TECLA X 10262
Alton/Jeffery | Bele Buche e Bele Parleure, book
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*This title is also available separately in print format TECLA 0056.
"Bele Buche e Bele Parleure" by Jeannine Alton and Brian Jeffery.
79 pages, first published by Tecla in 1976.
Bele Buche e Bele Parleure is a manual that Brian Jeffery published in 1976 in conjunction with Jeannine Alton. He describes her as "...a lovely lady who was his tutor in French philology when he was an undergraduate at Oxford" . Brian noted that singers didn’t know what to do about the pronunciation when confronted with medieval and Renaissance French music, so he did something about it.
Bele Buche e Bele Parleure shows you how to speak or sing medieval and Renaissance French. In Laurence Wright's 1978 review, he wrote that some of the philological details are debatable but nevertheless "the musician can be confident that use of the book will result in a pronunciation which is perfectly defensible, and sounds convincing". That may be philologically arguable but this book gives you something defensible and practical to work with when you sing or speak.
The book includes twelve examples of medieval and Renaissance French texts which are spoken and sung on the accompanying mp3 soundfile which is also available here.
