Narration in music

Hello everybody,

I need your help / advice!
A few years ago I wrote a poem and I now want to set it on music. However, I want that the soprano tells the story. Only in some cases she is singing along with the other instruments.
When I want the soprano to speak, do I have to write down the exact rhythm on the staff or should I trust her interpretation of how the rhythm of the words has to be?
How do I notate this?

In class, we learned that sprechgesang is not singing, nor speaking. It is between the two, but I want the soprano to talk like actors do in a theater show.

Thanks for your help,

Maarten

Hi

I think that if there is no melodic contour at all, you don't need to notate. I would write the text in the score, that's all. In sprechgesang the pitches are notated with crosses (X) as head notes, but there is an intonation.

Look at the score of "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra." It uses what I think you want in some cases?

1 hour ago, Monarcheon said:

Look at the score of "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra." It uses what I think you want in some cases?

 

Thank you for your response.

I looked for the score online, but I could not find it without paying. So I just listened to a recording of it and I read the wikipedia page. Do you have a score or could you explain how it is notated?

This way of narrating is in my opinion too static for telling a poem. In Britten's piece the narrator is almost always speaking in the spaces where the orchestra does not play instead of speaking while the orchestra is playing.

My idea was to have the voice tell the poem while an ensemble is playing programmatic music. I will add the score when I am online on my laptop to make it clearer.

@Monarcheon