Hmm.

[artsyhonker]

"A text in Latin shall be used", I read, of a choral composition competition.

It turns out they are a bit more picky than that:

Only texts by the following Latin Authors will be accepted: Ovidio (Publius Ovidius Naso), Orazio (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Virgilio (Publius Vergilius Maro), Catullo (Gaius Valerius Catullus), Marziale (Marcus Valerius Martialis), Lucrezio (Titus Lucretius Carus).

Being more a Christian sacred composer than anything else, and lacking a Classics background, I'm utterly unfamiliar with most of these. I understand Catullus is rather rude.

I suspect the pronunciation varies considerably from church Latin, too, though probably not so much that I can't set it well.

I feel a bit like this is a veiled attempt to filter out people who aren't posh enough, or haven't had the "right" educational background. I dislike those kinds of barriers to participation.

So: does anyone have any suggestions for me from those authors? Any passages you'd particularly like to hear me set to music?

Comments

[siderea]

Warning! There's this whole thing about metrical feet in classical Latin poetry, based on vowel sounds, not (IIUC) emphasis. It works differently than the poetry we're used to. I'm assuming that if they want classical poets set, they're expecting familiarity/facility with the conventions of classical poetics.

[artsyhonker]

That's definitely good to know about before I start!

Do the vowel sounds follow some kind of consistent rule based on what is written down, like Spanish, or are there squillions of exceptions to memorise, as there are in English?

(I can probably cope even with the latter if I can get a good recording, but choosing a text first seems sensible.)

[siderea]

I don't know. Latinists tend to badly exaggerate how methodical and consistent Latin grammar is (five declensions, my ass, e.g.) and I have only the barest of acquaintances with this fact. It was mentioned in Latin 2 as something we would be dealing with in Latin 3, but I graduated after Latin 2. Also, it comes up again in the Renaissance, where certain famous poets decided to apply the rules – or what they thought the rules were, which may not be the same thing – to French poetry. And then musicians decided to run with it and set the poetry by following the same rules: long syllables get two beats, short syllables get one beat, and we're in whatever time signature that works out to at any given moment. This should not have worked, but generated some surprisingly lilting and rhythmically pleasant music.

ETA: Some links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28Latin%29
http://people.virginia.edu/~jdk3t/epicintrog/scansion.htm

[siderea]

Also, I would recommend checking out an intro to classical pronunciation, so you know what phoneme palette (palate? :) you're working with.