Gloria in egg shells

[pne]

Whenever the Latin phrase in excelsis occurs in a song (typically in gloria in excelsis), I sing it as "in egg-shell-sis".

That's a pronunciation our music teacher at school taught us at one point, and I've kept it up ever since. (Regardless of whether the remainder of the song is in Latin, German, or English.)

He also wanted us to sing "gloria" as (roughly) "glaw-dee-a", but I think that was mostly to avoid having an overly rhotic vowel as in "glorrrrrr-ee-a". Since my default speech isn't rhotic, I didn't pay that much attention to that bit.

Comments

[arthur-sc-king.livejournal.com]

"Egg-shell-sis" has been the consensus among the various choir directors I've worked with. I think the key reason is that trying to sing it like "ek-shell-sis" or even "ek-sell-sis" means that you end up with a really noticeable break after the "ek-" syllable, and it sounds like crap. Keeping the voicing on the consonant (i.e. making it "g" instead of "k") makes the word flow much more smoothly in the song.

OTOH, I've never seen the same emphasis on "gloria", what with us native Canadian English speakers being none too rhotic. Very occasionally, because the default Canadian "r" is not particularly euphonic at the best of times, we'd be asked to trill the "r" in Latin words, using the "tongue trill" most Anglos learn in grade-school French classes. (Not many Anglos have bothered learning the back-of-the-throat "r" for French as I have.)

Also, we're usually asked to emphasise the "o" in "gloria", making sure it really is an "o" and not an "aw". The "u" that usually sneaks in at the end of an English long "o" seems not to be a problem when singing something like this.