English diction for singers : a self-instructional course of study utilizing the international phonetic alphabet with self-test materials

This dissertation, which takes the form of a creative project as is sanctioned by the Doctor of Arts Curricular Program, is a self-instructional course in solo singers' English diction. It is designed for Freshman-level voice majors and no prior knowledge of diction is assumed. The course attempts to achieve three basic goals: to serve as an introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), to alleviate the often overburdened Sophomore-level diction course, and to raise the concerns of English diction to a level comparable with those of Italian, German and French.The course falls naturally into three main divisions:Chapters III-VIan introduction to the IPA, the identification of allvowel and consonant sounds in English, the correctIPA symbols for those sounds, and simple transcriptionof English words into IPA;Chapters VII-Xa detailed analysis of the rules of English dictionand the IPA, including linkage, poetical and musicalstress, and declamation;Chapter XIthe preparation of complete song texts, applyingall the knowledge and skills learned in the course.Each chapter has accompanying exercises which require the student to use information contained in that particular chapter; self-tests for each chapter are provided at the end of the course. Answers for all accompanying exercises and all self-tests are included in the Appendixes. The Appendixes also include a listing of the sources for the extensive musical examples, a pitch nomenclature chart, and a quick-reference guide to the IPA symbols as well as the vocabulary introduced in the course.