Is it pronounced 'PURcell (ie like you'd pronounce the washing powder Persil)

or is it pronounced Pur'CELL (ie with the emphasis on Cell)

Or some other way (please post)



And if there's a right way and wrong way, how does anyone know which is right ?














PS This thread could have gone in the Early Music forum if we had one

Pur'CELL most definately.

I have always heard it said as PURcell with the accent on the first syllable but then ell rather than ill like the washing powder.

I have always been told it's Pur-SALL, so I voted 'other'

**I usually say Pur-CELL though....**

I guess it will always be a pot-Ato, pot-ARto thing..

I used to say Pur-CELL, but was then told it should be PUR-cell - but after I started getting puzzled looks when I said it that way I began to hedge my bets, and now tend to stress each bit the same!

tend to stress each bit the same!

yes

I avoid saying it at all.
I assumed it was PurCELL too but stood corrected once, but even now I know it's most likely PURcell I feel silly saying it right. It's like when LIDL (as in little) becomes LIDL (as in bridal). Or Kenya becomes Keenya. It just doesn't feel right to change what you're used to!

I say PurCELL but was informed repeatedly by a lecturer while at uni that it should be PURcell, but I couldnt say it without thinking about laundry power

Same stress on each syllable... should know I specialised in Restoration Church Music as an undergrad.

I used always say the composer's name 'Pur-CELL' despite the fact that there are a lot of them around the south-east (Tipperary/Waterford/Kilkenny direction) and I would always have called those 'PUR-cell'.
My mother's family are actually from Tipp and her mother's maiden name was Purcell, so that would always have been 'PUR-cell' to me (yes, just like the washing powder )

I started calling the composer 'PUR-cell' too while I was at college, when someone corrected me on it

*joins the folks on the fence*

*totters on fence as well*
I would probably say it differently depending on if I was saying the first name with it
I'd probably tend towards purr-SELL for just a name, but Pur-sul (like the washing powder!) if I was saying Henry Persil...

I have hever been to a concert in the PurSELL Room.

There is new research (i.e. more recent than when jod was at uni all those years ago) which suggests that his name is basically Italianate in origin in the style of Orlando Gibbons et al and should correctly be given with the soft CH sound (as in Pulcinella), i.e. purCHell.. I suppose at one point an ancestor would have been Purcelli or somesuch...

I have a broad "black country" accent ........ so it really doesn't matter how i pronounce anything really

I say it "per-SELL", but no idea how one should say it.....

pur-cell with equal stress on each, although I have absolutely no evidence or reasoning to suggest that is correct, it's just how I've always heard others say it....

No contest really.

One's a composer, the other's a washing powder.




Steve

purse-###### (it just popped out of the brain). Seriously though, I'd say equal emphasis on both syllables.

Now why did that happen? OK, I'll take the hyphen out. pursehell.

Same here. - I didn't like the washing powder connection.

Jod, I'm interested in what you say about even stress - but English is a stress timed language which theoretically means that all words have a tonic stress. It is theoretically impossible to pronounce a two syllable word without stressing one of the syllables. This isn't the case in French and I can remember getting quite annoyed when English people called our dog BaLOU instead o BA-LOU. I can say BA-LOU with equal stress in a French or English sentence. But I can't naturally say PUR-CEL. I suppose that's not very logical.

Just leaping in to clear up a little something here. Words do not have tonic stress. Sentences do.

Each word has a syllabic stress (and you're absolutely right about English being stress timed as opposed to French being syllable timed) - at least one primary stress, at least one zero value stress in words of more than one syllable and sometimes a secondary stress too. This is what gives English its characteristic rhythmic flow (and what makes it a better language to sing and rap in than French, if you want the results to sound natural. It's also the reason why chanson française exists, but the least said about that, the better!). Tonic stress, on the other hand, is one syllable in a sentence (usually part of the final lexical item or content word) that carries a higher articulation value than other words and, most importantly, carries one of the four semantic altering tones in English (rise, fall, fallrise, risefall) - whence the name 'tonic stress'. There is generally only one tonic per utterance, otherwise intonative patterns would be all over the place, whereas there can be many syllabic stresses per utterance.

So technically, every word of two syllables has to have a strong and a weak syllable - so aquarelle is right, it's impossible to say PURCELL. We have to say either PURcell or purCELL. In theory.

However... this is an overly simplified view of things. Words in isolation do not behave like words in an utterance flow (think of the word Absolutely - most people agree the stress falls thus absoLUTley. Yet in a sentence such as 'Absolutely terrible' the most likely pronunciation is 'ABsolutely TErrible'). Words in a flow, or sentence for want of a better term, behave like one long word. We do not leave spaces in between syllables when we speak, nor do we generally do so between words (unless phonetics or semantic displacement dictates otherwise) - so we can consider that a sentence may behave as a long word and a word may behave, conversely, as a sentence.

If we then take the example of 'He had a big red car' and we want to stress the words 'big', 'red' and 'car', we will note that a difficulty arises due to the fact that the stress pattern 0110 is impossible in English (two stressed syllables cannot occur directly adjacent to one another - with the slight exception of certain germanic compound words), if we furthermore take into account that the 1 syllables have to fall on a more or less regular rhythmic pattern, then we see that the only solution is to insert slight pauses in between the 1 syllables to avoid their adjacency. The sentence is thus likely to be said 'He had a big..red..car' which has the pattern 00010101 which is totally acceptable.

This can also be applied to Purcell's name. We can, theoretically, stress both syllables if we insert the tiniest pause in between them (and in the case of an isolated name, the pause only needs to be as long as a stressed syllable) and make it sound like we're stressing both syllables, even though we really aren't.

So, as Aquarelle has pointed out - it is linguistically impossible in English to accentuate both syllables of Purcell, however, as declarative phonology shows, we can give the illusion of doing so by inserting a small pause to imitate the presence of a zero value syllable.

Thus, linguistically the possibilities are:

PURcell (10 - with the second vowel being realised as a schwa and therefore sounding somewhat soap powderish)

purCELL (01)

or...

PUR(0)CELL (101)

Stepping aside from declarative linguistics in favor of an historical and etymological approach, the name is most likely to be pronounced PURcell, with a schwa realisation of the second syllable vowel articulation.

Allan
(sorry if that was really boring, but it's so rare that my speciality turns up on the boards that I felt I had to try to make myself useful!)

rosfrog - that was really fascinating - thank you so much

Thank you everybody for your replies, and especially rosfrog for your informed explanation.

I've always pronounced it PurCELL, but on the radio they pronounce it PURcell, which always jars with me (yep, because of the washing powder). When I realised yesterday that it was turning out to be more complicated than I expected, I did a google search as well to see what came up, and it seems that it's a well-debated question. There appeared to be one or two learned articles which promised to throw some light on the matter, but I couldn't access them without being a member of various organisations. Some sites suggested that PURcell is the historically accurate pronunciation, but I've no idea what they base this on.

I've tried to pronounce it as rosfrog has suggested but I find it impossible not to stress one of the syllables!

I'm willing to believe that PURcell is the more correct way, but as the poll shows, it's not the most common pronunciation, and as others have said, you're likely to get strange looks if you do pronounce it that way because most people don't.

I think I'll take Dulciana's advice and avoid mentioning him at all

that MUST be a kind of musical pasta...

I put the emphasis on 'cell' .

Very interesting thread.

Thanks Rosfrog. That was very enlightening. I'd forgotten most of the phonetics I learnt at Trinity!
I voted for PURcell.

Fascinating, rosfrog, thank you.

I'm afraid I'm a PurCELL girl, though...

Pur-CELL

I had never even contemplated or heard of anyone who pronounced it the other way till I saw this thread.

No, it was interesting!

Yes - fascinating.

* loves words !*

Thanks a lot rosfrog - and thanks for correcting me in my confusion of terms - tonic/syllabic stress. You are of course right. Your post was very interesting. I am at the moment struggling with trying to put French words to a set of English songs for a Christmas nativity play and it is very difficult - because of the lack of nice clear rhythmic stress in French. I also find it very difficult to teach rhythms by using words as we do in English.Thanks again!

.

I would go for PUR-cell. I recall reading an article about it where someone found his name in a musical composition (?by him) and the only way one could sing it effectively was if it was sang PUR-cell.

I have always said PurCELL, but I may be wrong....

I also voted for PURcell.

On a similar theme, it's tempting to ask how people pronounce "Chopin". I have always hated the first syllable being pronounced "Show" but I have no idea what is right.

I'd say the "cho" syllable as if it were "shop" without the p - roughly - hmm, that's a rubbish realisation of what I mean... I don't speak Polish but I guess I say it how I'd say it if he were Russian and it were written Шопен or something similar.

It is quite certain that it was pronounced PURcell in the composer's time. The proof? Dryden's Ode on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell. Read it out loud, and the stress must come on the first syllable. Dryden knew Purcell, so I think he's a pretty reliable source.

An Ode, On the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell
( Late Servant to his Majesty, Organist of the Chapel Royal

I

Mark how the Lark and Linnet Sing,
With rival Notes
They strain their warbling Throats,
To welcome in the Spring.
But in the close of Night,
When Philomel begins her Heav'nly lay,
They cease their mutual spite,
Drink in her Music with delight,
And list'ning and silent, and silent and list'ning,
And list'ning and silent obey.

II

So ceas'd the rival Crew when Purcell came,
They Sung no more, or only Sung his Fame.
Struck dumb they all admir'd the God-like Man,
The God-like Man,
Alas, too soon retir'd,
As He too late began.
We beg not ######, our Orpheus to restore,
Had He been there,
Their Sovereign's fear
Had sent Him back before.
The pow'r of Harmony too well they know,
He long e'er this had Tun'd their jarring Sphere,
And left no ###### below.

III

The Heav'nly Choir, who heard his Notes from high,
Let down the Scale of Music from the Sky:
They handed him along,
And all the way He taught, and all the way they Sung.
Ye Brethren of the Lyre, and tuneful Voice,
Lament his Lot: but at your own rejoice.
Now live secure and linger out your days,
The Gods are pleas'd alone with Purcell's Lays,
Nor know to mend their Choice.

John Dryden

Thanks for that Brian, and yes I see what you mean. I wonder if this poem (and maybe there are others) is what researchers have based their pronunciation on? Unless there's contrary evidence, it does seem pretty convincing. I wonder how it came to be pronounced the other way?

Well OK, next time I have to speak this composer's name, I'm going to pronounce it PURcell and see if anybody says anything. But at least I'll now be able to back up my choice, so thanks again for posting this

I'm afraid I'm going to keep saying PurCELL.

Strictly accurate it may not be, but language changes and I value being understood

You need only memorize these two lines Skyers:


So ceas'd the rival Crew when Purcell came,
They Sung no more, or only Sung his Fame.

You could sing it to anyone who disagrees with your pronunciation.

By the way, if you're wondering what the hashes (######) in Dryden's poem are for, they're being automatically inserted to replace H*ll, as in Hades (I've put in the asterisk otherwise this will also get changed into '######', and this post will end up being complete gobbledegook!). I've tried re-editing the post so it says what the poem says, but something is changing them back to ######. One of the most bizarre bits of censorship I've come across, when you can't quote a poem by Dryden about Purcell. Hmm.

And if 'Hades' or 'H*ll' get replaced by '######', no-one will have the faintest idea what the ###### I'm talking about.

I voted Pur-CELL. There's a Purcell School of Music. I wonder what they say when they answer the phone.

They say Pur'CELL....

Did you call them just to find that out, skylark?

I'm not sure how I say it - since reading this thread my pronunciation of it seems to vary each time. I voted PurCELL when the thread was first started though.

Think of it as research!

i pronounce it as pur-CELL.

i tried to say PUR-cell but it sounded odd!

There's a good chance that the fair folks at the Purcell school say it with the displaced stress because they think it sounds classier - moving first syllable stress to second is common in cases where people attempt to sound more educated or more elegant than they really are... many dialectal sources of English prefer first syllable stress, so perhaps it's a way of unconsciously distinguishing one's pronunciation from the dialect by making it the opposite of dialectal speech. Who can say?!

Purcell - emphasis on the second syllable...

I think that we should pronounce it as Mr Purcell would have done. Briantrumpet quotes Dryden's lines and it seems pretty conclusive to me that he should be PURcell.


So ceas'd the rival Crew when Purcell came,
They Sung no more, or only Sung his Fame.

I wonder when the Purcell School staff made the change. When I knew it first it was definitely the PURcell School.