My chorus’s holiday concert is in less than two weeks. We sing everything from memory. Among the 18 songs we’re doing are one each in French, Hebrew, Russian . . . and ASL. I’m having a lot of difficulty with the Russian. For those of you who are singers, do you have any special techniques for learning songs in languages you do not speak?
LOTS of repetition. Do you have a recording of the piece(s) you are doing? Listen to it over and over and over again, not just during rehearsal. If you have an mp3 player or other portable device, listen to it while you are commuting.
The first thing that makes it easier is to understand what each individual word means. A word for word translation is hugely important, and if I can’t find one, I do it myself.
Я вас люблю, люблю безмерно
ya vas l’ubl’u, l’ubl’u byismyerna
I you love, love [without limit] *
is a clearer thing for me to memorize than a string of syllables.
Longer term, learning the language (at least the equivalent of a first-year university course) makes it much easier to understand the structure, and makes the process far simpler. You can then use what you’re singing to reinforce your knowledge of the language. We singers have the unique privilege of learning other languages through their song, which is a very different way to experience a language and culture than reading newspapers or books. It’s even different from learning that language/culture’s poetry, as singing shows you how that songwriter or composer thought about the poem.
Not practical for the next <2 weeks, though.
- The square bracket means a concept that requires more than one word to translate; I suppose I could have used ‘limitlessly’, but без is without when it’s used by itself…
I was going to disagree with you strongly*, and then I noticed the word memorize, and I can’t recall a time when I sung something from memory which was in a foreign language. Although I must have some time, even if not exactly on-purpose in a performance context. And of course, looking back the the OP, that’s exactly the question being asked. So I’ll go away now.
*what I “need” is to be told how the vowels are pronounced–assuming it’s a language where a is always ah, and i is always ee or whatever. And if the consonents are said funny too. And then I just sing what’s written from that idea. But that may not help with the memorizing bit.
Buy all the Pink Martini/China Forbes albums you can find. Ms. Forbes’ signature is singing in as many foreign languages as she can, and her band, Pink Martini, is the only American band to have a big hit in France in French (“Sympathique”).
I agree with Le Ministre. If you understand what the text means, you’ll at least have some chance of emphasising the correct words and I generally find that helps me to memorise a piece.