Doh-Ray-Moi: singing in another language

by Christopher Lambton

It's lunchtime on a crisp February day in the west end of Glasgow. A small group of people gathers in a spacious first floor meeting room overlooking the gardens of Park Circus. The handsome building is shared between the Goethe Institute and the Alliance Française, respective cultural beacons for Glasgow's Germanophiles and Francophiles. Inside, it is functional, rather than luxurious, with multilingual noticeboards, exhibition posters (Menschen in Berlin), and the usual litter of staircases and corridors left behind when several Victorian houses are knocked together.

In the meeting room the trapezoid tables are pushed to one side of the ornate fireplace to make room for two short rows of chairs. In front, two more tables support, somewhat precariously, a silver Yamaha keyboard. Doors open, people drift in, others beetle off busily to round up stragglers. Eventually there are about ten: six ladies, three gentlemen, and at the keyboard the genial figure of Dr John Dagg.

This is La Chorale, a small choir that meets for an hour or so every fortnight with the particular aim of singing in French. The word "choir", by their own admission, may be a shade ambitious for such an ad hoc gathering. Most choirs are larger, have a conductor, and meet for a couple of hours or more every week. "It's more of a workshop", says John Dagg, a retired doctor of medicine. "And I'm not really a conductor - just a pianist. I was roped in when they were let down by the original director."

Dagg coaxes his keyboard into action - "It's a terrible sound: like pins" - and the choir launches into Giovanni Martini's Plaisir d'Amour, a unison song with an uncanny resemblance to the Elvis Presley classic Falling in Love with you. Then, César Franck's Cantique de Jean Racine in an arrangement for two parts. The singers in each section get to hear their notes, for reassurance, but Dagg's approach is to maximise the sing-song and minimise the note-bashing, even if the results fall some way short of being polished. Next, Panis Angelicus, also by Franck, and finally a rather jolly round by Rameau, Avec du vin, endormons nous.

"I have sung in several choirs", confessed one alto, "but none as friendly or relaxed as this". It certainly feels more like a club than a serious musical endeavour, though this did not prevent complaints last year from members of the Goethe Institute that La Chorale was making too much noise and disturbing their lunch. Vive l'entente!

Some members of La Chorale sing in other choirs, others do not. Some work in the building, others are familiar with the Alliance Française as students of language classes. One used to be a French teacher, another has a French brother-in-law. But they are all united by a fondness for both music and the French language. That said, the music they are singing is already pushing at the boundaries of what we understand by "French". Panis Angelicus, for instance, is in Latin and its composer was Belgian. Moreover apart from a solitary remark by the Alliance secretary (Swedish, as it happens) to pronounce "tu" with the right degree of lip-pursing, there is probably more music than French in La Chorale.

Of all languages, French is perceived as the trickiest for native English speakers. Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady summed it up when he said "The French don't mind what you say, so long as you pronounce it correctly". I know of at least one choir where the conductor has been so badly knocked about by members of the choir insisting on their own pronunciation of Il est né le divin enfant that she avoids programming French altogether.

"There is sometimes a prejudice among singers and voice teachers against singing in French," writes singer and teacher Pierre Bernac (1899-1980) in the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guide to the Voice. "They think the French language is unfavourable for voice production. This is wrong because they have a false idea of the language. On the contrary, it is particularly favourable for the production of a perfect legato, since it is entirely based on pure vowel sounds...Consequently, if one wishes to sing correctly in any language, the primary consideration is a precise awareness of its different vowel sounds..."

This, of course, is the velvet glove of reassurance concealing Bernac's ferocious determination to instil - Higgins was right - the correct pronunciation. He lists 8 common French-English vowel sounds, for instance la table = cup, mot = bowl, and été = safe, qualifying the latter "as spoken in Scotland." So far so easy. He then adds three with no English equivalent: dur, deux, and fleur, for the first of which we have to round the lips as though to say "oo", but actually trying to say "eh". No-one said precise awareness would be dignified.

Finally, Barnac produces the sting in the tail: a further four "nasal" sounds represented by the French words enfant, bon, vin, and parfum. Herein lie the greatest pitfalls for the aspirant singer in French. These sounds, says Barnac, "are not unfavourable for the voice. It is not a question of singing...through the nose, but simply of exaggerating...the nasal resonance of certain vowels." Natural born French singers such as Véronique Gens or Natalie Dessay can do this and make it sound as though the language is bubbling gently out of the music. Singers who are not French tend to overdo the nasal bit, muddling vowels and consonants with the desperation of an Englishman trying to book three return tickets from Paris to Chalons-sûr-Saône with nothing more than Berlitz at his side. We have all heard productions of Carmen where Don José's assault on the French language sounds rather less convincing than a petulant sheep.

Not even native French singers can avoid Barnac's rigour: the rich, rasping, "uvular" R sound, amply demonstrated by Edith Piaf (even when no R is present), should never be used in serious music: "it makes the diction quite vulgar".

Why, then, would a mild-mannered collection of Glaswegians choose to sing in this formidable language? Perhaps we should ask a different question: by choosing French, why would they choose to exclude, on principle, a cornucopia of music that lies just over French frontiers in Germany, Italy, Spain, and even Britain?

Fortunately, La Chorale is not so narrow-minded - after all it has already broken its own rules by singing Panis Angelicus. Music is international by default and does not recognise linguistic boundaries. The most famous operas set in France (La Boheme and La Traviata) were written by Italians to Italian words. Carmen is Spanish, but written by a French composer to a French text. Figaro is also a Spanish story set to music by both Austrian and Italian composers. Tristan takes place in Cornwall, but in German. The only thing that matters, as every choral conductor knows, is that singers should understand exactly what they are singing. As Lois Phillips says in the introduction to the classic publication Lieder Line by Line (1979): "Singing in a foreign language presents many problems. Apart from correct pronunciation and emphasis, it is of the utmost importance for the singer to know what the song is about, not merely in the general sense, but in every detail, if a real interpretation is to be achieved."

How many of the scores of people who have sung Haydn's Te Deum really know what "Te ergo quaesumus" means?

© Christopher Lambton. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.