Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A form of dramatic declamation between singing and speaking, in which the speaker uses lilt and rhythm but not precise pitches.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word sprechstimme.
Examples
-
The "rude mechanicals" rehearsing their impossibly bad "Pyramus and Thisbe" tragedy have music that makes fun of everything from Schoenberg's "sprechstimme" to Donizetti's mad scene from "Lucia di Lammermoor."
Archive 2008-08-01 sfmike 2008
-
The "rude mechanicals" rehearsing their impossibly bad "Pyramus and Thisbe" tragedy have music that makes fun of everything from Schoenberg's "sprechstimme" to Donizetti's mad scene from "Lucia di Lammermoor."
A Midsummer Night's Dream in Walnut Creek sfmike 2008
-
And the score is a hodgepodge of dreamy ballads, folk and patriotic song parodies and dense bits of sprechstimme, or speak-singing.
Solas Nua's first musical, the loopy 'Improbable Frequency' Peter Marks 2010
-
In Alexei Ratmansky's "Pierrot Lunaire," a quartet of Pierrots dance to Arnold Schönberg's 1912 sprechstimme
-
His role was part speaking, part sprechstimme, and part outright arioso and he was perfection in all of them.
Archive 2007-02-01 sfmike 2007
-
His role was part speaking, part sprechstimme, and part outright arioso and he was perfection in all of them.
Lou Harrison's "Young Caesar" sfmike 2007
-
Braun did rise above the frenzied orchestra in the fourth and fifth songs in a kind of anguished, wailing sprechstimme to achieve an impact beyond the merely orchestral.
-
In the verdant Wagnerian dusk of the prelude, the aching oriental song of the cellos, the weightless slow-dance of Tove's (Soile Isokoski) and Waldemar's (Stig Andersen) ecstatic duet, the mournful lullaby of the "Waldtaube" (Monica Groop), the testosterone roar of "The Wild Hunt", the picaresque ravings of Klaus-Narr (Andreas Conrad) and Barbara Sukova's mesmerising sprechstimme fantasy, every detail was faultlessly delineated.
-
Didn't expect to see so much sprechstimme (rhythmic speaking instead of singing), having accompanied the song in rehearsals for an English-language production here some years ago.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.