(Ger.: ‘speech-song’).
A type of vocal enunciation intermediate between speech and song. Sprechgesang, using the notation in ex.1a, was introduced by Humperdinck in Königskinder (1897), though in the edition of 1910 he replaced it by conventional singing. It could well have been an attempt to prescribe a kind of articulation already being used by singers of both lieder and popular song.
Schoenberg devised a new, related type of enunciation, which was later referred to by Berg as ‘Sprechstimme’. According to the directions for performance provided with Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (1912, notation as in ex.1b), in which the soloist hinges between the worlds of lied and popular song, the performer must clearly distinguish between speech, song and the new style, in which speech takes a musical form but without recalling song. However, Schoenberg also used Sprechgesang in quite different contexts: chorally in Die glückliche Hand (1924) and for the role of Moses in Moses und Aron (composed 1930–32). In later works such as A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) he adopted a new form of notation (ex.1c) that dispensed with exact pitches. Sprechstimme was used too by Berg in Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937), the former work introducing a new shade, ‘half sung’ (notated as in ex.1d) between Sprechstimme and song. In a prefatory note to Wozzeck Berg insisted that passages in Sprechstimme ‘are not to be sung’ but must be delivered as ‘a spoken melody’ (Sprechmelodie): ‘in singing the performer stays on the note without change; in speaking he strikes the note but leaves it immediately by rising or falling in pitch’.
However, the realization of Sprechgesang and Sprechstimme remains problematic, partly because the pitch range of speaking voices is narrow, partly because there is no clear middle point between speech and song but rather a haze of alternatives. The vocal works of many composers since the late 1940s, including Boulez, Berio and Kagel, have worked within that haze. Britten in Death in Venice (1973) notated Aschenbach's recitatives (marked ‘as if speaking’ or ‘spoken’) as stemless crotchets and used the notation of ex.1a primarily for rhythmic shouts and laughter. Rihm has called for shades of Sprechgesang, employing the notation of 1a, 1b and 1d in Jakob Lenz (1979) and other works.
R.W. Wood: ‘Concerning “Sprechgesang”’, Tempo, no.2 (1946), 3–6
H. Keller: ‘Whose Fault is the Speaking Voice’, Tempo, no.75 (1965–6), 12–17
W. Austin: Music in the 20th Century (New York, 1966), 196–201
P. Boulez: ‘Note sur le Sprechgesang’, Relevés d’apprenti (Paris, 1996; Eng trans, 1991), 206–8
PAUL GRIFFITHS/R