# Which composer/musician/conductor names are mis-pronounced a lot?



## Albert7

I had trouble saying Celibidache in fact when I first learned of him. I said celeri-dash-ee which was wrong.

I know that Rachmaninoff is another name people get wrong... I even heard Ratch-man-nee-nog once over the phone. Facepalm.

Any others that people get wrong?


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## ahammel

Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya aka Ustwolskaja aka Oustvolskaia aka Уство́льская. 

Chew on that, non Russians.


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## MoonlightSonata

Gubaidulina. I probably spelt it wrong.


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## elgar's ghost

To be honest, I'm not sure how to pronounce Magle.


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## starthrower

MoonlightSonata said:


> Gubaidulina. I probably spelt it wrong.


I believe the accent is on the second syllable. Here's a website with audio samples of correct pronunciation of composers/musicians. It's a long list that covers just about everybody you might have trouble pronouncing correctly. http://www.pronunciationguide.info/thebiglist.html


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## Woodduck

Moe's art........


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## starthrower

Woodduck said:


> Moe's art........


...Curly and Larry.


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## dgee

starthrower said:


> I believe the accent is on the second syllable. Here's a website with audio samples of correct pronunciation of composers/musicians. It's a long list that covers just about everybody you might have trouble pronouncing correctly. http://www.pronunciationguide.info/thebiglist.html


Nice site! Two I'm painfully aware of how wrong I got until they were pointed out to me were Ligeti (with emphasis on the first syllable rather than my second) and Lutoslawski (having ignored the Polish soft "l with a slash through it"). Now I notice a number of others (facepalm)!


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## Art Rock

Bach gets mispronounced by most English speakers (as does van Gogh, to name a non-music celebrity).


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## bigshot

"There are no cows in my family." -Leopold Stokowski

(Mickey Mouse pronounced his name correctly in Fantasia and incorrectly in Fantasia 2000.)


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## Il_Penseroso

Parisians couldn't pronounce 'Liszt' truly at his time and they would call him Monsieur Lits!

***

Well, I don't know how to pronounce Witold Małcużyński correctly (the polish pianist)... somebody help please...?


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## dgee

Il_Penseroso said:


> Parisians couldn't pronounce 'Liszt' truly at his time and they would call him Monsieur Lits!
> 
> ***
> 
> Well, I don't know how to pronounce Witold Małcużyński correctly (the polish pianist)... somebody help please...?


Love the Liszt story! I have next to no Polish but some limited ability to interpret the written language into sounds and I would suggest Maw-tsu-ZHI--ski with the little n being very pinched and having something like the Spanish n with the wavy line above it and a little lifted sound after it. I hope to be affirmed by a proper speaker but expecting savage correction


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## GioCar

Once a German friend of mine told me that most people, at least in Italy, pronounce Beethoven with the wrong accent, on the "o". The accent should fall on the "ee".


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## Dim7

I still keep mispronouncing Chopin in my head. When I read "Chopin Liszt" I think "Chopping list? What kind of a joke is that?"


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## Chrythes

Maybe Dvorak? I know that at least I pronounced it at first as Dvo-rak, instead of Dvor-zhak. Maybe we could benefit from recording ourselves in Vocaroo pronouncing names?

http://vocaroo.com/


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## brotagonist

I speak German and French, so I have a pretty good feeling for European vowels, which are softer than their Anglophone variants. Slavic tongues are foreign to me. I just follow the spelling strictly and say it with conviction


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## Delicious Manager

I often hear Ligeti's name pronounced 'Li-EH-ti', but in Hungarian the stress is always on the first syllable (so, 'LEE-getti', 'BAWR-towk'; 'KOD-ayi').


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## Hmmbug

Schytte and Fux.


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## Chrythes

Delicious Manager said:


> I often hear Ligeti's name pronounced 'Li-EH-ti', but in Hungarian the stress is always on the first syllable (so, 'LEE-getti', 'BAWR-towk'; 'KOD-ayi').


So the g is pronounced as in "gear", and not as in "germs"?


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## Orfeo

Whenever there are transliterations (Russian to German, Russian to Ukrainian, to English, to French, Greek to English, Estonian to Finnish, and vice versa, etc.) there's always a chance to misspell and mispronounce a composer's name. And I've seen that often. Like, for instances,

Tchaikovsky->Tschaikovsky->Chaikovsky
Glazunov->Glasunow->Glazounov.
Lyatoshinsky->Lyatoshinsky->Liatoshynsky (mundane maybe, but the differences are there).
Wagner (which many forget that in German, the W has a V pronunciation).

And so forth.


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## arpeggio

To this day I still do not know how to properly pronounce Dvorak. 

Also for years I kept mispronouncing Ralph Vaughn Williams.


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## starthrower

arpeggio said:


> To this day I still do not know how to properly pronounce Dvorak.
> 
> Also for years I kept mispronouncing Ralph Vaughn Williams.


Hey there, Ray-fee boy! - Ed Norton, The Honeymooners

A Hungarian composer not on the list is Laszlo Lajtha. Not sure how to pronounce that one?


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## 20centrfuge

Drives me crazy when I hear people say Bern STEEN for Leonard Bernstein


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## Kivimees

starthrower said:


> A Hungarian composer not on the list is Laszlo Lajtha. Not sure how to pronounce that one?


Something like LASS-lo LOIT-haw (with an added Hungarian accent).


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## Kivimees

Arvo Pärt is another often mispronounced name.


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## Chrythes

Kivimees said:


> Something like LASS-lo LOIT-haw (with an added Hungarian accent).


Wait, isn't it "lashlo"? Like you would pronounce it in Polish?


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## Kivimees

No, in Hungarian, sz is pronounced like s and s is pronounced like sh.


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## Mahlerian

People I've encountered pronounce Takemitsu as "Talk-eh-_miht_-su" rather than "Tah-keh-mee-tsu".


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## violadude

Mahlerian said:


> People I've encountered pronounce Takemitsu as "Talk-eh-_miht_-su" rather than "Tah-keh-mee-tsu".


Guilty

........................


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## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> People I've encountered pronounce Takemitsu as "Talk-eh-_miht_-su" rather than "Tah-keh-mee-tsu".


Takemitsu is pronounced exactly the way it's written. Silly native English speakers...


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## Cheyenne

Nietzsche composed a few things, and more than a few mispronounce his name -- though not as many as misspell his name.


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## Woodduck

Why do Czech names ending in the letter "a" - such as Kozena or Randova - have an acute accent over the final "a" (they actually do, I just can't do it here) ? I don't think it's a stress accent. What does it do?


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## Dim7

Cheyenne said:


> Nietzsche composed a few things, and more than a few mispronounce his name -- though not as many as misspell his name.


I learned to spell Nietzsche correctly in my teens - maybe I was a spelling prodigy.

Edit: I wrote "an spelling prodigy" instead of "a spelling prodigy" totally unintentionally, now ain't that funny.


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## Chris

For a long time I assumed Frank Martin was pronounced as the English names Frank and Martin. Wrong.


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## Woodduck

Cheyenne said:


> Nietzsche composed a few things, and more than a few mispronounce his name -- though not as many as misspell his name.


And I always spelled it Nietzschzschzschzschzschzschzsche...


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## Marschallin Blair

Dim7 said:


> I learned to spell Nietzsche correctly in my teens - maybe I was a spelling prodigy.


That beats the prodigies of political imbecility in the ivory tower who talk about his ideas without actually knowing them.


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## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> And I always spelled it Nietzschzschzschzschzschzschzsche...


I was talking with a sweet old man once in a bookstore. He was actually very literate. He started talking about "the elective affinities of Go-eee-thee."

- "Go-eee-thee?" I inquired.

- "Yeah, 'Go-eee-thee'. . . the guy who wrote _Faust_."

I didn't correct him. He was on a roll. And he was sweet. . . That guy wasn't you, was it, Woodduck?


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## GreenMamba

Boulez, I have heard as "Boo-lay." 

As mentioned above, Ligeti should not rhyme with spaghetti.

Nietzsche is not related to the former linebacker of the Packers. 

Beyond that, though, it can be hard to draw the line between mispronunciations and accents. I can't get "ich" quite right in German, but that's not ignorance of how it should be pronounced.


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## Woodduck

Marschallin Blair said:


> I was talking with a sweet old man once in a bookstore. He was actually very literate. He started talking about "the elective affinities of Go-eee-thee."
> 
> - "Go-eee-thee?" I inquired.
> 
> - "Yeah, 'Go-eee-thee'. . . the guy who wrote _Faust_."
> 
> I didn't correct him. He was on a roll. And he was sweet. . . That guy wasn't you, was it, Woodduck?


Nein, liebe Marschallin. (But I am sweet :angel


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## ptr

Kivimees said:


> Arvo Pärt is another often mispronounced name.


That's probably because English have such a limited set of vowels... 

/ptr


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## ahammel

Woodduck said:


> Why do Czech names ending in the letter "a" - such as Kozena or Randova - have an acute accent over the final "a" (they actually do, I just can't do it here) ? I don't think it's a stress accent. What does it do?


It seems to make it a long vowel ("a" in Czech orthography is /a/ in IPA, "á" is /a:/)


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## pianississimo

Russians pronounce Tchaikovsky as Tchee-kovsky often. The rest of the world doesn't seem to have noticed.
Mstislav Rostrprovich is one most westerners seem to just give up on. Even his friends just called him Slava.


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## elgar's ghost

ptr said:


> That's probably because English have such a limited set of vowels...
> 
> /ptr


There's something in what you say - our non-use and general lack of understanding of diacritics does leave us wide open to mispronunciation at times.


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## bigshot

Ree-card Strauss


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## Marschallin Blair

bigshot said:


> Ree-card Strauss


"Ree-card?"

How about "VEEK-heart?"

_;D_


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## quack

I always have trouble with Joseph Green's name, comes out as jew-zippy-fur-day, or something crazy like that.

We live in dull days when there is only one 'correct' way to pronounce a name. In the past every country and region had the courage to pronounce names however the hell they thought was reasonable, and everyone got to have several flavours of names. Now you are wrong unless you reproduce precisely the person in question's specific intonation.


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## GreenMamba

quack said:


> I always have trouble with Joseph Green's name, comes out as jew-zippy-fur-day, or something crazy like that.
> 
> We live in dull days when there is only one 'correct' way to pronounce a name. In the past every country and region had the courage to pronounce names however the hell they thought was reasonable, and everyone got to have several flavours of names. Now you are wrong unless you reproduce precisely the person in question's specific intonation.


I always liked it when people unapologetically said "Don Quicks-Oat."


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## quack

GreenMamba said:


> I always liked it when people unapologetically said "Don Quicks-Oat."


Donkey Jokie is a very good example of this supposed 'mispronunciation' because even the Spanish pronounce it wrong compared to how Cervantes would have pronounced it. Something like key-shote-ee.

http://oyc.yale.edu/spanish-and-portuguese/span-300/lecture-1#ch1


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## arpeggio

20centrfuge said:


> Drives me crazy when I hear people say Bern STEEN for Leonard Bernstein


That's Frankensteen.


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## Cosmos

It's been a struggle for me because I only ever read these composers names, and it isn't until I hear someone say the name that I know how to pronounce it:
- I have definitely been pronouncing Dvorak wrong. Apparently, it's like Dvor-jaques, with a soft D. I would say Di-VOR-jack]
- And I guess I've been saying Ligeti wrong [like Spaghetti]
- I'm not completely sure on Debussy and at this point I'm afraid to ask
- Gnesin? Is it NEH-sin, or neh-SEEN?
- Haydn: Hey-dn or High-dn?
- I pronounced Salome [SA-lo-may] as Suh-LOAM when I first read the title
- I don't even want to say Messiaen's name in public
- Also, how do you say Pärt? Umlauts trip me up, and I just say Part but that's wrong
- I used to say Shuhs-TAK-o-vich instead of Sho-sta-KO-vich [I think the latter is right]

Not classical, but I always thought Goethe was Go + th sound, instead of GOAT-uh


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## Becca

And just how do you pronounce Yannick Nézet-Séguin?


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## ahammel

Cosmos said:


> - I have definitely been pronouncing Dvorak wrong. Apparently, it's like Dvor-jaques, with a soft D. I would say Di-vor-JACK]


What is a soft d when it's at home?



Cosmos said:


> - I'm not completely sure on Debussy and at this point I'm afraid to ask


/debysi/, or approx deh-buh-see, where the 'u' in 'buh' is a vowel that does not appear in English. Good luck!



Cosmos said:


> - Haydn: Hey-dn or High-dn?


The latter.



Cosmos said:


> - I don't even want to say Messiaen's name in public


/mɛsjɑ̃/ or mess-yen with some Gallic nasalness _ad lib_.



Cosmos said:


> - Also, how do you say Pärt? Umlauts trip me up, and I just say Part but that's wrong


It's the 'a' in 'cat', but most English speakers cannot put one of those after a 'p' without practising.


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## Cosmos

Thanks ahammel! I'm trying to say Pärt right now and am struggling lmfao
Also, about the D of Dvorak, I mean that it's not silent, but you put little emphasis on it


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## ahammel

Cosmos said:


> Thanks ahammel! I'm trying to say Pärt right now and am struggling lmfao
> Also, about the D of Dvorak, I mean that it's not silent, but you put little emphasis on it


Yes, there is no vowel after the 'd'.

In fact, its possible to speak an entire sentence in Czech with no vowels.


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## PetrB

GreenMamba said:


> I always liked it when people unapologetically said "Don Quicks-Oat."


That is very near the German pronunciation. Strauss' Don QuicksOat, or Cervantes' Don keyhotee


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## PetrB

Gabriel *Fauré*


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## Woodduck

Cosmos said:


> - I'm not completely sure on Debussy and at this point I'm afraid to ask


The difficulty with many French names is that the French language has virtually no lexical stress - i.e., no syllable in a French word is more strongly accented than any other. "Debussy" in English might come out DEB-you-see, Duh-BEW-see, or Deb-you-SEE. All are equally acceptable but all are wrong. Just pick one and don't apologize - unless you go to France.


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## GreenMamba

Jacques Ibert. Jackie Bear?

Celidibache. I used to make it kind of French, ending in something like "bosh." I think it is bay-kay.


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## GreenMamba

PetrB said:


> Gabriel *Fauré*


i was not expecting to hear that.


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## ahammel

PetrB said:


> Gabriel *Fauré*


Justin Bieber:


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## Kivimees

Cosmos said:


> - Also, how do you say Pärt? Umlauts trip me up, and I just say Part but that's wrong


That's the issue. The ä in Pärts is - strictly speaking - not an umlaut, so pronounced as in German is just as wrong as saying Part.

The tip by ahammel (like the a in "cat") is pretty good. (Don't forget to roll the r in "Pärt"!)

Another composer with a "nice" name: Alo Põldmäe


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## Skilmarilion

I sometimes mispronounce composer's names for the sake of it …

Bach --> "Batch"

Dvorak --> Davorak

Schnittke --> Schnittika

Mozart --> Moz-ert (like "Goz" sounds in Gosling)

Haydn --> Hayden

Bruckner --> *Bruck*-ner (like "Duck")


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## Dim7

Skilmarilion said:


> I sometimes mispronounce composer's names for the sake of it …


But I assume your difficulties with spelling the titles of Tolkien's books are real


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## Stavrogin

Woodduck said:


> The difficulty with many French names is that the French language has virtually no lexical stress - i.e., no syllable in a French word is more strongly accented than any other. "Debussy" in English might come out DEB-you-see, Duh-BEW-see, or Deb-you-SEE. All are equally acceptable but all are wrong. Just pick one and don't apologize - unless you go to France.


Doesn't French always stress the last syllable?
To me the correct way is Deb-you-SEE.
(where the "you" is a rough approximation of the french "u").

Some French will also finish the word, as it is in -y/-i, with a strange leftover of a sort of "sh". This is certainly peculiar of some dialect but I don't know which one.
Here's an example (the last two of the three instances in the page) --> http://it.forvo.com/search/debussy/


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## Stavrogin

About Dvořák... the "r" is certainly the most difficult part  but one thing that is often overlooked is that it is the "a" that is to be stressed, not the "o".

dvo-ř-AAK


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## Skilmarilion

Dim7 said:


> But I assume your difficulties with spelling the titles of Tolkien's books are real


Real? Nah.

I'm just cool like that. :tiphat:


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## Animato

GreenMamba said:


> Celidibache. I used to make it kind of French, ending in something like "bosh." I think it is bay-kay.


I would say "Celibidache" is italian and should pronounced: Tshelibidake

For me, as a German, I have difficulties - not to pronounce at all - but to find the correct pronounciation for
opera singer: Bryn Terfel
and pianist: Benjamin Grosvenor

I have been told it is : Ter'val
and: Grovn(e) 
is this right?


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## Cosmos

Skilmarilion said:


> Bruckner --> *Bruck*-ner (like "Duck")


Um...*sweats nervously* t-that's _not_ how you pronounce it?


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## GioCar

Animato said:


> I would say "Celibidache" is italian and should pronounced: Tshelibidake


Actually Celibidache is Romanian but you are right because Romanian and Italian are very similar in pronunciation.


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## Guest

Schoenberg.

I can pronounce it right, but the problem is, my friend and I have discussed Schoenberg so much that it will feel weird to force a change now. At some point or another, can one simply adhere to the ignorant white boy's status quo?


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## elgar's ghost

Quick question - are the two dots used over the vowels in Estonian used in the same way with Finnish or do they make different sounds?


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## Guest

I abbreviate J.S. Bach's middle name as "Seabass" in casual conversation (as in "Kick his ***, Seabass!"). Is that relevant to this thread?


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## Mahlerian

Cosmos said:


> Um...*sweats nervously* t-that's _not_ how you pronounce it?


It's more like "Brewk-ner".


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## Stavrogin

elgars ghost said:


> Quick question - are the two dots used over the vowels in Estonian used in the same way with Finnish or do they make different sounds?


The letter Ä occurs as an independent letter in the Swedish, Finnish, Skolt Sami, Karelian, Estonian, Luxembourgish, North Frisian, Saterlandic, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Rotuman, French, Slovak, Tatar, and Turkmen alphabets, where it represents a vowel sound. *In Finnish *and Turkmen *this is always [æ]*; *in *Swedish and *Estonian regional variation, as well as the letter's position in a word, allows for either [æ] and [ɛ]*.

(from Wiki . the bold is mine)


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## Stavrogin

Skilmarillion said:


> Bruckner --> Bruck-ner (like "Duck")





Cosmos said:


> Um...*sweats nervously* t-that's _not_ how you pronounce it?


I'd say it depends on how you pronounce "duck"


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## Stavrogin

pianississimo said:


> Russians pronounce Tchaikovsky as Tchee-kovsky often. The rest of the world doesn't seem to have noticed.


This is true, even though I would describe it more as a closed "ay" rather than outright "ee".


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## Kivimees

elgars ghost said:


> Quick question - are the two dots used over the vowels in Estonian used in the same way with Finnish or do they make different sounds?


In standard Finnish and Estonian, ä and ö are pronounced the same in both languages; Finnish has y, whereas Estonian has ü. Estonian also has õ to make life interesting; Finnish has no equivalent. Both languages also have a love of diphthongs.


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## Albert7

I think a few people don't know how to pronounce conductor's Jarvi's last name very well.


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## Chris

It's virtually impossible for an English person to correctly pronounce Cesar Franck without sounding like Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films.


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## GreenMamba

GreenMamba said:


> Celidibache. I used to make it kind of French, ending in something like "bosh." I think it is bay-kay.





Animato said:


> I would say "Celibidache" is italian and should pronounced: Tshelibidake


Oh, hell, I didn't even have the spelling right. B before D.


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## superhorn

Mussorgsky is accented on the first syllable, not the second . The maddening thing about Russian is the total unpredictability of the stress ; it can fall on any syllable and often falls where you least expect it .
Modest is pronounced Ma- D'yest . The dest is palitalized ; that is , it has a y sound added . But it's difficult to indicate this in English . The former Soviet Republic of Belorussia is also palatilized ;
it's pronounced B'yelo russia .Or B'yelorus . 
The Amenian name Khatchaturian is pronounced gutturally ; Ch as in chutpah , not Catch- aturian .
Bartok is pronounced Bar-toke , not Bar-talk .


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## Woodduck

Stavrogin said:


> Doesn't French always stress the last syllable?
> To me the correct way is Deb-you-SEE.
> (where the "you" is a rough approximation of the french "u").
> 
> Some French will also finish the word, as it is in -y/-i, with a strange leftover of a sort of "sh". This is certainly peculiar of some dialect but I don't know which one.
> Here's an example (the last two of the three instances in the page) --> http://it.forvo.com/search/debussy/


None of those examples on the link accent the last syllable. My feeling about the "sh" sound is that it's a sort of side-effect of the very closed position of the tongue and hard palate typical of French, but that the little residual rush of air you hear would not always be heard, depending on the speaker and the context. Notice that you don't hear it from the first speaker. It certainly isn't a feature of "standard" French, but may be, as you suggest, characteristic of certain regional accents. Anyone French here to tell us?


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## Orfeo

For a long time, Weinberg was (mis)spelled as Vainberg. Thank goodness for scholars (like Pers Skans, David Fanning, et al.).


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## elgar's ghost

dholling said:


> For a long time, Weinberg was (mis)spelled as Vainberg. Thank goodness for scholars (like Pers Skans, David Fanning, et al.).


I was unaware that Vainberg was wrong as I thought it was simply a transliteration of how the name was pronounced in Russian (Вайнберг) once he'd moved to the Soviet Union from Poland.


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## SONNET CLV

I once heard a fellow from Detroit mispronounce the name of jazz pianist/composer David Benoit. Perhaps worse than this is that on a _Law and Order_ episode some years back, while investigating a nefarious orchestra conductor, Detective Bobby Goren, who always seems to know everything, even the unknowable, grossly mispronounced the name of Polish composer Penderecki, putting emphasis on the syllables and consonants, just as an American who didn't know might do -- Pen-der-ekk-kee.

But then, who am I to complain. I have trouble pronouncing my own last name -- CLV. Not enough vowels, perhaps?


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## Alydon

My favourite is Knappertsbusch ever since his name featured in an episode of Inspector Morse & one of the characters kept mispronouncing it much to the annoyance of Morse, who in turn had to keep correcting him. The problem with mispronouncing a name is that usually you are rarely corrected by the person you are addressing out of politeness, which makes you feel even worse when you hear the correct form at a later date.


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## Delicious Manager

Chrythes said:


> So the g is pronounced as in "gear", and not as in "germs"?


In many languages, 'G' is always hard. This is certainly true for all Slavonic languages (except that 'g' in Russian is occasionally pronounced as a 'v', oddly) and is true also of Hungarian. Czech, Finnish and Lithuanian are three other languages where the stress is always on the first syllable (I'm not sure about Finnish's close relative, Estonian). In Polish, when there are more than two syllables, the stress is always on the penultimate syllable. Russian is difficult as it varies a lot.


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## Delicious Manager

Stavrogin said:


> About Dvořák... the "r" is certainly the most difficult part  but one thing that is often overlooked is that it is the "a" that is to be stressed, not the "o".
> 
> dvo-ř-AAK


No! The stress in Czech is always on the first syllable. The accent on the 'a' in Dvořák' lengthens the vowel, not stresses it. Listen to any pronunciation site.


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## Stavrogin

Delicious Manager said:


> No! The stress in Czech is always on the first syllable. The accent on the 'a' in Dvořák' lengthens the vowel, not stresses it. Listen to any pronunciation site.


True. I used the word "stress" incorrectly. I was referring to the length of the vowel, which misled me.


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## Stavrogin

Woodduck said:


> None of those examples on the link accent the last syllable. My feeling about the "sh" sound is that it's a sort of side-effect of the very closed position of the tongue and hard palate typical of French, but that the little residual rush of air you hear would not always be heard, depending on the speaker and the context. Notice that you don't hear it from the first speaker. It certainly isn't a feature of "standard" French, but may be, as you suggest, characteristic of certain regional accents. Anyone French here to tell us?


I have just been corrected on stresses so I'd better be silent, but... yeah I am quite sure that, in French phonology, the stress is always on the last full syllable. (And it does sound like that to me, in the link).


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## Orfeo

elgars ghost said:


> I was unaware that Vainberg was wrong as I thought it was simply a transliteration of how the name was pronounced in Russian (Вайнберг) once he'd moved to the Soviet Union from Poland.


Well, the composer spelt it as Weinberg, in accordance to Latin alphabet used in Poland (at that time). Its origin is German/Yiddish. The Russian transliterations added to the confusion based on the a variety of factors, one of them due to approximation of the Russian alphabet to the original language, then transliterated further into English and what not. The late Pers Skans expresses his take on the matter here. 
http://www.music-weinberg.net/


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## Woodduck

Stavrogin said:


> I have just been corrected on stresses so I'd better be silent, but... yeah I am quite sure that, in French phonology, the stress is always on the last full syllable. (And it does sound like that to me, in the link).


This (from Wikipedia) may be useful, Stavrogin:

_Statements about the position of stress are sometimes affected by the fact that when a word is spoken in isolation, prosodic factors (see below) come into play, which do not apply when the word is spoken normally within a sentence. French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, but this can be attributed to the prosodic stress that is placed on the final syllable (or, if that is a schwa, the next-to-final syllable) of any string of words in that language, and hence also on the last syllable of a word analyzed in isolation. The situation is similar in Mandarin Chinese; see Stress in Standard Chinese. French (and according to some authors, Chinese) can in fact be considered to have no lexical stress.
_

In other words, a light stress may occur on a final syllable as a way of marking the end of a sequence of words (or a word spoken in isolation), but the stress is not an accent belonging to the word. It's more like audible punctuation. When French is spoken, you won't hear accentuation of individual syllables within a sentence.

This site explains it more thoroughly:

http://french.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/rhythm.htm


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## Albert7

I wonder how often Takemitsu is mispronounced... or any Asian composer for that matter.


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## elgar's ghost

dholling said:


> Well, the composer spelt it as Weinberg, in accordance to Latin alphabet used in Poland (at that time). Its origin is German/Yiddish. The Russian transliterations added to the confusion based on the a variety of factors, one of them due to approximation of the Russian alphabet to the original language, then transliterated further into English and what not. The late Pers Skans expresses his take on the matter here.
> http://www.music-weinberg.net/


Fair enoughski - what's good enough for an authority such as Skans (who also wrote some great sleevenotes, as I recall) is certainly good enough for me.


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## pianississimo

Stavrogin said:


> I'd say it depends on how you pronounce "duck"


Haha! I'll be thinking about this thread next time I see a dook pond!! :lol:


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## pianississimo

GreenMamba said:


> As mentioned above, Ligeti should not rhyme with spaghetti.


Funny you should say that. On Wednesday I was at a concert where Ligeti's music was being played. The musicians were taking turns to introduce each of the composers whose music they were playing and the horn player, speaking about Ligeti, pronounced it to rhyme with spaghetti.

I didn't think it sounded right. I thought it should be LiG -er- ti with only a slight emphasis on the G. 
But he was a Hungarian, born in Romania, and I always get those Eastern European names wrong!!


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## hpowders

I always laugh as mainstream hollywood TV types always mispronounce Mozart as if it was an English name as well as Bernstein pronounced as Bernsteen. Quickly reveals the classical music illiterates.


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## EdwardBast

Delicious Manager said:


> No! The stress in Czech is always on the first syllable. The accent on the 'a' in Dvořák' lengthens the vowel, not stresses it. Listen to any pronunciation site.


I have it on good authority (a Czech musicologist specializing in the composer's music) that Janácek is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable.


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## ahammel

EdwardBast said:


> I have it on good authority (a Czech musicologist specializing in the composer's music) that Janácek is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable.


Wiki thinks it's on the first syllable, but the "á" is a long vowel which sounds a bit like emphasis.

/'janətʃɛk/ is probably the incorrect pronunciation your friend is objecting to.


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## MoonlightSonata

ahammel said:


> Wiki thinks it's on the first syllable, but the "á" is a long vowel which sounds a bit like emphasis.
> 
> /'janətʃɛk/ is probably the incorrect pronunciation your friend is objecting to.


Oops. I always pronounced it like that. Is the correct pronunciation /'janatʃɛk/?


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## ahammel

MoonlightSonata said:


> Oops. I always pronounced it like that. Is the correct pronunciation /'janatʃɛk/?


/'janaࠡ:tʃɛk/ (with a long a).


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## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> I have it on good authority (a Czech musicologist specializing in the composer's music) that Janácek is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable.


Wiki confirms this (they have a "listen" function). You can also hear the difference between the accented and unaccented vowel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leoš_Janáček


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## MoonlightSonata

ahammel said:


> /'janaࠡ:tʃɛk/ (with a long a).


Oops. I meant that, just forgot about the colon thingy.
(BTW, do you know what some of these IPA characters are called? I know there's the schwa, but have no idea what the aforementioned "colon thingy" and the "ʃ" are called.)


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## ahammel

MoonlightSonata said:


> Oops. I meant that, just forgot about the colon thingy.
> (BTW, do you know what some of these IPA characters are called? I know there's the schwa, but have no idea what the aforementioned "colon thingy" and the "ʃ" are called.)


Don't know if the colon thingy has a name. Length marker, maybe?

ʃ is called esh.


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## MoonlightSonata

ahammel said:


> Don't know if the colon thingy has a name. Length marker, maybe?
> 
> ʃ is called esh.


Oh, thank you.
I probably forgot it because of the similarity to "ash".


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## senza sordino

Please tell me how to pronounce Eugène Ysaÿe.


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## KenOC

øʒɛn iza.i says the source of all wisdom. Hope this helps!


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## Albert7

The name of the German composer in the Monty Python sketch is:

Johann Gambolputty-de-von-Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crass-cren-bon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelter-wasser-kurstlich-himble-eisenbahnwagen-guten-abend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwürstel-gespurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumeraber-schönendanker-kalbsfleisch-mittleraucher-von-Hautkopft of Ulm.

If you speak german, this might have put a smile on your face.


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## Stavrogin

KenOC said:


> øʒɛn iza.i says the source of all wisdom. Hope this helps!


This will help too
http://it.forvo.com/word/eugène_ysaÿe/


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## senza sordino

KenOC said:


> øʒɛn iza.i says the source of all wisdom. Hope this helps!





Stavrogin said:


> This will help too
> http://it.forvo.com/word/eugène_ysaÿe/


Both pronunciations seem a bit different to me.

eez-zay-ah

or

eez-zay-ee


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## Stavrogin

senza sordino said:


> Both pronunciations seem a bit different to me.
> 
> eez-zay-ah
> 
> or
> 
> eez-zay-ee


Why, "iza.i" in IPA is exactly what you hear in the other link.


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## Headphone Hermit

Delicious Manager said:


> In Polish, when there are more than two syllables, the stress is *always* on the penultimate syllable.


 usually the stress is on the penultimate syllable ... but there are exceptions (many of which appear to be directly from latin or greek) such as m*u*zyka :tiphat:


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## Headphone Hermit

Mahlerian said:


> It's more like "Brewk-ner".


ah ... like a scouse "I reeed a bewk"?


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## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> The difficulty with many French names is that the French language has virtually no lexical stress - i.e., no syllable in a French word is more strongly accented than any other. "Debussy" in English might come out DEB-you-see, Duh-BEW-see, or Deb-you-SEE. All are equally acceptable but all are wrong. Just pick one and don't apologize - unless you go to France.


and don't ask for any music of Bare-lee-ozzz either unless you want to demonstrate that you have inept pronunciation in all parts of the name :tiphat:

(and no .... I am *not* going to try to offer any advice at all on how to write it phonetically or pronounce it correctly!


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## Figleaf

Headphone Hermit said:


> and don't ask for any music of Bare-lee-ozzz either unless you want to demonstrate that you have inept pronunciation in all parts of the name :tiphat:
> 
> (and no .... I am *not* going to try to offer any advice at all on how to write it phonetically or pronounce it correctly!


I wish you would, because I've been calling him Bare-lee-ozzz.  With French pronunciation, I often feel like the more I learn, the less I know!


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## Headphone Hermit

^^^ my french pronunciation is so poor that when I went into a post office to buy a stamp, they sent outside for someone to come and translate for me


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## Headphone Hermit

Ok ... Lutosławski ... I wonder how many say Lutoslavski (wrong) or Lutoswavski (correct) because the 'ł' is a letter that we don't have in english ... its pronounced as a soft 'w'


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## Headphone Hermit

and on similar lines ..... Paweł Łukaszewski .... Wookaszefski


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## hpowders

Charles Munch.

Newsflash: He was French. His first name should be pronounced the French way.


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## Woodduck

hpowders said:


> Charles Munch.
> 
> Newsflash: He was French. His first name should be pronounced the French way.


It's the last name that troubles me, since it's apparently not a French name. How do the French mispronounce it?


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## Itullian

Ferenc Fricsay................


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## manyene

I think most of us in the UK depend on BBC Radio 3 to get the correct pronunciation of composer's names, but other sources of information are more fallible. There's always a problem with Polish names, the subject of much discussion on this thread. My favourite is Karlowicz with the Polish crossed 'l', often pronounced as an 'l' rather than a 'w'. And just to clear up one matter - does the stress in 'Gorecki' fall on the second syllable or the first-most people tend to opt for the former.


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## Headphone Hermit

^^^ the penultimate syllable ... it would sound Russian if it were the first syllable


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## Stavrogin

Woodduck said:


> It's the last name that troubles me, since it's apparently not a French name. How do the French mispronounce it?


http://it.forvo.com/languages/fr/tag/charles_munch/


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## Stavrogin

Itullian said:


> Ferenc Fricsay................


The first name is stressed on the last syllable, and the "c" is pronounced "ts", so it's fe-RENTS

Now the last name... is a bit of a mess I guess. In my mind I have always pronunced it as "freak's eye" 
But Forvo says otherwise --> http://it.forvo.com/word/ferenc_fricsay/#hu


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## hpowders

Woodduck said:


> *It's the last name t*hat troubles me, since it's apparently not a French name. *How do the French mispronounce it?*


I never said they did. His last name is German, by the way and if I know my German, his last name should be spelled and pronounced as "Münch.

It just irks me to hear his first name pronounced the American way instead of the French way.

He's lucky he's deceased and doesn't have to deal with this crap anymore!


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## Woodduck

Stavrogin said:


> The first name is stressed on the last syllable, and the "c" is pronounced "ts", so it's fe-RENTS
> 
> Now the last name... is a bit of a mess I guess. In my mind I have always pronunced it as "freak's eye"
> But Forvo says otherwise --> http://it.forvo.com/word/ferenc_fricsay/#hu


Ferenc Fricsay is Hungarian, as is my father. Hungarian, like its distant cousin Finnish, is always accented on the first syllable, regardless of the number of syllables in the word. Roughly, FEH-rents FREE-choy, with the Rs flipped.


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## Kivimees

Szervusz Woodduck úr!


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## Woodduck

Kivimees said:


> Szervusz Woodduck úr!


Thank you for the "hello." Estonia? Your language is also Finno-Ugric, but if you know Hungarian then you are very likely Hungarian, since hardly anyone not Hungarian speaks it. I cannot, but can pronounce it fairly well.


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## Kivimees

Nem magyar vagyok. Actually, I studied Hungarian many years ago at university. Sadly, I have long forgotten most of it.


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## Sloe

manyene said:


> I think most of us in the UK depend on BBC Radio 3 to get the correct pronunciation of composer's names, but other sources of information are more fallible. There's always a problem with Polish names, the subject of much discussion on this thread. My favourite is Karlowicz with the Polish crossed 'l', often pronounced as an 'l' rather than a 'w'. And just to clear up one matter - does the stress in 'Gorecki' fall on the second syllable or the first-most people tend to opt for the former.


In Polish C is pronounced ts.
Gorecki is pronounced Goretski.
Penderecki is pronounced Penderetski.


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## hpowders

Claudio Arrau. A lot of gringos and gringas do not roll the r's. Should be Arrrrrau!


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## Albert7

Woodduck said:


> Ferenc Fricsay is Hungarian, as is my father. Hungarian, like its distant cousin Finnish, is always accented on the first syllable, regardless of the number of syllables in the word. Roughly, FEH-rents FREE-choy, with the Rs flipped.


Wow thanks for the tip! I've been butchering his name for months now.


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## elgar's ghost

Re Hungarian. British commentators are usually lazy when trying to pronounce the names of Hungarian football teams and often settle for a lazy but convenient phonetic alternative:

Ferencváros - mispronounced as 'Ferenckvar-ros'

Újpest Dózsa - mispronounced as - Oozhpest Doe-sha'

God knows how they'd get on with Zalaegerszeg or Szombathelyi Haladás. :lol:


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## hpowders

I would love to see the holier than thou "hollywood elite" attempt to pronounce Wolfgang Mozart, Leonard Bernstein and Antonin Dvorak instead of their usual favorite rappers.

Should be good for some deep belly laughs! :lol::lol:


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## MoonlightSonata

I'm learning an Arvo Part choral work, and the pronunciation (and the rapidly changing metre) is a nightmare at the correct tempo. For example, how does one pronounce "Chrjé"?


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## manyene

Re Charles Munch,

The situation is made more complicated by the fact that Alsace was under German rule from 1871 to the First World War. Koechlin was another composer likewise affected. Presumably the German controllers of Alsace-Lorraine use the German pronunciation rather than the French when they pronounced these surnames?


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## MarkW

Frederic Rzewski


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## Albert7

A good news article about the very topic at hand:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/classical-music-pronunciation_n_4995348.html


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## Sloe

Should Holst as in Gustav Holsts last name be pronounced with a diftong or without a diftong. He was an Englishman but had Scandinavian heritage with a Scandinavian name. So should it be pronounced with a diftong as an English name or without in a Scandinavian way?


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## QuietGuy

Rautavaara ...........................


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## Tedski

Woodduck said:


> Nietzschzschzschzschzschzschzsche... :confused


Gesundheit.


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## MarkW

When I was growing up in the Boston area, all the Boston classical announcers pronounced Sibelius' first name (Jean) like the German Jan ("yahn"). So that's what I said for years. Recently, although elsewhere, I hear it pronounced like the French Jean ("zhuhn"). That puzzled me, so I asked a Professor I know from Norway, figuring Scandanavians would know as a matter of course. He confirmed the French pronunciation, but I'm curious where the other originated.


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## Dim7

QuietGuy said:


> Rautavaara ...........................


All the a's are pronounced like the a in "father" (but "aa" is longer than the single a's). "u" is like short "oo".

If we really want an authentic pronunciation, r's are trilled (or "rolled" as they say), "t" is unaspirated (like in "still"), v is pronouned with a weaker friction than the English v. Stress is on the first syllable.


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## rrudolph

Milhaud

Kodály


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## LHB

Ralph Vaughan-Williams
Karol Szymanowski
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
Iannis Xenakis
André Boucourechliev
Frederic Rzewski


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## DiesIraeCX

Yo-Yo Ma. 

I always say Mo-Mo Ya.


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## elgar's ghost

Sloe said:


> Should Holst as in Gustav Holsts last name be pronounced with a diftong or without a diftong. He was an Englishman but had Scandinavian heritage with a Scandinavian name. So should it be pronounced with a diftong as an English name or without in a Scandinavian way?


Holst did have Scandinavian ancestry but his surname apparently originated from Germany. I've only ever heard Holst's pronounced with a hard letter o as in p*o*t - as there is only one vowel would it actually sound different anywhere else?


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## Sloe

elgars ghost said:


> Holst did have Scandinavian ancestry but his surname apparently originated from Germany. I've only ever heard Holst's pronounced with a hard letter o as in p*o*t - as there is only one vowel would it actually sound different anywhere else?


So it is supposed to be pronounced without a diphtong or thriphtong.
Radio presentators like to pronounce Holst with a diphtong in a very exagerated way.


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## KenOC

Gustavus Theodore von Holst dropped the "von" legally from his name in 1918. Seems it sounded too...ah...German.


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## Sloe

KenOC said:


> Gustavus Theodore von Holst dropped the "von" legally from his name in 1918. Seems it sounded to...ah...German.


Many Scandinavian families that belong to the nobility use von as a prefix regardless of German heritage or not.


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## KenOC

Per Wiki, the Holsts came from a good number of backgrounds, with German evidently predominating. The "von" had nothing to do with nobility -- it was "appropriated" by an ancestor in 1802!


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## Sloe

KenOC said:


> Per Wiki, the Holsts came from a good number of backgrounds, with German evidently predominating. The "von" had nothing to do with nobility -- it was "appropriated" by an ancestor in 1802!


But that is what everyone things. It sound and look fancy.


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## science

Edit: Maybe this post was unacceptable....


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