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THE POEM SINGS:
IDENTIFYING THE SINGING FEATURES OF A POETIC TEXT WITH AN
ANALYSIS OF LE CIMET~ÈRE MARINBY PAUL vALÉRY.
by
Elizabeth Esther Bdovitch
B.A. Honom, McGill University, 1972
THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in the Department
of
French
Q Elizabeth Esther Brodovitch 2000
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
July 2000
Ali ri@ rcsmed This work may not be
nproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy
or othcr means, without permission of the author.
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The author has granted a nom exclusive licence allowing the National Li'brary of Canada to reproduce, lm, distri'bute or di copies of this thesis in microform, paper or electmnic formats.
The author retains ownershlp of the copyright in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extmcts fiom it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's -ssioa.
L'auteur a accordé une licence non exchuive permettant à la Bibliothéque nationale du CanaAli de reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou vendre des copies de cette thèse sous fa forme de microficheffilm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.
L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de ceile-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation.
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Poeticians &bute a "singing" quality to a text, but without considering the
physical processes of singing and spoken performance which prepare the voice to
ûansform &en text into sound. 1 propose to evduate text content and its performance
in the light of musical characteristics, using Le Cimetière marin, composed by French
Symbolist poet Paul Valéry, as a basis for M e r analysis.
Chapter 2 clarifies tbe distinguishing featutes of music and singing and establishes
criteria ofperfodiciîy, continuity and extemion of voculic duration which can be apptied
to paetic recitation. 1 examine singing techniques of breath and resonance management,
as well as theaûical approaches to the appraisal of textual phonetic and rhythmic features.
The chapter concludes with a review of Valéry's poetic and musical philosophy and his
knowledge of the process of voice-in-performance.
In Chapter 3, a summary of Le Cimetière marin's phonetic content, produced with
the aid of an eiectronic database, confirms dut Valéry's poetic use of souud, compared to
a prose passage written by Valdry and to a general average of French sound occurrence,
favours sounds valued by perfamers for their projectabilty and continuity, M m e r
rather than place of articulation of the text's phonetic content detemiines the continuity of
breath flow and its effect on vocalic durational extension. Valéry's placement of sound in
on-set situations and closed-syllable structure supports this conclusion.
Chapter 4 focuses on the rhythmic durational extensions of the syllables and on the
e muet's role in the pacing of the performer's breath. Readings by Henri RoUan, Paul
Mankin, Jean Vilar, and Paul Vaiw provide a performance corpus upon which
measurements of syllabic time durations may be made using the Computerized Speech
Laboratoxy. The results suggest a re-evaluation of the caesura's finidon in terms of
sound delivery rather than sound hkmption, and provide evidence that the readers agree
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in their choices of durational extensions, both phonetic and rhythmic. I conclude that the
text itself can facilitate a more musical deiivery regardless of the extemal conditions of
performance (intonation, voice quality, speed of delivery, etc.), and that the methodology
developed effectively coordinates performance techniques with text analysis.
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Les quaiitks que I'on peut énoncer d'une voix humaine sont les mêmes que I'on doit étudier et donner daos la poésie.
Et le "magnétisme" de la voix doit se transposer dans L'alliance mystérieuse et extra-juste des idées ou des mots.
La continuité du beau son est essentieile.
Paul Valéry
Cahiers II: 1088
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is my pleasure to thank Dr. Phyîiis Wrenn, the Senior Member of my committee
for her guidance. C'&ait un beau voyage.
I would iiûe to thank Dr. Stephen Steele, the second member of the cornmittee,
particularly for his editotial observations.
I would also like to thank Dr. Zita McRobbie, of the Simon Fraser Department of
Linguistics, who acted as Externai Examiner. Dr. McRobbie's comments clarified many
points for me and were greatly appreciated.
Dr. Wiiam Wider of the University of British Columbia D e m e n t of French
wiliingly assisted me in the use of the TACT computer program.
1 am indebted to Sandra Head, Vancouver voice hstructor and theatre coach, for ber
comments on singing technique, particularly with teference to the breath.
1 was continuaily sustained by the interest and care which the teaching and
administrative staff of the Simon Fraser University Department of French extended to
me; in particuiar 1 would like to thank Ms. Rita Gould, Undergraduate Advisor, for her
support.
A speciai thank-you to Mary and Jefney who advised me in the art of Thesis
Defence. Thank-you, Abi and Sophie, and Florence and John, for your unwavering
support. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Jean-Claude Brodovitch who helped me with
computer operations and statisticai calculations, and who devoted many hours of
conversation to U s topic. There are not enough words in any language to thank him.
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Table of Contents
. . Approval .................................................................................................................... u ... Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ur
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... vi . . ....................................................................................................... Table of Contents vil
........................................................................................ List of Figures and Tables x
1 . Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 2 . Defining the Singing Elements of Poetry ......................................................... 6
2.1. Music And Poetry: The Search for a Comparative Methodology ....................... 6 2.1.1. Discursive Systems: the Search for Musical Signification .......................... 6
.................................. 2.1 .2 . Formal Systems: the Organization of Sound in Tie 7 2.1.3. Definhg the Terms of Cornparison ............................................................. 8
2.2. Poeticians and the Musical Text ........................................................................ 11 2.2.1. The Euphonious Text: Ease of Reception or Ease of Transmission .......... 14
..................................................................... 2.3. The Musical Production of Sound 17 ........... 2.3.1. Music and Singing: the Raduction of Periodic, Continuous Tone 17
............... 2.3.2. The Performing Voice: Sound Projection and Sound Extension 19 ...................................................................... 2.4. Paul Valdry and the Singing Text 32
2.4.1. Valéry and the Inner Voice ........................................................................ 33 2.4.2. Valdry and the Performing Voice .............................................................. 34
......................................................................................................... 2.5. Conclusion 37
................................................ . 3 The Sound Structure of Le Cimetière marin 39 ........................................................................ 3.1. The Text of Le Chetière mmin 39
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3.2. Vaky and Sound ......................... .... ................................................................. 41 3.3. The Sound Structure of Le Cimetiare marin ..................................................... 42
.................................. 3.3.1. Sorting the Sounds: the Use of Cornputer Analysis 42 3.3.2. Preparing the Text for Electtonic Analysis ................................................ 46 3.3.3. Processing the Data .................................................................................... 47 3.3.4. Frequency of Occurrence of Individual Sounds in Le Cimetière marin
and Images de la France ........................................................................... 48 3 -3 . 5. Frequency of Occurrence of Sounds in the individual Stanzas of Le
Cimetière marin ......................................................................................... -56 ................................. 3.4. Continuity in the Sound Structure of Le Cimetière murin 60
3.4.1. Flow of the Airsûeam and Extension of Sound Duration ......................... 60 3.4.2. The Distribution of Consonants in Syllable-Final Position in
Le Cimefiire murin .................................................................................... 61 3.4.3, Anaiyzing the Text for the Extension of Sound Duration
.......................................................................................... in Performance 67 ........................................................................................................ . 3 .5 Conclusion -72
4 . The Rhythmic Structure of Le Cimetière marin ......................................... 75 ................................................................................ 4.1. Music. Poetry and Rhythm 75
4.2. Vakry and Rhythm ............................................................................................ 77 ................................................ 4.3. The Rhythmic Structure of Le Cimetière marin 80
4.3.1. The Hemistich Divisions. the Enjambed Caesm and the
.......................................................................................... Lyric Caesura ..81 ........................................................... 4.3.2. Duple and Triple Rhythmic b u p s û4
............................................................... 4.3.3. Syiiable Duration and the e muet 88
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.......................................... 4.4. The Rhythmic Performauce of Le Cimetière marin 93 ......................... 4.4.1. Measuring Performance: Finclhg a Basis of Cornparison 93
4.4.2. The Spoken Performances ......................................................................... 94 4.4.3. Measuring Duration ................................................................................... 96
4.5. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 1 13
.............................................................................................................. 5 . Conclusion 1 6 Appendix A . Texts of Le Cintetiére marin and Images de la France ............................. 121 Appendix B . Taggiag the Text for Electronic Analysis ............................................. 129
B . 1 Identifying the Grapheme Groups .................................................... 1 30 ....................................................................... B.2 Tagging the Marker File 130
Appendix C . Frequency of Occurrence of French Sounds in Images de la France and Le Cimetière marin, Compared to Wioland Rankings ......................... 138
.................................. Appendix D . Corpus of Closed Syllables in Le Cimetière marin, 139 ....................................... Appendix E . The Metrical Groupiags of Le Cimetière marin, 148
Appendix F . Syllabic Durations in Centiseconds, of Stanzas 10 and 13 . of Le Clmehère marin ................................................................................ 149
Appendix G . Relative Syllabic Durations in Staazas 10 and 13 . . ................................................................................ of Le CzmetiPre marin 153
Bibiiography .......................................................................................................... 157
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List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1. Two captures of Paul Valéry Reading St. 10: 1 of Le Cimetière marin. ............,. 99 Figure 2. Voice printouts of Mankin, Rollan, Vdéry, and Vilar, showing continued
articulation through the caesura of St. 102 of Le Cimetière marin. ................. 103 Table 1. Frequency of Occurrence of French Sounds in Le Cimetière marin and
Images de la France Compared to Wioland Compilation (1972). ..................... 49 Table 2. Frequency of Occurrence of Consonants in Word-Initial Position . .. in Le Cimeaere marin, .................................... , ...................... ..... ,....... ... ,... ......... 53 Table 3. Frequency of Occurrence of Consonants in Syllable-Closing Position . .. in Le Cimehere marin. ........................................................................................ 64 Table 4. Average Duration in Centiseconds of Stanza Verselines of Four Readers ........ 100 Table 5. Duration in Centiseconds of the Hemistich and Caesura Verseline Divisions
of St. 10: 1 and St. 13:s for Mankin, Rollan, Valéry, and Vilar. ......................... 101 Table 6. Duration in Centiseconds of the Caesura Between Hemistich 1 and 2 ......... ..... 104 Table 7. SyUable Duration Ratios of St. 10:4: for Mankin, Rollan, Valéry, and Vilar ..., 108 Table 8, The Durational Ratios of Syilables with [ER] and [E] Graphemes
in St.10:l-23 ................................................. . .................. . . ............... , 1 1 1
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1. Introduction
When the presence of music was separated fiom poetry, or no longer automatically
assumed to be present, French pe ts of the latter-haif of the nineteenth century sought to
redefine the musical elements of poetry in tems of the "music" inherent in the words
themselves. Zn 1882, Verlaine had published his celebrated poem Art poétique, which
opens with the injunction "De la musique avant toute chose" (Verlaine, 1969: 261). Art
poétique was, in fact, an ironic rebuttal to Boileau's L 'Artpoétique written in 1674, in
which that author had maintained that clarity of expression must be one of the guiding
principles of literary endeavour (1966: 160). Verlaine's response was to describe verse as
an adventure, as a lightness of being which fies forward unencumbered by the weight of
predetermined eloquence, and as a "chanson grise", in which the power of suggestion is a
musical characteristic which takes precedence over the literary capacity of the poem to
inform its listener or reader (261-262).
"...reprendre à la Musique leur bien" wrote Paul Valéry (E.1: 1272)1, but it appears
that Valéry was echoing his mentor and principal representative of the Symbolist
movement, Stéphane Mallarmé, who wrote in a letter to René Ghil in 1885: "Cet acte de
j u s . restitution qui doit être le nôtre, de tout reprendre à la musique ..." (cited in Stimpson, 1984: 285). The Syrnbolists viewed the poem not as language iransformed into
a musical product, but rather as the result of an underlying network of semantic and
sound interactions. Words were heavy with substance, and their organization into surface
manifestations of souad and metrical patterns generated c'resonances" of deep interna1
response in the individual's consciousness, "...a music", concludes Stimpson,
%depend&t of the art of sounds" (1984: 10).
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1 Vaky's writiag is published in two voIumes entitied ûhures, edited by Hyticr. From 1894 to 1945, Vaiéry also mahtained a daily private joumaI, in which he recordcd his perceptions of the living wodd and his f8t-mging intercsts. Thcsc 261 workbooks have been «iited mto two volumes entitied Cahies (Ed. J. Robinson). 1 have abbnviated nfmnces fiam ûbra and Cuhièrs as (E.i/Ii and C.VII.
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Valéry was always clear that the music of poetry resided in the capacities of the
human voice, both spirituaüy and physically (Stimpson, 1984: 210-21 1). The singing
quaiity of language in the poetic context absorbed Valéry's interest throughout his writing
career, and he continually defined and redehed the qualities of music, poetry, and poetic
singing.
Like Valdry, 1 wished to investigate the singiog quaiity to which poets and
poeticians refer in their analysis of the poetic text. The description of poetry as "musical"
and as "siaging" interested me because as a professional singer, 1 had spent many years
working on breath control, vowel production, range extension, and refînement of tonal
quality. 1 dehed singing as the delivery ofa particuiar quality of sound, and as a body
experience that was almost a form of physicai exercise. But in what way could the
"musical" substance of the written text be described in terms of a physical process? Any
text can be sung. Was it possible that the poetic text itself could contain identifiable
elements which would facilitate the delivery of the singing sound without musical
accompaniment? It is, of course, the singing qualities of the spokn performance which is
the nature of poetic recitation aud which must fonn the bais of this discussion. This
criterion provided an initial point of departure, and 1 began a search for a "musical" poetic
text by listening to spoken recitations of French poetry-
Those working with the tepertoire of the French mélodie2 become quickly familiar
with the poetry of the Symbolists. Debussy set texts by Malland, Pierre Loufs, and
Tristan l'Hermite, but the majority of his song output is reserved for the poetry of
Verlaine (Bemac, 1970: 154-155). Having sung these son@ many times, 1 was entirely
A composition for voicc and piano accompanmicnt. Hector Beclioz is credittd for being the nrst to apply this ~ n n to a genre of musical compwition which began as a ronrrmce and cvolved into the mt song (Roe, 1997: 36).
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familiar with the musical settings and rhybüc durations that the composer had chosen
for the poetic syllables.
However, when 1 listeneci to spoken recordings of the same texts, the poems did not
seem rhythmic or "musicalyy at ail. The tecitations varied a great deai in dynamics and
tempi, but they lacked rhyîbmic definition and did not convey a sense of that glowing
musicality which had made the mélodies so acclaimed. Perhaps the poetic musicalness lay
simply in the composer's ability to incorporate poetic words into a beautiful melody, and
the reai musicality lay in the musical harmonies and rhythm superimposed on the poetic
text. Gabriel Fauré, using repetitive minor chords in his setting of Verlaine's Prison,
seemed to convey the despair of a wasted iife more effectively than the reader who
delivered the text quickly with little variation in intonation and, it seemed, with no
rhythmic energy.
Three spoken recordings of Le Cimetière marin, read by Paul Maukin, Henri
Rollan, and Jean Vilar, provided my first inimduction to the poetry of Paul Vakry. The
ciifference in the interpretations, one of which stnick me as king entirely musical and
approaching a song-like state, suggested that musicality and "singability" (which are not
the same thing) could be realized in the spoken performance. The vitality of Vilar's
interpretation of Le Cimetière marin was initiaily so striking compared to the Rollan and
Mankin versions that 1 wanted to know why this performance was so effective.
Nevertheless, the quality of Vilar's voice was exceptionally beautiful,3 and it was
possible that it was not the musical fmtures of the text, but, rather, the voice itself (Like a
composer's setting), wbich had imposed the! musical conditions on the words.
However, not oniy did Vilar's performance appniach the resonance of music, but
the spacing of a series of sound clusters seemed to culminate in a blossoming of sound
Probably whaî Wim-WiIson calls the Wimdaful Voice (1993: 93-94), -an instrument of such great remnaacc that it could be called the vocal equivaicnt of a StradivaMJ violin.
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fiom wliich the meaning emerged. Al1 of the performances were accomplished without
the benefits of the strong melodic and rhythmic conditions which a musical setting
imposes on the direction ofthe text. But Vilar's interpretation suggested that well-defined
sound and rhythmic patterns were indeed present in the text's formal construction, and
b t Viar in some way had most fuliy utilized their presence to accomplish his
transformation of the written text into sound.
If there was a musicality or a singing quality in the words themselves, it was with
the text that the investigation should begin, rather than with a description of the text's
orai performance, since the musicalness of the performer's personal voice quality and the
ski11 of the performer's delivery represents an "extemal musicality", so to speak, which
can influence the listener's perception of the text as musical. On the other hand, the poet
determines the organization of the poetic sound, and the performer, experienced in the
profession of public sound delivery, controls its production. 00th poet and performer
engage in an assesment of the poem's sound and rhythmic content, the performer
preparing the orai delivery as meticulously as the poet organizes the structure. This
suggests that an understanding of performance vocal techniques and their application to
the realization of each sound of the text and the sounds' place in the text's rhythrnic
framework wuld offer valuable insights into the singing character of the poetic text.
Following this iine, 1 will devote the initiai stages of my discussion to a clarification
of techniques of v d production practised by singers and acton. These performance
practices and the singing criteria ofperiodicity, continuity, and extension of vocalic
&ration will guide the subsequent analyses of the sound and the rhythmic structures in
Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, of Le Cimetière murin. The cornputer will prove to be a
usefiil tool, sorting the sounds of the poem efficiently and quickly and directhg the focus
of the discussion to the sounds' manner of articulation and theù relationship to the
aistmm flow which singers and actors maintain as they deliver the text. In Chapter 4,
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with the assistance of the CSL (ComputenZed Speech Laboratory), 1 will examine the oral
performances of Le Cimetière marin, as 1 search for evidence that rhythmic short-long
relationsbips of syilable duration, identined in the rhythmic analysis of the text and
recalculated as relative ratios of duration, have been realized by severai speakers-4 This
will ensure a broder base for conclusions bnrsed on performance and eliminate
dependence on the ski11 of one perfomer aione.
Thus, 1 will argue that the singing qualities of the aurai substance of the text can be
evaluated on the basis of that part of the performance pracess which utilizes the =und
and the rhythmc features of the text to guide the pnqamtion of the voice in the
transformation of d e n text into sound, 1 am proposing a two-pronged methodology in
which I combine a formal anaiysis of the written text and its structural arrangement of the
sounds with an analysis of the performer's appwach to the oral delivery of the text. By
clari&ing the characteristics of singing and examining the poetic text in the light of these
characteristics, 1 seek to establish objective criteria, at teast fiom the technical perspective
of performancesriented vocal production, which can be used to evaluate the singing
qualities of a poetic text. 1 must note, however, that this study, whde featuring a review of
Valéry's musico-poetic conceptions and an analysis of bis poem Le Cimetière marin, is
using an individuai's work as a field of operation in order to estabiish a methodology
which couid be applied in a general sense to descriptions ofpoetry as musical, and more
particuiarly as singable.
4 Th, rrcorded corpus bccame ewn more iuîensting because 1 was abIe to add a version of VaIéry hmwif reading smraI stauzas of & Cimeriére marin
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2. Defining the Singing Elements of Poetry
2.1 Music and Poetry: the Search for a Comparative Methodology,
In the twentieth century, music and language have been comparai as systems of
discourse with extemal referential fiuictions and as systems of fom which have internal
referential functions.
2.1.1 Dicursive Systems: the Search for Musical Signification.
Current research undertakes to treat language and music not as systems of language
in which meaning is created through binary opposition, but as systems of discourse in
which there is recognition of and response to meaning. In her doctoral thesis, GyUian
Phillips reviews approaches to music as discourse. For example, in the late 1940'~~
Theodore Adomo described the establishment of atonality as a response "...to the decay
of the modem capitalist cultures ..." (1996: 34). Adorno understood music in ideological tams as a sociaiiy produced discourse/text containhg the referentid power to dismpt and
challenge the commodincation of art. Leonad Meyer' theorized that the formai structure
of music represents a self-teferential system; that is, the musical notes relate to me 0th-
in the formai composition, but do not refer to meaning outside the formai structure.
However, Meyer postdates that music's e x t e d referential pwer lies in its ability to
create emotional responses on the part of the Listener (that is music as emotional
discourse), by using dissonance, or non-tesolution of cadences at harmonic closure
points, for example, to create a sense of expectation on the listener's part, If the cadence
resolves to the established tonal centre, the listener's expectations are fulfilled. Phillips
her~elfsuggests that the musicai performance of text, which breaks dialogue into musical
Etnotion and Meaning in Miuic, 1956.
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motifs, blurs meaning, leaving the murative "siippery, unfinished, and associationai"
(284). The performer's body becomes the medium which transfers the text to the
audience, but at the same time blurs the written message through sonority, gesture,
presence, movement, voice intonation, and htensity. Phiilips sums up these
interdisciplinary methodologies: "Once language is admitted as being indeterminate,
multivocal, subject to semiotic dimptions (choase your critical paradigm), music is ouly
removed from words by a matter of degree, not by an irreducible binary between meaning
and nonmeaning" (56).
Pbillips' statement underlines the fact that cornparisons based on a matter of degree
avoid the necessity of identifjing what is specific to each area. The qualities of music and
poetry may be studied for their degrees of rapprochement, but 1 think that the more
interesthg observations lie in the definitions of the characteristics which distinguish one
art h m the other. Isolating the most basic units which can convey meaning at the
musical and the linguistic levels is the task of the semioticians? and whether music needr
to convey meaning is, for me, stiii an unanswered question. However, the desire to
compare the two art forms is understandable, particularly as music and poetic language
undoubtedly share formal elements of structuré.
2.1.2 Formal Systems: the Orgaaizrtion of Sound in Time.
Music and language in Western cultures3 shate features of intemal structure and
forma1 organization. They contain identifiable surface structures which relate to each
See, for example, Nattiez, 1. (1974) ~ b l ~ de 3miologic musicale et de poétique". Semiotica XUe: 247-268, and (1977) '"Ttie Conm'bution ofMusical Scmiotics to the Semiotic Discussion in Generaly' in A Perfiuion of S i p , Ed T. Sebeok.
3 My discussion is conducted within îhc context of Western Empan tradition, whose f o d p ~ & c and musical concepts an mtcd m the phiiosopbical thdes of Ancient Gmce.
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other to produce a self-contained product, although the nature of the f o m in the two
media and their fiinctional relationship with each other ptovide another direction in this
ongoing discussion.4 The two systems are constmcted with sound units which are
transcribed as written symbols (musical notes, aiphabetic characters) and are read,
moving fiom left to right and down the page (again within the general context of Western
practice). In performance, the sounds of the text and the musical notes are taken off the
page and transmitted acoustically to the listener by the reader, the actor, or the singer.
Music and poetry involve the creation of sound patterns reinforced by repetition and
rhythmic organization. The p e t d e s specific choices of consonants and vowels to
mate alliteration and assonance (and, by extension, rhyme), and arranges these choices in
a series of long and short time durations (either in formai, countable meter, or in fiee
verse), whose length is contained in the syiiable. The composer sets musical pitches in
rhytbmic patterns of uni& of long and short duration, ais0 metered or fiee. The musical
note carries information about both pitch and rhythmic d u e , while in poetry the
spelhgs identm the sound unit, and the syllable (with particular reference to French
versification), composed of one or severai sounds, represents a tirne unit, a "beat" of
longer or shorter duration. This would suggest that in an investigation of the musical and
singing elements of poetry, one of the first tasks would be to analyze the poet's choices of
sounds and rhythmic arrangement of those sounds.
2 . 1 Defining the Termt of Cornparison.
Scholars are advised to be cautiow in th& approach to comparative meâhodoiogy
4 For discussions of poetic form, ste Cohen (1966), Delas and Filliolet (1973), Meschonnic (1970), and Stankicwicz (1977). For cornparisons of music and poetic formai nlationships, scc Brown, 1948; Bmm, 1992; Cone, 1974; Fry (l9S6), Kramer (l984), Schwadron (Nil), Springer (1971), and Wi (1981). See Phillips (1996) for a ccview of pre- and post-1970 interdisciplinary theones of the nfeirnti*ai capaeities of language and music.
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of rnusico-lit- study, descriid by Kramer as melo-poetics (Scher, 1992: xiv).
Interdisciplinary investigations of music and poetic text provide a rich field of
investigation and contribute to a deeper understanding and appreciation of each am's
contribution to the finished product.5 But the description of a text in a musicai setting
may not prove a relationship in meaning at the extemai referential level (swh as narrative
or emotional), or at the interna1 referentiai level of formal relationships between the
surface structures of the text/composition. Such relationships may be in effect a series of
observations or analogous cornparisons in which the writer creates relationships
according to h i s k response, rather than based an absolute criteria of cornparison. White
(Scher, 1992) advises critics to define their tenns: commenting on R Solie's feminist
interpretation of Schumann's Frauenliebe und -Lebert, White notes:
1 have no quarrel with Solie's analysis of the musical content of Schumann's songs, although 1 would Iike to have it documented that major always denotes positive and minor negative or at I t m t was presumed to have been apprehendible as such at the time Schumann composed tbis piece. (303)
Solie's anaIysis of the interrelationship between the musical and textual settings
equates Traum (dream) to Pickery, the "trickiness" ernphasized by the setting of T r a m
on a diminished seventh chord. '%y a diminished seventh?'continues White, "What
does a diminished seventh do? Does it subvert the force of the assertion and its possible
tnith ..." (304). For Sotie it does, But it is not estabfished that this acoustic perception on Solie's part, based on Western conceptions of estabLished tonal intervais, is shared by a
For examplc, sec Conc's analysis of Scbubeds Song, Der Erlk6nig(Sonnd andPoeny, 1956), in which Caae explores xhe composer's transformation of a stmphk poctic fonn hto a through-composed m g ; or Kramcr's discussion of Schumann's sctting of a Heme poem in the Dichterfiebe, in which b e r suggests that by spueezing this Romantic pods tomat of ernotionai anguish into melodic Lines of d mtcrvaiic differenccs, b e cornposer"cfamp~~' the pam and succceds m actually heightening the tension (1984: 146). Conc (1956), Schwadron (Ml), and Knrma(t984) aii provide an aaalysis ofthe poetico=musical htCtactioasmDer~ig.
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Analogous comparisons have permitted the specif~c technical terms of one art form
to be applied to the other, and music and language share a vocabulary which has
permitted an acoustic situation in music or singing to be redefined as a reflection of the
thought-content of the text. The risk is that the terms, once redefhed according to the
poet's or the cesearcher's interests, then [ose the identifjhg features which detemiined
their original meaning. For example, in her article "Tone in the poems of Paul Valéry"
(1970), Noulet equates tone to the central idea of the poem, to the emotionai content of
the text, to the tone of the voice as it rises and falls in performance, and to the intensities
and rhythmic "movemenf' of the ideas - %efortissimo rendering on the same note of the word of the supreme movement ...", the moderato of the "grophg investigation" (45-46). Tone in musical terms describes a sound of definite pitch and vibration, but Noulet, using
Rimbaud's image, "la pensée chantt?e9' (41),7 redefines tone, not as a manifestation of
sound, but as the musicalization of thought. Noulet bas appropriated musical vocabulary,
which she now uses to study poetry fiom its own musical point of view rather than in
tems of absolute musicality.
Following Symboiist poetics, Valéry fiequently appiied terms such as timbre,
intonation, resonance, melody, voice, and harrnony to describe the "musicality" of the
poetic text. However, Valdry defined and redefined his terms constantly within the wider
perspective of bis continuou search to uaderstand the aesthetics of poetic language, and
6 White points out that i€UIvcstigati*ons of music as a conveyot of mcaning arc underiaken on music which contains no tcxt, tùe researcha wiil be forccd to idenri@ "...an equivdenf of a verbal content. ..m musical (or musieolo~d) temis alonc" (292). Th& is, music is behg descrihi with words, but language so fiir cannot be descriaed ushg only musical "language".
7 Rimbaud wrote in a îetiu to Paul Demcny, 15, 1871: ' U s romantiques, qui prouvent si bien que la chanson est si peu souvent l'awn, c'est-idire la pensée chantée et comprise du chaatcur?" (Rimbaud, 1984: 201)
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he reaiized that Ms descsiptions were not proof, but only steps in a process leading to a
deeper comprehension of poetic art.
Thus, anaiogous descriptions may underline similarities between poetry and music
and pique the imagination. But if the anaiogy is accepted as proof, the poetic text,
formerly qualified with protective parentheses as "musical", becomes metaphorically
musical, and, as Phillips suggests, the researcher can then build an argument for poetic
musicality based an his or her own musical definitions and set aside the identifying
characteristics which define music.
2.2 Poeticians and the Musical Test,
Scholarly interest has focused on the concept of Voice, inspired in some part by
Paul Zumthor's introduction of the concept of mouvance in medieval troubadour poetry.
Zumthor considemi that the text, through the constantly modifjing conditions of live
performance, was constantly recreated. Thus, every performance represented an authentic
version of the text. Zumthor opened a discussion on the nature of sung text,g and
extended the meaning of voice to a more global context of the inner beauty of Voice, an
inner monance or consciousness unique to every human being, as weli as its outward
physical manifestation, which is the speaking, singing voice.
Val&yYs interest in the couple Voicelvoice and his application of the nature of voice
to poetry has provided a ready field of investigation for scho1ars.g Christine Crow (Pm1
Valéry and the Poetry of Voice, 1982), and Brian Stimpson (Paul Valéry and Music,
1984), two works of interest to this study, have devoted much of theu research to the
8 Sec fmochrciion d /upocO,rè o d e (1983) and Per/ormance, réception, lecture (1990).
W i i ceferencc to Valdryan nlationships of somd and formai struchin, sct Delas and Fiiolet (1973), Gauthicr (W4a and 1974b), Guiraud (1953). Lawlcr(1959,1963), Morier (l974), and Scott (1980,1998). For Valéry and music, sec Clow (1982), Hyticr (l953), Lamnti (l973,1974), and Stimpson (1984).
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interpretation of the voice in tenns of Vaiéryan philosophy.1° 1 will discuss Valéry's own
conceptions of music in the latter-half of this chapter, but my purpose in mentionhg this
research is to undedine the scholars' interpetive approach, which is to define the poetic
nature of Voice rather than the technical nature of voice. Both Stimpson and Crow present
sensitive and thorough interpretations of Valéry's use of sound, relating Valéry's musical
approaches directiy to the phonetic content of the poetic line (melody, rhythm, harmony,
recitative, "la musique verbale "), but the discussion aiways expands into the deeper
implications of the presence of an inner-voice which lies within the human
consciousness, and is awakened by the semantic and sound associations created by the
pet."
These sound and semantic associations in the context of poetic singing were
previously expIored by Pierre Fortassier (1973), who linked the inner musical voice to its
realization in poetic recitation (which he defined as lying haifway between speech and
song). Fortassier relates his discussion of pets' sound arrangements to the use of "échos
sonores" (37) in which vowel- and consonant-sound combinations of key words have
been planted throughout the text, thus subliminally preparing the ear for their arrival. He
claims that if the saunds are there, and the ear perceives the arrangement - "l'orchestration de leurs sonorités" (43) - the text is musical, This seems to me to be an analogical conclusion rather than a precise identification based on musical characteistics.
However Fortassier touches, if ody briefly, on a techoicai aspect of singing that is
relevant to this discussion, "ia dude'', which he associates with the slower tempo of
Io Hytier's woi i aiso contains much valuable information about Valdry's intcrpretation of the singiag tex$ but is less concenicd wiîh the production of a d singing sound
The degm to which somd and sense are connected is not part of my discussion. Do sounds acnialize meaniug, or do they becorne meaningfid through our association wiîh their use in semantic tenns tbat have meaning for us?
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poetic recitation. "Observons seulement que le son, pour s'établir, exige une certaine
durde: c'est encore plus sensible quand intervient la musique, mais déjà le vers qui
chante, ou le mot qui chante dans le vers, tend ii ralentir le débit" (3). This is interesting
because Fortassier recognizes the nature of sound delivery itseif. It is tnie that a sung
musical text can be greatly extended in duration; for example, in the aria "Rejoice
greatly" from Handel's Messiah, the vowel of goice is maintained for fourteen quarter-
note beats, and the sequence occupies 18 centimeters on the printed page of the Novello
edition. By identifjing musical sound in terms of time duration, which is measurable,
Fortassier offers a concrete basis for investigation of a poetic text Ui terms of musicality.
That is, does the text itself in some way permit the tempo of oral delivery to be slowed?
Tsur also offers a point of view which includes a specific reference to the technical
nature of musical sound production. Tsur explains that acousticdy, continuous and
periodic speech sounds are kquentiy perceived as beautifùl(1992: ix), and that in the
poetic context "...the poem's musical nature is enhanced by the fact that the dominant
speech sounds in the stanza are, like the sounds of music, continuous and periodic"
(74).[2 Tsur, üke Fortassier, thus links musical and poetic sounds at the level of their
physical realization in performance, at the technicd sound production level, as it were.
Tsur's approach also suggests that the sounds of the text can be examined for their
continuous and periodic propezties, although the term contirnous requires carefùl
dennition. Does the continuousness Iie in the listenerfs perception of repetitive sound
occunences, vocalic and/or consonantal, or in hisRier awareness of a continuous flow of
sound? In fact, how can continuity in a poetic line be evduated as more continuous than
rhat of another iine?
12 Tsur is investigating cognitive and psyhandytic aPpcas of the expmsive capacity of sound patterns.
13
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2.2.1 The Enphonious Te*. Ease of Reception or Ease of Transmission.
Researchers have applied the term euphony (hm the Greek "sweet-voiced,
musicai") to their investigations of what Gauthier calls "l'architecture sonore" of the
poetic construction (1974b: 7). Euphoniousness does not seek to describe poetic writing
in terms of musical tone, or as an actual musical state, but rather to reflect a perception of
pleasure which the listener discovers in hearing a pleasing arrangement of poetic sound,
comparable to the same pleasure enjoyed when tistening to music. Gauthier defines
euphony as "...l'étude des phonhies d'un poéme, ... dans leur organisation et arrangement mutuel, et en liaison avec les cadres traditionnels de la prosodie, de la
métrique et de la versification" (1974b: 1 O). His review of twentieth-century descriptions
of sound expressivityl3 suggests tbat g e n d y , in the search for poetic euphoniousness,
theorists proceed by identwng the munds in the poetic verseline according to
articulatory or acoustic similarities, thus uncovering sound patterns which through their
repetition and rhythmic arrangements offer a '%armony" of sound that the listener can
perceive. Gauthier outlines many forms of sound patterns whose timbres echo or repiy to
one another at various metrical and stress points in the verseline; for example he traces
patterns of same consonant- or vowel-groupings which occur two, three, four, and five-
l3 Becq de Fouqui&res (1879) ibeorizes that the sound components of a keyword generatc M e r sound and semantic choices (mot gdnérateur d'hmnonie). Hytier (1923) focuses on the acoustic strength of the chyme sound components, and their echos in the verseline. Guiraud (1953) defiaes the systematic groupings of sounds as tonali& and the relationship between concomitant phonemes as modulation. The Russian Formaüsts investi*gate the sound repetiiions hughout the paaic verseline but reject the Symboiists' vision of phonemes as carriers of emotional qualities. (Herc, Gauthier is citing Delbouilley P&e et sonorités, 1961). Jakobson (1971) suggtsts that the npctition of the phonetic components cfeates a subliminal undeqmning of the semantic content to create a parblership of sound and sense working in parailel balance. Saussure expaads the notion of subliminal underpinnings to a starch in Latin texts for diphones and triphones, which he calls hypogrummes- J.P. Chausserie La@e (1971) views euphony as the sum of the gnatest number of various patterns of sound pupings in the entire verseline. Finally, Gauthier cevicws Grammont's thtory of "la m ~ q u e des vws", in whidi Grammont defmes euphony as îhe study of conmsting vowel timbres (écImanies/sombm, a@udiJ/cIuhs) and their organhtion into p u p s of twos or threes, or multiples oftwos andthms (1954, origidy pubLished iu 1904).
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times within a single verselh. But Gauthier insists that the vowel and consonant
arrangements should be studied separrttely. He believes that the two categories of sound
are perceived differently by the listener, consonants are distinguished by theu place of
articulation, and vowels are perceived by their timbre (1974b: 46), and that ultimately the
euphonious effect must be evaluated by its reception rather than by a description of the
sounds' articulations -"...l'expérience prouve, dans ce domaine, qu'il est essentiel de
rester prudent et attentif aux identitis acoustiques (et non articulatoires)" (1974b: 85).
Bishop suggests that euphouiousness is "...a positive correlation between lingual
ease and aura1 pleasure" (1 985: 344). This links the perception of 'Lpleasurable" sound to
its ease of transmission as wefl as to its ease of reception. Put differently, the ease with
which the speaker's tongue can move h m sound to sound will contribute to the listener's
perception of agreeable continuity. Thus Bishop equates euphoniousness with the
mechanical process of articulating sounds, and he proposes a point system of evaluation
based on the identification of the poetic sounds (through repetition), the prominify of
sounds with neighbouring articulations, and the progression of vowels and consonants as
they "succeed each other in the poetic line ..." (353). Bishop, like Gauthier, evaluates consonant and vocalic combinations separately, but his system stresses aflow of sound.
He describes articulations which intemipt the =und transmission, such as clusters of
unvoiced plosives, as "harsh", citing Rudrauf s cornments on the inelasticity of unvoiced
occlusives pl, b] and [t] (354). Bishop's system for an euphonious product includes the
suggestion that these obstructive sounds must be contained in a "buffer zone", and should
be separated h m one another with "softer" sounds (354), uniess the stops can be placed
in pattern of aiiiterative repetition at dependable rhythmic sires points.
There are two points which 1 wish to discuss as a result of these arguments. The
hrst is that them is a tendency in these appmaches to suggest that the production and
transmission of the sound itselfis a fait accompli, and andt it is the listener's ear which
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detemines the success of the euphoniousness.~4 However, just as various individuals of
an audience will have ciifferhg opinions of a musicai performance, defîning arrangements
, of sounds as "harmoniousY' based on the individual's abiiity to perceive the sounds, that is
the acoustic reception, adds as many parameters as there are listeners. Secondly, if the
listener perceives an euphonious arrangement of somd, it is because the somd has been
transmitted to the ear. In fact, the terms of the production of this sound have rarely, if
ever, been examined, let done defined in musical or singhg terms.
Whiie Gauthier's interest lies in the functional possibilities of sound arrangement,
he compares his analysis of the euphonious sound system to the musician's interest in
discovering the formai structure of the composition (1974b: 7), a discussion of the
"melodyyy of form as it were.15 He suggests that the= are two kinds of amateur musicians,
those who listen to music and those who practise the art, and that the reai musicality for
the musician lies in the discovery of the relationships within the musicai form. It seems
that Gauthier wishes to j a hiS approach to fimctional euphoniousness by compariag it
to music, which is unnecessary. His investigation of the possibilites of euphonious sound
within a fiinctionai encadrement is perfectly legitimate without justification at the
musical level. Moreover, while he seeks a rapport with the musician's approach at the
l4 Bishop suggests, somewhat dubiousiy, that "...a high frequency of sibiiants ... shocks the French ear even more than that of an Anglophone"(l975: 20). A conccnü'ation of the sound [s] in a Iiae of verse is an unlikety source of "shock" for French tisteners.
l5 Gauthier bases his sîudy of the phonetic structure on acoustic identification rather than phonemic binary opposition. He pnfers to avoid articulatory criteria as this approach risks a ntum to the biaary theory of understandkg thtough opposition rather than thmugh timbre. He links pemptual effdveness, by the üstening ear, of the sounds in the text to their place in the otganization of meter, accentuai groups, and rhythmic pattern of timbre. Gauthier points out that nseatchers tcad to identify groups of sou& as "melodious" or "modulating", but that identifymg sounds in tenns of succession or contrast does not really explain euphoniousness in tmns of fbction. Rather tbau pimply notmg simüar contrastiag patterns of sound, Gauthier identifies equivaIent p u p s (groupes semblables) of repeated timbres and relates the groups ta thcir functional role in the verseline. "Ce n'est pas seulcmcnt parce que R et L sont deux liquides qu'ils se trouvent en rapport, mais parce que, ridns ce wrs, iis se trouvent, riom ckoqtdegroupe, occuper un poste €gaiement Libre, ils peuvcntfo)~~tionnrr memble" (1974b: 64).
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f o d level, Gauthier leaves uaacknowledged the performing musician's primary goal,
which is the production of paiodic sound in a wntinuous rhythmic flow guided by the
the composer's instnictions. While the musician is aware of the formai structure, it is the
transformation of fonn-on-paper into sound, using dl the technical ski11 at his or her
disposai, that is the musician's immediate goai. Gauthier and others explore
euphoniomess in terms of ease of reception, but they seem to skirt the issue of looking
at terms which define absolute musicality, whik at the same tirne introducing
cornparisons with music. However, Gautbier's comments about the musician's approach
did draw my attention to the musician's and the singer's perception of music production,
and Bishop's definition of lingual ease suggested that the oral preparation of the text's
delivery must consider the production of the sounds thernselves and the muscuiar act of
joining the sounds together.
Some points emerge fiom this review which offer specific musical feanires: that is,
periodicity (a quaiity of vocalic sound), continuity (a flow of vocalic and consonant
sound), and the concept of the extension of the sound's duration. These criteria must be
de- more carefûlly; first by examining c k t e r i s t i c s specific to music and singing,
and then by reviewing the preparation of the performing voice in tenns of sound
production aud sound extension.
23 The Musical Production of Sound.
2.3.1 Music and Singing: the Production of Periodic, Continuous Tone.
Western conceptions of the acoustic science of music define its organization as the
arrangemea of tones into units of time duration which are given exact values. Singing is
a physicai process in which the human voice combines musicai tone with verbal
Iaaguage. Singing is the musical act of speaking, using an enlarged body space (enlarged
lung cavity, enlarged pharynx), and engagement of the sinus cavities to create an intense
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state of sound resonance. Both music and singing rely on the production of pdodic tone,
making song a form of music. But whereas sounds and rhythm are the comrnon formal
elements shared by poetry and music, common elements shared by singing and poetry can
only be established on the basis of the avaiiability of periodic tone, which in language is
principaily produced with the articulation of the vowels.i6
Vowels are complex periodic tones, characterized as Ladefoged describes them,
'hot by one fiequency each but by a combination of fiequencies" (1996: 102).17
Ladefoged identifies these frequencies asformanfs or "resonant fiequencies" (1 3O),
which he defines as "modes of vibration [whose) peaks in the spectra of vowels ... correspond to the basic fiequencies of the vibrations of the air in the vocal tract" (94).
The propet placement of the lips and tongue for vowel articulation determines the shape
of the resonators, which in turn determines the fkquency of the first and second fermants,
These frequencies, in turn, are responsible for the perceived identity (or timbre) of the
vowel. Once the articulators are in place for the correct pronunciation of the vowel, and
its formant frequencies subsequently established in an optimal coordination, the
information about the vowel's q d i t y cm be sustained on the airstream indefiaitely. As a
result, the vowels have great carrying potential and audibility.
Theoretically, this wouid limita discussion of the singing properties of poetic text
to an examination of its vocalic content if the poem is to be considered as a manifestation
of t ue musical sound. However, musical sound m u t be continuous and able to be
extended in duration. Why not examine the sound content of the poem hom these points
of view as well, bearing in mind tbat the singing quaiities of a poetic text will be
l6 And to a lesser extent consonants withptiah, îhe n a d consonmts [ml and [a], and the liquid consomts [RI and [l]. The articulatory pmperties of French sounds an summanZed in 2.323. 17 Ladefoged suggwts that in musical terau, cach vowel is charact#wd by iîs own chord, tapidly rqeated, of fkquencies (1996: la).
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delivered in a spoken performance? What does the voice itseifrequke h m a text to
facilitate the delivery of continuous and extendible sound? Understanding the preparation
of the pedorming voice allows us to approach the analysis of a "singingyy text from the
point of view of the sound deliverer, whose voice is trained to produce sound and deliver
meaning. A closer examination of the preparation of the performing voice may yield
further bases for cornparison.
2.33 The Performing Voice: Sound Projection and Sound Extension.
Singing and the theatncal delivery of text dSer fiom ordinary speaking according
to the nature of the different patterns of control which the individual exercises over the
voice source and the shape and sue of the vocal tract (Baer, Bell-Berti, and Rubin,
1979: SI), which is essentially a resonator tube consisting of the pharynx, the mouth, and
sometimes the nose (Miller, 1986: 48). Breath must be transformed into sound, and
endowed with a greater resonance and amplitude to ensure that the sound projected into
the performance space is audible to the listeners. Mastery over the exhdation of breath
allows îhe petformer to extend the duration of the souad, and subsequently to prepare the
rhythmic variations of long and short notes (in singing), long and short syllables (in
speaking), and, by extension, long and shoa phrases.
2e32.1 The Singer's Voice and Sound Projection.
The mechanisrn of singing is directed towards initiating and maintainhg a steady,
continuous vibration of the vocal folds for much longer tirne-durations than is normal in
speaking, which is about 4 seconds for the cycle of inspiiration-exphtion (Milier,
1986: 20). The k a t h moves fiom an area of sub-giottal pressure in the lungs through the
glottai slit into an area of lower air pressure (supraglottal pressure) in the pharynx. In
order to maintain regular sound patterns for an extended duration, d e c t e d by the
constant alternations in air pressures, the singer learns to balance the various muscuiar
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components of the process.
Technical skill in singing is largely dependent on the singer's ability to achieve consistently that fine coordination of airfiow and phonation ... which is determined by cooperation among the muscles of the larynx and the chest wall, and diaphragmatic contraction, a dynamic balancing between subglottic pressure and vocal-fold resistance, (Miller, 1986: 23)
The production of vocal sound is supported by a controlled colurnn of air and a
steady sub-giottal pressure, which the singer maintains using the muscles of the lung
cavity, the lower back, and the diaphragm. The steady and extended exhalation of the
breath therefore maintains the continuity of sound and becomes the second characteristic,
in addition to the production of periodic tone, which traditionally distinguishes singing
fiom speech in Western musical terms. Valéry, as will be seen, was well aware of the
importance of the breathing mechanism to sound production.
With the establishment of a dependable breathiag apparatus, the next task for the
singer is the improvement of the resonant sound. The larynx, pharynx, nasal passages and
varying articulatory configurations of the buccal cavity ail serve as continually adjustable
resonant spaces. Moreover, when the pharynx is expanded in width - yawning provides the physiological sensation of a widened pharynx - this additional resonant space will contribute to the production of the singer 'sformmf which Sundberg describes as a "shiny
sound" radiating fiom the front of the mouth and e n d g a more forward projection.18
The vibratory sensations of the tesonances of this shiny sound, collecting at the fiont of
the mouth (Miller, 1986: 85) are the sensations which the singer must l e m to ident*
and maintain.
The rqsonant spaces of the vocal tract are constantiy reshaped by the articulations of
l8 "ifpharynx width is adjustcd and becomes considerably wider than the ma of the entrauce to the larynx tube, the third, fourth and (probably) fifth fomiants ciustct and dtimately gain m amplitude" (Sundberg, 198t: 13).
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the vowels and consonants. In their continuous flow to extremes of high and low pitches,
singers must modifv the timbre of the vowel articulations in order to establish what
Miller, an acknowledged expert in the field, c d s "a desirable balance between low and
high harrnonic partials" (1986: 156). Miller means that at higher singing pitches, which
normally are not used in speaking, the fùndamentai fiequency may be higher than that
required to produce a given vowel formant. Consequently, the harmonic reinforcement
responsible for the production of the formant (which in turn determines the vowel's
perceived identity) can no longer be achieved, Miller states that in these situations, the
singer must establish a compromise between a loss of vowel timbre and the maintainance
of an optimal resonant balance between the fundamental and its harmonic overtones
(1986: 157). He recommends h t the singer adjust to the more relaxed articulatory
features of [a] and [a], which he describes as "central modifjhg vowel[s]" (157), to
deliver the articulation of a high vowel such as [il, for example, on a high note. The
singer lowers the tongue and opens the mouth to articulate a more neutral version of the
vowel, neutral in the sense that the tongue moves to a more central position in the mouth,
and the lips are neither completely rounded nor completely spread.
Such articulations also relieve the singer of muscular tongue movements which may
cause the body, and particularly the b a t , to tense and thus constrict the open air
column. As the pitch goes up, the vocal cords are stretched (Ladefoged, 1982: 226), and,
physicaiiy, the body tightens as the singing voice strains to articuiate an [il on a high B,
for example, with the tongue pushed high up on the palate. By chooshg a more neutrai
articulatory configuration, the singer encourages the body to relax. Of course, in spoken
performance, the actor normaiiy does not establish the wider range of pitches which may
be present in a song and does not need to adjust the vowel articulations accordingly. But
what is interesthg is that lower articulations like [a] and [a] may be usefui to the speaker
as well as the singer for the senfie of ease which they impart to the artist's ' W y
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relaxation antemaen in performance.
"Consonants", continues Miller, ''need not be considered unwelcome intniders that
impede good vocalization" (1986: 78). MiIles's humorous comment is an allusion to the
interruption to the breath flow which the articulation of a consonant involves, either by
stopping the breath with a [pl or [b], for example, or constricthg the breath with a
continuant [s] or [z]. Theatre coaches Bausson and Lavallie liken the articulatory
configurations to a set of moulds or casting shapes. 'Z'ariiculation n'est que la
manipulation du courant de vibrations large, libre et bien appuyé. Les divers moules des
consonnes et des voyelles dans la bouche sculptent le courant de son sans l'interrompre"
(1997: 52). Both comments underline the singer's and the actor's preoccupation with
maintainhg a continuous flow of air at a steady pressure and reducing intemptions to a
minimum.
However, some consonants enable good vocal tone production, in particda the
nasal consonant [ml. Vocalizing on a prolonged [ml is particularly helpful for the
establishment of resonance, forward sound placement and sound projection (Miller, 1986;
Westemian Gregg, 1996). Articulation of the labial [ml leaves the resonant cavities of the
mouth and pharynx completely open and unimpeded by the tongue, which lies flat and
relaxed.19 [ml is articulated with a closing and releasing of the lips, but if the lips remain
closed and the aidow is directed through the nasal cavities, the singer cm sustain its
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I9 Articulation of the othcr intra-buccal nasal consomts "sculpts" the mouth monances more resîrictively. To produce an [n], îhe toque tip is plactd on the alveolar ridge, cnating a division in the resonating buccal cavity; the production of the palatal nasal b] braccs the toque's blade against the bard @te, effectively restnctiog îhe rclease of air through the mouth cavity.
For thc p a h i nasal [DI, the back of the twguc mtets the hard plate, and diver& the entire airsiream through the nasal cavitics. Howem, îbe articulations of [n], [Ji1 and Ln] teduce the mouth cavity as a resonatiag space, vocalizing on these n a d consonants crrates high fornard sensations in the singer's head and nose or behind the cycs, and their Upefulaess in f& nsonancc balmckg is of great value (Miüer, 1986: 84-88).
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articulation by using the sinus passages as resonators to produce extra vibrations.
Miller dso recommends working with the continuants [VI [fl [z] and [s], noting that 'ln singing, it is significant that in executing [VI and [z], and their voiceless mates [f] and [s], the tongue need not move fiom its acoustic, at rest position" (1986: 95-96).
Milier promotes vocalization on [v] as weli for the value of the vibratory sensations
which its articulation produces at the fiont of the face. For almost the same reason, the
labial stop p] also receives Miiîer's attention, because while the breath is temporarily stopped before the sound explodes outwards, the production of [b] at the fkont of the
mouth in physiological terms creates an open pharyngeal-buccal resonant space, and
psychologicaily, Miller believes, offers the singer the reassurance that the sound is
projecting forward (97). Thus the fonvard articulations of a language sound systern serve
as usefiil tools in the development of projectable singing sound, whîie those articulations
in which the tongue remains as close as possible to its "at rest" position encourage the
singer to maintain a steady airstream flow and experience the resonances without
additional articulatory tension.
We can imagine the air in the singer's body feedhg smoothly through the narrow
opening of the vocal folds at a steady pressure, and emerging as wirations which pas
through the widened pharynx and mouth passages. The movements of the tongue, lips and
jaw continualIy reshape the vibrations into recognizable sound units which are dropped
onto the flowing airstream and projected one by one forward into the atmosphere. The
quaiity of the everyday speaking voice has been enriched by the correlation of
fundamental and formant fiequencies in the vowel articulations. Whatever the
articulations may be, the sound has acquired a singing quality, which seeks to flow
mintemrpredly in order to maintain a dynamic balance of muscular energy and air
pres--
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23.2.2 The Actor's Voice and Sound Continuity.
Like the singer, the actor prepares the voice to pmject and ampli& learning to
extend and control the breath flow, and developing the resonant chambers of the body.
The training of the voice is the most tirne-consuming and difficult of aU our disciplines. It includes the mechanisrn of breathing and resonance, voie placement, articulation, and diction, purity of speech, and, hally, singing - al1 this with a view to developing a vocal quality in the actor that is clear, rhythmic, and musical. (Withers-Wilson, 1993: 22)2*
The actor may devote more time than the singer to exploring the resonances in
various areas of the body, including the chest cavity, using humming exercises to feel the
tesonant spaces and singing exercises to understand the durational possibilities and tonal
amplitude which the vowel provides (Bausson et Lavallée, 1997: 40; Berry, 1993b: 78;
Rodenbutg, 1993: 94). But, unlike the singer who can sustain a single vowel for an entire
musical phrase, actors do exercises for consonants to develop what Berry, the Voice
Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, calls their muscularity (1993a: 28), and they
leam to balance the articulations of the vowels with those of the consonants.
It is quite cornmon to h d that the tone for the consonant is forward, and back or medial for the vowel. The adjustment that sometirnes has to be made is very subtle and takes time but it is good to work the vowel and consonant exercises together so that they never become separate in feeling ancl you can continuaiiy balance them in relation to each other. (1 993b: 51)
Berry's comment is instructive; she indicates that the performer should not separate
the vowel and consonant articulations as theonsts of euphoniousness have done, but
rather should concentrate on linking their resonances together. This suggests that the
artist, through ski11 and practise, leanis to understand the resonant connection of sound to
sound, and it also suggests that the vocal techniques which join sounds together will
z0 Withers-Wilson is ciîing Michel Saint-Denis, whose theatricai conmiutions are descnid by John Houseman in Houscmads autobiography F W Dress (1983).
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contribute to the continuity of the finished produdl
Thw, the preparation of the singer's and the actor's voice will ciiflier in the artists'
conception of resonance, because, while the singer is concemed aimost exclusively with
the production and extension ofperiodic tones, principally the vowels, the actor must
prepare the resonances of the: non-periodic sounds of the text, that is, of the consonants,
with as much care as the periodic ones. The singer's voice moves fiom vowel duration to
vowel duration to create a fl ow of periodic tom, reducing consonant interruptions to a
minimum. But the actor's voice moves dong the linear sound-line, feeling the tond
contributions of dl the sounds as they comect to one another.
23.2.3 The Sounds: The Articulations of French Vowels and Consonants.
The preference for certain articulations which voice teachers and theatre coaches
observe suggests that tbe articulatory propexties of the vowels and consonants of a text
will have an important role to play in the preparation of the voice and of the text. We are
particularly concemed with the French sound system since this discussion will be
considering the sound content of Paul Valéry's Le Cimetière marin.
In French, vowels are descnbed as high, mid-high, mid-low and low, according to
the tongue's height in the mouth. They may be rounded or spread, detennined by the
2L It also raises the question of what constihites "üngual case" (Bishop, 1985: 354) for the performer as she moves h m sound to somd. One of Bishop's niteria in the definition of lingual case is that &ere should be fiw maximal leaps h high to low vowels and h m forward to back wwels (356). He means that if the vowels ofthe text are armged m such a way that the tongue's action in the deternination of apemire and place of articulation can be teduced to more gtaduril mowmwts, the ndting reduction in die artieulatory effort will yicld a more fiowiag imptcssion. It is possible that a reductiUCtion of large articulatory contrasts could yield a mon euphonious or a shgabk product. But it is impottant Co explore more compIcteIy which articulatory l e m quire the most effht before settling on a definition of lingual case; for example, is die articulatory effort ofmoving h m a hi@ h t m l to a high back vowel mon intcnsc than the movement nom a hi& &ont vowet to a low h n t vowel? For a singer, it appears that this is so, since we have seen that vocal pedagogues prefer artesculations with lower tongue positions when working on iiic development of a teIaxed dynamic muscular balance.
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degree of lip-rounding. These positions are classinecl as aperture." The French hi&
vowels are [i y u], the mid-high vowels are [e 0 O], the mid-low vowels are [E œ e 31,
and the low vowels are [a a]. The vowels' urticulatory position is classified asforwurd
or bac4 according to w h e the greatest mass of the toque-body lies in the mouth. The
forwatd vowels are [i y e 0 E ce a] and the back vowels are [u O 3 a]. The neutral sound
[a], which in this study I will identify as the e muet, is the only French centrai vowel.
There are aiso four nasal vowels in French, the [É @ Ü 5],= which are distinguished
fiom the oral vowels by the expiration of the airstream through the nasal passages as well
as the mouth; that is by lowering the velum, the breath can be directed through both the
mouth and the nose, allowing the sound to resonate in the nasal cavities as well. Al1 of the
nasal vowels are mid-low or low vowels accordiig to their aperture; t and 8 are forward
in their articulatory position, and 6 and â are back vowels.
Consonants are described according to their manner of articulation, and theirplace
of articulation. The manner of articulation is firstly characterized by the degree of the
obstruction to the airstream flow. Whefi the airstream is modified by articulation - by a complete or an incomplete cbsure of the lips, for example, to produce a @] or a [v]
respectively, the speaker wili have the sensation of complete or of partial interruption of
the airstream, and the iistener the auditory impression of complete or of partial
22 For aperrwe, Engiish uses the am high, nid-high, nid-low and low, which describe the tongue's position; however thc French tams an f d e , semifermée, semi-ouverre, and ouverre (Carton, 1974: 62), which relate to the openkg action of the jaw. Moriarty quite rightly makes the point that if singers inte~ret a vowel as close4 they may instinctively "cIose", that is, tighten, the b a t , which will affect the relaxed release of sound which they arc trying Co achieve (1975: 9). While 1 agree with Moriarty, and d l continue to classify the vowel's apemue as high or low, it is tempting to use the tems open and chedas tbey are used so hquently, particdarly in singhg diction texts. This is probably because open remin& the monner to relax tbe jaw for the low arti*culations. Sec Cofnn, EnoUe, Smger, and DeIm (1982), Gnibb (1979), and Wall, Cddwe11, Gavilanes, and Allm (1990).
23 [&] is disappearing fbm the Fmch vowd system, as is [a], but these sotmds were part of Valéry's somd syst'='-
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interruption of the sound. Secondly, manner of articulation distinguishes between the
presence or absence of vocal fold vibrations (the sound is voiced or voiceless),24 and
thirdly, between nasality and non-nasality, since the airsüeam can be deflected through
the nasal passages when the velum is lowered. Thus, a consonant can be described as a
stop or a continuant, as voiced or unvoiced, and as nasal or non-nasal.
Place of articulation defines the location of the obstruction or constriction of the
abmeam as the consonant is articulated. With the exception of the labial consonants, this
is prhcipally determined by the tongue's contact with various k e d articulators: the hard
and soft palate, the alveolar ridge, and the teeth. For example, the back of the tongue
pressed against the soft palate produces a [g] or a ml, although it is the voiced/unvoiced feature which further distinguishes these two sounds from each other. [dl and [t] are
pduced by pressing the tongue behind the upper fiont teeth. In another example of the
combination of the mouth's articulatory areas, [v] and [f], identified asfiicatives, result
when the upper-fiont teeth press against the bottom lip, and the air is released in a
continuous smam.
This raises the question of how the nasal consonants should be classified, since ihey
can be considered as stops or as continuants in the sense that the closing of the lips stops
the sound, but the airsûeam deflected through the nasal passages continues to flow and
maintain a resonant sound. Clearly, they are considered as continuants by those skilled in
the preparation of perfomiing voices. Therefore, in this study, the voiced continant group
will include the nasal continuants [m n pJ25, the liquids [RI and [II, the giides [w q j], and the voiced fricatives [V z 31. The unvoiced continuants are [f s 11. The voiced stops
are [b d g]; the unvoiced stops are [p t k].
*4 iu the case of vowel articulations, the vocal foi& an always viirating.
25 The phoneme [QI has k e n addcd to the French sound system since Valéry's the.
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In terms of the continuity of breath, it is the distinction between continuauts and
stops which will be most weful ta this discussion, since continuity of airflow is criticai
for the maintenance of performing tone. Consequently, we may conclude that in the
investigation of a singing text, the manner of the consonants' articulation, which
describes the movement of the airsûeam, must be considered before the place of their
articulation.
In fact, French- and English-speaking actors leam to identifj consonants according
to a hierarchy of longest to shortest durations, determined firstly by their manner of
articulation. (Bausson and Lavallée, 1997; Berry, 1993b). Voiced continuants are longest,
followed by the unvoiced continuants, the voiced stops and finally the unvoiced stops, an
arrangement which places the continuity of air flow ahead of voicing or place of
articulation in importance and continues to relate the flow of the airstream to the
stretching of the voice.26
Analyzing this hierarchy of duration forms an essential part of the actor's training.
The length of the consonant is as crucial to the actor's preparation of the text as the
production of the vowels, because its durational balance with the vowel will permit the
actor to understand the weighr of each sound in the linear iine of the text's unfolding
delivery. B q concludes:
Now this weight and substance ... cornes precisely fiom the diBetent lengths of the vowels, ... and also h m the variable times the consonants need to fuliill their vibrations ..,, The tirne consonants take to speak varies according to whether they are unvoiced or voiced, plosive or continuant, and how maay there are! .... These are negotiable, but as you cm see, the interaction of length between vowels and consonauts is limitless, for the lengtà of the consonant affects the length of the vowel. (1993a: 29)
z6 This summary, organized accotdiig to the d e p of obstruction to the airsaeam, npnsents an overview of the relative d d d pmpties of consonant categories and not a cornparison of sound durations to thm of the same sounds in other languages.
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The notion of the sound's weight is the b i s of îhe theatrical approach to the
preparation of the text, and Bausson and Lavallée (1997), Berry (1993% 1993b), Linklater
(1976), ad Rodenburg (1993) devote their W n g techniques to awakening the actor's
awmness of the physical sensation of sound-in-body. Meanings will natvally be
realized, not through "syllabic pressure" (Berry, 1993a:28), but when the speaker has
registered the impact of each sounà's production and released the somd's energy, guided,
as these authors suggest, by the length of t h e it takes to establish the sound, Berry
describes the process as "the physical movement of the thought" (1993a: 148). This
technique and its application to the r e b t i o n of sound-in-prformance recalls to mind
the Symbolists, and their conception of words as baving not only a representational d e
in the transmission of meaning, but a palpable physicai presence as well.
We can understand how carefidiy the performer must examine the text in order to
identiSl the durational capacities of the sounds and the importance of the semantic
content which the sounds convey. Each sylIable wiil be a combination of individual
sound durations, organized into metrical groupings of short and Iong syllable duations.
The longer durations (in general) will identify the matenal which is richest in phonemic
content,2? for exampIe, h a i rhyme syllables in stressed position. UnUe the singer, who
foilows a musical score, the actor is not provided with exact mathematical divisions of
time duration, and is a fiee agent with regard to the reaiization of the poem's durational
contrasts. As Berry says, "There are no d e s , only structures which have to be
recognized" (1993a: 178).
2.33.4 The Text: Syilable Structure and Sound Extension.
The syiiable stnu:nire can affect both vowel duration, whose periodic tone is the
27 What Cooper and Ross m their dimwion of conjimct ordaPlg caU "longer remnant nuclei" (1975: 71)-
29
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primary characteristic of singing, and continuity of sound, which is detennined by the
manner of the consonants' articulation.
The vowel in a syiiable may be sûessed (accentuée) or unstressed (inaccentuée),
depending on the syllable's place in the word. The thai syllable of the word is the
stressable (or tonic) syllable in French, and it is a feature of the language that a stressed
syiiable is, in generai, twice as long as an unstressed syllable (Léon, 1996: 107). A m e r
distinction of potential for stress (and increased duration) is made between stressed and
destressed (or haif-stressed / demi-accentuée) syliables, according to the tonic syllable's
place in the syntactical unit, which is described as a rhythmic grouping.28. Léon, in an
earlier work (1966: 107), notes that all vowels occurcing in stressable position (stressed or
half-stressed) are longer in duration than unstressed vowels, which implies that the
greater duration of the syllable is related to the greater duration of its vowel. In any case,
whatever the durational potential of each of the phonetic components of the syllable, it
must be assumed that the vocalic material of al1 süessable syllables in French will be
longer than that of unstressed syiiables.
In addition to its stressed status in the word, the vowel's capacity to be extended in
duration may be influenced by the syllable structure, which is described as open when it
ends in a vowel, and closed when it ends in a consonant. An open syliable leaves the
vowel unblocked, and the sound can then resonate fieely on the breath for as long as the
performer chooses, since the aimûeam is not interrupted by the articulation of a
coIIS0nant.
The closure of a syllable, whose stnicturai title descn'bes the effect on the continuity
of sound (th& breath "closes" with the W consonant's articulation), thteatens the
28. The naturc of the rhythmic groupiag will be hrtkr discussed in Cbapcet 4.
30
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duration of its tonic vowel. However, the phonetic nature of the consonant that closes the
syllable and of the vowel itself can contribute to the lengthenhg of the syllable's duration
even in these closed conditions.
Linguistic studies have established that in spoken French, specific consonants
closing a stressable syllable will influence the duration of any preceding vowel. These
lengthening consonant^^^ [RI, [VI [z], [3], and the combination [ml, are aU voiced continuants. As well, when the oral vowels [a], [O], and [a], and aU the nasal vowels [El,
[&], [q, and [5] occur in a stressed or destressed closed syllable, they can be lengthened
in duration, regardless of the identity of the following closing consonant. Consequently
these vowels are identified as lengthening vowels.30
ui fact, Delattre's work on the duration of French nasal vowels proves that French
nasal vowels are always longer than their oral counterparts in aZZ positions, stressed,
destressed, or unstressed.
On a pu constater que les voyeles nasales dans toutes les positions [syiiabes fermées accentuées, syllabes ouvertes accentuées, syllabes fermées inaccentuées et syllabes ouvertes inaccentuées] étaient plus longues que les voyeles orales correspondantes ,...La différence moyenne en= les nasales et les ordes était dans l'ordre de l,42: 1. (198 1 : 17)
Delattre and Monnot found that the durational differences between nasal vowels
and their oral counterparts were greatest in closed unaccented syllables and siightest in
open accent& syllables (198 1 : 17). This impiies that al1 the nasal vowels of a text have
the phonetic potential to add durational length to its oral delivery, regardless of the
29 AIkmgemt îs the tm applied to the extended durational capacity of these pampamcular French consonants and vowels. 1 have aanslatcd allongeunt as lengthening. See Ltoa, 1966: 21. 3O 1 will contiaue to identifj. thcsc sounds as lengrhening voweis and lengfkning consonants, despite the potentiai ambigu@. in fàcî, although they are su-named because thcy lengthen the preceding vowet's duration, ttie French lengrhening consonants are themsclvcs "lengthuiable" because they are contmuants. On the other hand, the lengrhening voweIs are in themselvcs leogthenable, but they do not exert a 1-g eûèct on the mm& arod them.
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syllable's stressable status and open or closed structure.
Phonemic vocalic durational distinctions can also be made between vowels whose
grapheme-correlates contain a circumflex diacritic and those vowels unmarked by the
circumfiex. The longer vowel of maître [ m c t R] as opposed to that of mètre [mg t ~ ] is
the feature which differentiates the sense of the two words (master/meter), although the
distinction is disappearing in spoken French. However, French theatre technique, which
stresses the durational capacity of the lengthening vowels and lengthening consonants,
continues to observe these durational distinctions as wel! (Bausson and Lavallée, 1997:
60-64).
If the syllable (in French) is closed with a speciiic lengthening consonant such as
[RI or contains a lengthening vowel, the trained voice is alected to the possibility of extending the musical tone of the preceding vowel. if the syllable ends in a continuant
rather than a stopped articulation, its duration may be extended as well by extension of
the consonant itself, a more singable situation in ternis of aitstteam continuity. Thus, by
the choice of final consonants in closed syllables, a p e t can encourage both the duration
of the vocalic periodic tone and the continuity of sound, and in this light, Valéry's use of
sound in the closed-syiiable süucture of Le Cimetière marin can be examined.
2.4 Paul Valéry and the Singing Text.
It is tirne to hear Valdry's own voice; his analysis of the poetic mérier and its
associations witb the singing voice. For Valdry, poetry is an extension of the inner
musicality of the human spirit, and out of bis passion to undetstand poetry's unique status
in the oral world ultimately emerges his formula that "musique xpoésie = chant" (cited
by Stimpson, 1984: 14-15).
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2.4.1 Valéry and the Inner Voice.
Et cependant c'est 1 'Maire du poète de nous donner la sensation de l'union intime
entre la parole et 1 'esprit. ((E.1: 1333)
To understand Valéry's musical ideas, we must begin to grasp the Valéryan
phiiosophy which always operates simultaneously at hvo levels of construction and
thought; that i
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