Anyone who spends even a bit of time listening to French music (or to French poetry being read aloud) will quickly learn that the words are often not pronounced as in speech; rather, they have schwas added to the ends to make the line scan better.
Example (from Rufus Wainwright’s “Coeur de Parisienne”)
Is there a word for the-act-of-adding-syllables-to-words-in-song-so-that-it-sounds-better (French-style or otherwise)? And is this common in other languages? Doesn’t strike me as terribly common in English, but I could be wrong…
Apparently, soldiers of the French Foreign Legion remove the accented e’s from the ends of words at the ends of lines, so they sing Marseillaise as “Allons enfants de la Patri’/le jour de gloire est arriv’/” etc. No idea why they do that.
IIRC, pronouncing the -e as a definite syllable in its own right is typical of pronuciation in the south of France. I think something similar became hip among certain young Parisian crowds a few years ago as well.
The usage in song may be partly because (correct me if I’m wrong) all French dialects once pronounced it this way. English has undergone a similar shift. The Old English word for “name” is, well, name , but pronounced “NAH-muh”, as you would still pronounce it were it, say, a German word. (Actually, in this cae, I think it is a German word).
According to Wikipedia (article in French) an unaccented “e” at the end of a word is called “e caduc”, but this letter is necessarily pronounced. There is also another article here specifically about the e caduc. It says that whether it is pronounced or not depends on a variety of factors, but it does not say there is any sort of special name for pronouncing it in poetry and song.
Yes, indeed, it’s very common in songs. And that’s so usual that I never, ever wondered about it. I never noticed that there’s no obvious reason to pronounce it this way.
I’m asking a friend who is a music teacher. Besides singing over the phone a dozen examples while I’m posting, and explaining to me why it’s better this way in these various examples (not that I understand why it would be just wrong otherwise), she told me it doesn’t have any name, and that if it had, she would know. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this statement, but so she said.
Now, she’s digging in 16th century songs, so apparently it’s nothing new…
And she’s pointing out, like a previous poster, that the silent “e” is pronounced in some part of southern France, with a similar sound (though of course shorter).
Wouldn’t you say, clairobscur, that this style of pronunciation can also be an affectation likely to be found amoung literary types, profs, etc.? In most of the interviews with, for example, L.-F. Celine, he’s pushing the terminal schwas pretty hard. There are a hundred other examples of famous types using this little “poetic” trick to add something extraordinary to what might be otherwise banal thoughts. I mean apart from the Southern accent – people who otherwise have Parisian accents and use the typical French equivalent of “mushmouth,” etc. At least that’s the way I’ve heard this little affectation used.
I was in a competitively chosen singing ensemble in highschool. We were state champions for 14 years when I was there (they still are for all I know). Our director was an ex-Metropolitan Opera performer. And I was in AP French at the time.
It was my understanding that it was not optional; it wasn’t pronounced according to the needs of the meter. The final, otherwise silent E was ALWAYS pronounced when singing in French, and this DICTATED the meter, not followed it. It was never given a name, just, This is how you do it in French.
Isn’t this wrong? The last word there is “arrivée”, if my French doesn’t fail me, and the the “é” makes the word have to be pronounced with an “ay” sound at the end.