables are economical [ˌεkanˈomikl] and Presbyterian [prˌεzbItˈIrIan].

Rules for Singing Stressed and Unstressed Vowels

Stressed vowels sung within the stable vowel pitch range are ideally pronounced when sung as close to the basic vowel as possible without modification. For pitches higher than the stable vowel pitch range, rules for migration apply. (See Fig. 103, p. 234, Record 5, Bands 1-14.)

Unstressed vowels are almost always pronounced [ə] or [I]. This rule is fundamental for English pronunciation.³ The unstressed vowels are always sung toward the neutral vowel [ʌ] or schwa [ə] on all pitch levels. This alternated stressing-unstressing lends an eloquent lilt to the English language which must be preserved in song.⁴

EMPHATIC AND EMOTIONAL STRESS

Numerous varieties of stresses within languages relate to specific meaning within a particular sentence. Such subdivisions of subject area are used to teach drama and speech to persons who do not face the problems of phonemic duration within a preconceived musical rhythmic framework.

For the musician, two types of stress are sufficient, as an aid to textual intelligibility, to express the factual and emotional meaning within the art song, folk song, and opera. They are emphatic stress and emotional stress. Within each of these types are varying degrees of vocal force and emphasis, which enable the singer to use stress as an interpretive tool as well as a device to intensify a word.

Emphatic Stress

The primary objective of emphatic stress is to lift a word from the phrase for greater intelligibility. It is the assertion of key words within a sentence that reveal the thought content of the words in a compelling manner. These key words are always the subject, verb, direct object, adjectives, and adverbs.

Nouns and verbs are the principal vehicles for revealing thought content in the sentence, yet the singer must take great care to stress only those sounds that are important to the expression of an idea, since unnecessary emphasis will detract from stress already made.

Emphatic stress is used to describe in an unemotional manner matter-of-fact things, places, moods, conditions, and narrations. It is used mostly while singing a legato line, whether that line be fast or slow, piano or forte.

To attain good diction while using emphatic stress, the singer should stress each phoneme through increased vocal force so that it will emerge from other phonemes in the polysyllable or sentence. The singer should also lengthen the consonantal sound by imparting to each consonant firmness of both lip and tongue. It is impossible to sing a consonant (which is an interrupted vowel sound) with as much sonority as a vowel; therefore, duration, is substituted for sonority when singing all consonants.

In applying emphatic stress as an interpretive tool, the singer should consider the melodic line intervallically and rhythmically. Words will be stressed unconsciously if the pitch skip is upward and one word or a part of a word is sung on a higher pitch. This unconscious stressing also occurs when the word falls upon the primary or secondary accent points of duple, triple, or compound rhythms.

Drills for Emphatic Stress. Sing the following words upon the suggested note patterns, place the stress upon the proper syllable, apply the rules for stressing, (a) exaggerate the proper vowel sound at all stress points and (b) lighten the vocal force on all unstressed syllables.

Miscellaneous Words
(with varying syllabic stress points)

The following words have three, four, and five stressed syllables. Sing them, using the suggested melodic patterns. Apply emphatic stress rules a and b for stressing and unstressing of each word.

Emphatic Stress Within the Sentence. Flowing speech has a normal lilt that must be preserved. The sentence, “I hˈope to fˈind it,” has two stressed words, hope and find. “Shˈe is a beaˈutiful wˈoman” has three stress points, she, beautiful, and woman.

Such stress points should be emphasized in song to preserve the natural rhythm of the language. In speech the stress points shift within the normal sentence. In song such changes in meaning are emphasized by using higher pitches, tenutos, or longer note values.

Note in the following examples how meaning shifts with stress:

Are you going to sing in the hall tonight? (No.)

Are you going to sing in the hall tonight? (Not I.)

Are you going to sing in the hall tonight? (No, play.)

Are you going to sing in the hall tonight? (Tomorrow.)

In song, the sentence stress is often lost because note values do not correspond to the natural rhythm of the language. In such cases, the sentence stress may be subtly stressed but never to such an extent that the strong melodic line is destroyed. The following song text is an excellent example of a composer’s disregard for linguistic characteristics of his language.

Lully wrote this aria in the Italian style and destroyed the rhythmic lilt of the French language by placing unstressed mutes (bl,e, br,e, tr,e) on accent points in the bar and by giving them long duration. Unless sentence stress and word stress are observed, the line has a tendency to plod. This tendency is partly caused by the strong irregular melodic line and partly by the matching chordal accompaniment.

In most songs the rhythm is compatible with the meter of the verse form. In such cases the natural rhythm of the phrase is easily maintained, as in the following example of emphatic stress (See Record 4, Band 29.):

The strong rhythmic accent upon the first beat of the bar assists in stressing the principal parts of speech. Logical rhythmic scansion is a composer’s gift to the singer.

Emotional Stress

Emotional stress is used in varying degrees to intensify the word and heighten the drama of the situation.

The exclamations, “My God! My Father!” may be expressed with varying degrees of vocal force and still be classed as emotional stress. If the words were gasped in a hoarse whisper with each word “spaced with silence"⁵ consonants would be stressed to the point of being plosives, “Mˌy Gˈod! Mˌy Fˈathˌer!” The effect would reveal more emotion than if it were shouted. Emotional stress does not always suggest loud singing. Where pitches and note values are written in the score, emotional stress should follow the wishes of the composer and should interpret the dynamic markings suggested, as in this example of emotional stress in which both stressing and unstressing must be observed:

In this example the singer is able to use considerable vocal force at stress points and still stay within the musical boundraies of the text regarding note value, pitch, consonant, and vowel. Tone quality should be the first consideration of the singer in his attempt to fulfill the intensity (loudness) demands of the text, for to distort the vocalized sound for the sake of the text is to weaken the musical elements of the composition. In the following example of emotional stress every syllable must be stressed.

In this portion of the song the singer faces the task of sustaining intense emotion by gradually reducing vocal force, by increasing the stress of each phoneme and by giving each consonant more and more duration as the decrescendo is attained. This portion of the song is sheer drama. To be sung successfully, it must be staged, for the total body position must be controlled to make this passage persuasive.

Textual intelligibility within this line is realized only when the singer consciously controls emotional stress through the intelligent use of vocal force, phonemic emphasis, and consonantal duration. (See Record 4, Band 29.)

METHOD OF DETERMINING STRESS POINTS

In working out stress points within a new song, the student will find it helpful to proceed in the following manner:^*

1. Underline the stress points, the subject, verb, and direct object. These parts of speech are basic words in determining meaning.

2. Underline those stress points within the adjectives that enrich the mood, idea, or drama.

3. Unimportant words that convey little meaning should not be underscored for stress (articles and prepositions).

4. Read the text aloud before singing and notice that emphasis of each word will be matched by a stress within the rhythmic framework of the composition. Too many students rely upon this rhythmic emphasis to carry them through a rewarding singing experience. This procedure will never prove satisfactory. Stress must be conceived and applied beyond the music to bring about truly eloquent interpretation and successful diction in song.

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^* A phoneme is a sound family—that is, any letter or group of letters that sound the same although they may be spelled differently (key, quay, the same phoneme [i]; boss, sauce, the same phoneme [ɔ]). It is also the smallest unit of language which conveys meaning-Wet, Vet, Let (initial); Beet, Bit, Bate (medial); Beg, Bell, Beth (final).

^* See song material, Chap. u, p. 385, and Record 5, Bands 1-14.