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Sprechgesang

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Sprechgesang and Sprechstimme are expressionist vocal techniques between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, Sprechgesang is directly related to the operatic recitative manner of singing, whereas Sprechstimme is closer to speech itself. Wikipedia

What I’ve become interested in are popular versions of this. Lou’s Walk on the wild side is an ‘iconic’ case if this. How exactly does it work and why do I like it? Oh and what are your fave examples?

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Comments

  1. I think the key to this might be in the word ‘expressionist’ in the definition I gave. Consider how prevalent Sprechgesang is in the blues, probably the most expressionist form of vocal, not only in so-called ‘talking’ blues, etc.

    But I think it delves deep into the intonations, etc of different languages and their dialects which somehow translate into musical effects, creating this expressiveness. Just thinking aloud now.

    • Yeah. Now that I think about it, I think it is more Sprechstimme than Sprechgesang in all these rockish examples.

      Dylan’s in there somewhere too, not all of the time though.

  6. A few contributors from Scotland.

    My first thought was Michael Marra but he does seem to be more singing rather than talking on his wonderful Frida Kahlo’s visit to the Taybridge Bar.

    But James Yorkston’s rather splendid Woozy with Cider definitely belongs here.

    As does Arab Strap’s The First Big Weekend.

  12. An interesting example of this, I think, is “Big Sky” by the Kinks, off of “Village Green Preservation Society”.
    Ray speaks the verses and then sings the chorus bits.

  13. Just as an aside – that Wikipedia article in the opening post is yer proverbial Wiki nonsense.

    The German word »Sprechstimme« just means »talking voice« (as opposed to singing voice), and it doesn’t matter if the voice in question reads a laundry list or talks to a neighbour. »Sprechgesang« means »talk-singing«, and it also isn’t restricted to »expressionist« mumblings. Nowadays in Germany it’s often used amusingly to describe the dreaded »German HipHop«.

    • Wow. German hip-hop? Really?

      I hadn’t realised that that was even a thing or at least a technically possible thing.

      The thought of trying to jemmy a 28 syllable construction into a hippy-hoppy rhymy thing gives me the jitters. Imagine a strongly worded song of advice about making sure you have your legal ass covered when you smack your bitch up, you’d never be able to use the term Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften with ease.

  14. I’m surprised we have had no tracks from the Emerald Isle yet.

    Van the Man would be my first thought, but no track comes to mind, There are so many fine Irish wordsmiths, one of them must have done a spoken track,

    Suddenly I thought of this track by Mike Scott: The return of Jimi Hendrix.

    James Murphy of LCD Sound System does a lot of spoken bits in his songs. And very effective they are too!

      • Thanks Black Type. I knew we could rely on Van. ‘I am knocking together a playlist which I will share soon. Going to be a winner.

        Here’s a cracker from Laurie Anderson.

        And a weird nocturnal one from The Lizard King.

    • Mmmm…something about Peggy Lee…

      Although I like this version as well…

      This might be my favourite, though – the backing has a real Weimar Republic feel to it – and Bette get genuinely emotional…

  22. Tom Waits.

    He likes talking. He likes singing. He likes doing both together. Whatever it takes to capture the character in his songs, even when that character is himself. Shore Leave is my favourite and he’s even done one in German, Kommienezuspadt, but here’s Walking Spanish.

  25. Saint Etienne have done several spoken tracks. This one works rather well even if some of the lyrics are a bit iffy. I was surprised to find Donovan getting a mention.

    Going all the way back to the 1960s, John Peel would often feature poets, to an extent you would not expect in a modern music radio show.

    Peel even read some of Marc Bolan’s poetry. Oh dear! Twee doesn’t even get near it.

    To be fair, it’s probably rather good if you are four years old. Alternatively, out of your gourd on mushrooms.

    Adrian Henri and the Liverpool Scene made frequent appearances. Some tracks were just a poem with some bongos bonging and sax tootling in the background. Some were real songs.

  26. Suddenly I remembered this brilliant and very upsetting track by Oscar Brown Jr. It certainly isn’t singing. But the spoken word of an auctioneer is strange at the best of times.

    An amazing track and an important history lesson.

  28. Dave Bartholemew – The Monkey
    Soft Machine – Why Are We Sleeping? from their debut album plus various bits of Volume Two
    Arthur Brown – Spontaneous Apple Creation etc.
    King Crimson – Elephant Talk, Thela Hun Ginjeet
    The Bonzo Dog Band – Rhinocratic Oaths, Rawlinson’s End
    Laurie Anderson – O Superman
    Julian Cope – Reynard The Fox
    The Stranglers – Peaches
    Johnny Cash – I Hung My Head
    Nick Cave – The Mercy Seat

  30. There’s a moment of sheer spoken word, pop magic in ABC’s The Look of Love.

    By speaking rather than singing, it’s as though he is taking the listener aside and sharing a confidence.

    “And all my friends just might ask me
    They say, “Martin, maybe one day you’ll find true love”
    And I say, maybe there must be a solution to
    The one thing, the one thing we can’t find”

    Brecht used sprechgesang to create distance. Here it’s the opposite. He’s coming out of character for a moment.

  31. This is my manner y’all
    Man just feel satisfied
    No competition
    No competition at all
    I just feel satta star
    Them eyes are gorgeous girl
    No demise, upraise
    I got to raise it again
    Them eyes are gorgeous
    I must advance
    I don’t check for no superficial
    It’s got to be beneficial
    These sonic fruits
    These sonic fruits
    Sights
    These sonic fruits
    Got them moving around alright
    Hyper play
    Steppin’ and rising

      • What you do in the privacy of your own home, Moose, is your personal business!

        You were quite right to mention Schoenberg, @fitterstoke, as he invented the term.

        This article from The Awl has some useful comments on this all

        https://www.theawl.com/2014/08/the-ways-in-which-white-people-talk-over-music/

        I quote:
        ”

        “As a vocal technique, sprechstimme was popularized by Arnold Schönberg in his 1912 melodrama, Pierrot Lunaire. Although today “melodrama” applies to anything from Douglas Sirk films to pulp fiction, it originally referred more specifically to quasi-operas whose texts were spoken rather than sung, which is exactly what Pierrot Lunaire does. The notation for sprechstimme resembles that of singing, with precise pitch and duration, but the end effect should resemble speech first, song second. Or at least, so Schönberg said — apparently, the performance of his melodrama by its original singer, Albertine Zehme, did not match his expectations, and Schönberg repeatedly revised descriptions of his technique over the course of thirty years. Regardless, the end-product sounds something like this, starting at around the 1:11 mark:

        “This flatness, the source of the song’s appeal, was quite deliberate. Brecht actually devised “Alabama Song” as a full-bodied melody, but Weill altered it by shifting some of the emphases and razing the pitch to a sprechstimme. (Weill’s teacher at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, Engelbert Humperdinck, contends that he is the inventor of sprechstimme, which he employed in his 1897 opera Königskinder.) Although using a different notation system, Weill’s opera, like Schönberg’s, specifies spoken intonation down to the sharps and flats.”

        Just a thought. Speaking in the context of a song does, I believe, have other names, namely “recitative” or just “spoken intro”. It was used by Cole Porter, Gilbert and Sullivan and Noel Coward, I believe.

        Lots to chew on here!

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recitative

        Fast forward to today and bands like Dry Cleaning, Black Country, New Road and Do Nothing who have a frontperson who speaks rather than sings. And the artist who was the biggest influence on them was not from Berlin. It was rather our very own Mark E. Smith.

        https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/oct/31/all-talk-why-2019s-best-bands-speak-instead-of-sing

        • Mentioning Kurt Weill reminded me that I saw Dee Dee Bridgewater do an entirely spoken version of Mack The Knife from her album of Kurt Weill covers.

          Some of this (the studio version) is spoken, but there is a magnificent vocal performance too.

  38. It just struck me that when making links between Schoenberg, Brecht and Weill on one hand and Lou Reed, Mark E. Smith, Tom Waits and John Cale on the other, one song stands out: The Alabama Drinking Song.

    It’s from Brecht and Weill’s Little Mahogany in 1927 and was then re-used in The City of Mahogany in 1930. It was sung in English despite the rest of the opera being in German.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Song

    In 1966, when The Doors were choosing material for their first album, Ray Manzarek suggested it.

    An eccentric choice perhaps but this was a well-read band,. They were named after a quote from William Blake!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors_of_Perception

    Jim and Co were a literate bunch.

    Could the enormous popularity at this time of Weill’s widow, Lotte Lenya, have something to with their awareness of Brecht? It was very much her song. Lotte had played Bond villain, Rosa Krebb, in From Russia with Love in 1963, was pals with Lous Armstrong and was in the original Broadway cast of Cabaret as Fraulein Schneider.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotte_Lenya

    Alabama Song was very successful and soon became a staple of their live act at the Whiskey a Go Go.

    The song continued to provide a bridge between the world of Brecht and Berlin and rock when it was chosen in 1978 by Bowie for his live shows.

    This wonderful Bowie blog, Bowiesongs – Pushing ahead of the Dame, tells the full story of both the song and Bowie’s relation to it. Well worth five minutes of your time.

    https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/tag/the-doors/

  41. That’s 100 comments. A hamper heading your way I suspect. Well done, Mr Stroker!

    Surely we can’t pack up without looking at a modern German band’s use of sprechgesang?

    In a video directed by Swede, Jonas Åkerlund, here are the truly wonderful Rammstein.

    I had no idea that they belonged to a new genre, NDH (New German Hardness).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Deutsche_H%C3%A4rte

    Just for fun, here are Oomph, another NDH favourite with an equally lavish video.

    • Thank you K, your contributions have been fab and so well-informed.

      BTW all these mentions about German language in pop/rock have made me wonder about the (changing perhaps?) role of German in German popular music. It seems there was a time in which nothing but English was used, as in Can, et al. Any thoughts?

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