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Hersey, Anna. Scandinavian Song: A Guide to Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Repertoire and Diction. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Cloth, xvlil, 383 pp., $65.00. ISBN 978-0-8108-8453-3 eBook 9780-8108-8454-0 $64.99. www.rowman. com
Anna Hersey invited Donald Simonson, Past President of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), to write the preface to this book; in it, he fondly recalls his initial experience with Phonetic Readings of Songs and Arias by Berton Coffin, Ralph Erróle, Weiner Singer, and Pierre Delattre (Boulder: Pruett Press, 1964). Like countless other singers, he was introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and the study of diction through this collection of song text transcriptions. The volume was instrumental in the development of the uniform study of lyric diction and was the first in a large number of song text compendia. Simonson points to the book as an invaluable reference, but notes that it includes only Italian, German, and French lyrics. In recent years, however, the resources for diction have grown to encompass (among others) Russian, Czech, Greek, and Polish. This volume by Hersey offers a guide to the songs of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and proffers tutelage in the pronunciation of repertoire that is often overlooked by English speakers.
The book is organized into three parts: an explanation of the diction of the Scandinavian languages, an overview of art song repertoire, and translations and transcriptions of song texts into IPA. In the introduction, Hersey outlines the challenges in this study, beginning with the nomenclature in identifying the region. In common usage, Continental Scandinavia refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (the subject of this volume); Scandinavia includes those three countries...