[TCA] Recordings of Gareth Morgan reading Latin on line

[John McChesney-Young]

Of possible interest to some here:

From: Tim Moore <***@mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: [TCA] Recordings of Gareth Morgan reading Latin on line
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 15:48:46 -0500


Colleagues,

Many of you will recall the voice of our former colleague Gareth
Morgan reading the ancient languages aloud. I am pleased to report
that recordings of Gareth reading Cicero, Catullus, and Horace are
now on line at
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/itsaud/series.php?series_name=cc-6-02.
These recordings were made in 1970 for an album of Latin poetry and
prose produced by members of the UT Classics Faculty and are provided
for public access courtesy of Harper-Collins Publishers. Many thanks
to Mike Heidenreich of the UT College of Liberal Arts Instructional
Technology Services, who took care of the uploading. Mike and Beth
Orr are hoping to post additional recordings of Gareth in the future.

Happy listening,

Tim Moore
--
Timothy J. Moore
Department of Classics
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station, C3400
Austin, TX 78712-0308 USA

_______________________________________________
TexasClassicalAssoc mailing list
***@mylist.net
http://mylist.net/listinfo/texasclassicalassoc


--


*** John McChesney-Young ** panis~at~pacbell.net ** Berkeley,
California, U.S.A. ***

[Owen Cramer]

The In Catilinam come through well--compare Sonkowsky at
http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/cicero.htm: Sonkowsky's baritone is more
resonant and emotionally over-the-top; Morgan's tenor faster and more
agile--both do the elisions well, keep to a consistent set of vowels
(Morgan's open e's contrasting with Sonkowsky's resonant closed e's in
words like abutere) and I suppose Morgan is more exciting. Well worth
having on the net. On the other hand, I couldn't get more than the first
word of each of the Catullus poems to actually play--is there something
wrong with the files?

Owen Cramer
M. C. Gile Professor of Classics
Colorado College
14 E. Cache la Poudre
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
719.389.6443 fax [phone]
***@coloradocollege.edu

________________________________

From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group on behalf of John
McChesney-Young
Sent: Wed 8/16/2006 5:46 PM
To: CLASSICS-***@LSV.UKY.EDU
Subject: Fwd: [TCA] Recordings of Gareth Morgan reading Latin on line



Of possible interest to some here:

From: Tim Moore <***@mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: [TCA] Recordings of Gareth Morgan reading Latin on line
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 15:48:46 -0500


Colleagues,

Many of you will recall the voice of our former colleague Gareth
Morgan reading the ancient languages aloud. I am pleased to report
that recordings of Gareth reading Cicero, Catullus, and Horace are
now on line at
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/itsaud/series.php?series_name=cc-6-02.
These recordings were made in 1970 for an album of Latin poetry and
prose produced by members of the UT Classics Faculty and are provided
for public access courtesy of Harper-Collins Publishers. Many thanks
to Mike Heidenreich of the UT College of Liberal Arts Instructional
Technology Services, who took care of the uploading. Mike and Beth
Orr are hoping to post additional recordings of Gareth in the future.

Happy listening,

Tim Moore
--
Timothy J. Moore
Department of Classics
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station, C3400
Austin, TX 78712-0308 USA

_______________________________________________
TexasClassicalAssoc mailing list
***@mylist.net
http://mylist.net/listinfo/texasclassicalassoc


--


*** John McChesney-Young ** panis~at~pacbell.net ** Berkeley,
California, U.S.A. ***

[John McChesney-Young]

At 6:16 PM -0600 8/16/06, Owen Cramer wrote in small part:

... I couldn't get more than the first
>word of each of the Catullus poems to actually play--is there something
>wrong with the files?

I tried 6 of them (using Firefox 1.5.0.6, Mac OS X) and they all
worked fine for me. Perhaps it was something transient at U Texas
server? Or a browser/QT plug-in problem? Quitting and restarting or
trying a different browser might help if the problem persists.

I tested it with Opera 9.0 and even having the browser identify
itself as Mozilla or IE didn't trick the server into giving me the
page. The error page I was taken to instead says they require:

MacOSX: Safari, v1.2+ (recommended)
MacOSX: Firefox 1+, Camino .82+:, Gecko derivatives
Windows: Firefox 1+, Mozilla 1.3+, Netscape 7+, Gecko derivatives
Windows: Internet Explorer 5.1+

John

***

I'd quoted:

<< I am pleased to report
>that recordings of Gareth reading Cicero, Catullus, and Horace are
>now on line at
>http://www.laits.utexas.edu/itsaud/series.php?series_name=cc-6-02...
--


*** John McChesney-Young ** panis~at~pacbell.net ** Berkeley,
California, U.S.A. ***

[Mariano Paniello]

Is it the norm always to "trill" the single r in Latin (apart from at the
beginning of a word)? As a native Spanish speaker, it peeves me when someone
learning Spanish gives the same quantity to a single r as a double one, thus
effacing the difference between (for example) pero (but) and perro (dog).
I've heard people do this with Italian as well, which always has struck me
as pedantic. Is this trill simply an oversight on the part of reciters, or
is there evidence to show that the single and double r in Latin were
pronouced the same way?

Just curious,

MP

----Original Message Follows----
From: Owen Cramer <***@COLORADOCOLLEGE.EDU>

The In Catilinam come through well--compare Sonkowsky at
http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/cicero.htm: Sonkowsky's baritone is more
resonant and emotionally over-the-top [...]

Owen Cramer

[Ralph Hancock]

Mario Paniello wrote:

> Is it the norm always to "trill" the single r in Latin (apart from at the
> beginning of a word)?

Wondering about this, I found a discussion posting at
http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2006/03/more_latin_orth.html ,
quoting from W. Sidney Allan, _Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of
Classical Latin_, Cambridge UP, 1989:

------

Before considering the individual sounds in detail, it is important to note
that wherever a double consonant is written in Latin it stands for a
correspondingly lengthened sound... [I]t is necessary to observe this in
pronunciation, since otherwise no distinction will be made between such
pairs as ager and agger, anus and annus. English speakers need to pay
special attention to this point, since double consonants are so pronounced
in English only where they belong to separate elements of a compound word—as
in rat-tail, hop-pole, bus-service, unnamed, etc.; otherwise the written
double consonants of English (e.g. as in bitter, happy, running) have the
function only of indicating that the preceding vowel is short. The English
compounds in fact provide a useful model for the correct pronunciation of
the Latin double (or 'long') consonants.

In early systems of Latin spelling, double consonants were written single;
the double writing does not appear in inscriptions until the beginning of
the second century B.C. Ennius is said to have introduced the new
spelling..., but in an inscription of 117 B.C. the old spelling is still
more common that the new. [Footnote: Another device, mentioned by the
grammarians and occasionally found in Augustan inscriptions, is to place the
sign 'sicilicum' over the letter to indicate doubling (in the manner of the
Arabic 'shadda')—thus, for example, os̉a = ossa.] The single spelling in
such cases does not of course indicate single pronunciation, any more than
the normal single writing of long vowels indicates a short pronunciation.
(p. 11)

-------

So according to Allen they ought not to be doing it. But you have to give
English speakers a certain latitude here, since their various dialects have
Rs of varying strengths from negligible (English RP, Boston Brahmin) to as
strong, singly, as a Spanish double r (the remoter parts of the Scottish
Highlands and Islands). And these sounds are fixed, since in English the
function of a double letter, including R, is to shorten the previous
consonant, without affecting the sound of the R itself.

Also, isn't the Italian double R different from the Spanish one, more two
separate fairly light Rs separated by a slight stop, rather than a trill?

The test for Latin would be the prevalence of R -> RR and RR -> R errors in
graffiti. Can find no trace of records of such statistics on the web.

RH

[Glaukopis Athene]

Just a thought, but I'm sure there were different dialects or accents
for Latin too. So the R might possibly be pronounced differently
depending on where and when in the Roman empire you are.

I still think we should dig up some dead Romans, hit 'em with a spell,
and make 'em talk! ;-)

-Monica


On 8/29/06, Ralph Hancock <***@dircon.co.uk> wrote:

> So according to Allen they ought not to be doing it. But you have to give
> English speakers a certain latitude here, since their various dialects have
> Rs of varying strengths from negligible (English RP, Boston Brahmin) to as
> strong, singly, as a Spanish double r (the remoter parts of the Scottish
> Highlands and Islands). And these sounds are fixed, since in English the
> function of a double letter, including R, is to shorten the previous
> consonant, without affecting the sound of the R itself.
>
> Also, isn't the Italian double R different from the Spanish one, more two
> separate fairly light Rs separated by a slight stop, rather than a trill?
>
> The test for Latin would be the prevalence of R -> RR and RR -> R errors in
> graffiti. Can find no trace of records of such statistics on the web.
>
> RH
>


--
http://glaukopidos.blogspot.com/

[Ralph Hancock]

I wrote, carelessly:

> in English the
> function of a double letter, including R, is to shorten the previous
> consonant, without affecting the sound of the R itself.

I meant the preceding *vowel*. Sorry. (And of course there are lots of
exceptions in this irregular language, such as 'very' with a short e, and
'tarry', which can be pronounced with a short a if it means 'delay', or with
a long one if it means 'covered with tar'.)

RH

[Bradley Skene]

I beleive it says in the SHA that Trajan had a Baetican (i.e. Spanish)
accent.

On 8/29/06, Glaukopis Athene <***@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just a thought, but I'm sure there were different dialects or accents
> for Latin too. So the R might possibly be pronounced differently
> depending on where and when in the Roman empire you are.
>
> I still think we should dig up some dead Romans, hit 'em with a spell,
> and make 'em talk! ;-)
>
> -Monica
>
>
> On 8/29/06, Ralph Hancock <***@dircon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > So according to Allen they ought not to be doing it. But you have to
> give
> > English speakers a certain latitude here, since their various dialects
> have
> > Rs of varying strengths from negligible (English RP, Boston Brahmin) to
> as
> > strong, singly, as a Spanish double r (the remoter parts of the Scottish
> > Highlands and Islands). And these sounds are fixed, since in English the
> > function of a double letter, including R, is to shorten the previous
> > consonant, without affecting the sound of the R itself.
> >
> > Also, isn't the Italian double R different from the Spanish one, more
> two
> > separate fairly light Rs separated by a slight stop, rather than a
> trill?
> >
> > The test for Latin would be the prevalence of R -> RR and RR -> R errors
> in
> > graffiti. Can find no trace of records of such statistics on the web.
> >
> > RH
> >
>
>
> --
> http://glaukopidos.blogspot.com/
>

[Owen Cramer]

Thanks to Ralph Hancock for citing Allen's advice. As to the Gareth Morgan
and Robert Sonkowsky recordings we were discussing, they clearly depend on
the actual written/printed text: both manfully render the double-r in
conferri (in the second paragraph of In Catilinam I). My own practice is
a(n attempted) single-tap for intervocalic or initial r, and the trill
for the double rr.

What struck me in listening again to these recitals this evening was the
inconsistency in rendering final -m before initial vowel: the
elisions/nasalizations we think we ought to make in prose and *must* make
in reading verse. Short of a sound-restoration program subtle enough to
recapture the traces of original Roman recitals from the circumambient
air--something a Calvino or a Borges might at least imagine--we may have
to make do with compromise on these.

Owen Cramer

[Mariano Paniello]

Many thanks to all who responded!

Regards,

MP