Duration, Pitch, and Loudness in Kunqu Opera Stage Speech

Summary Objectives Kunqu is a special type of opera within the Chinese tradition with 600 years of history. In it, stage speech is used for the spoken dialogue. It is performed in Ming Dynasty’s mandarin language and is a much more dominant part of the play than singing. Stage speech deviates consid...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of voice 2017-03, Vol.31 (2), p.255.e1-255.e7
Main Authors: Han, Qichao, Sundberg, Johan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
China
Conversational speech
Female
Humans
Kunqu opera
Loudness Perception
Music
Otolaryngology
Pitch Perception
Pressure
Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted
Singing
Sound
Speech Acoustics
Speech Production Measurement
Stage speech
Time Factors
Voice Quality
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Summary:Summary Objectives Kunqu is a special type of opera within the Chinese tradition with 600 years of history. In it, stage speech is used for the spoken dialogue. It is performed in Ming Dynasty’s mandarin language and is a much more dominant part of the play than singing. Stage speech deviates considerably from normal conversational speech with respect to duration, loudness and pitch. This paper compares these properties in stage speech conversational speech. Method A famous, highly experienced female singer’s performed stage speech and reading of the same lyrics in a conversational speech mode. Clear differences are found. Results As compared with conversational speech, stage speech had longer word and sentence duration and word duration was less variable. Average sound level was 16 dB higher. Also mean fundamental frequency was considerably higher and more varied. Within sentences, both loudness and fundamental frequency tended to vary according to a low-high-low pattern. Conclusions Some of the findings fail to support current opinions regarding the characteristics of stage speech, and in this sense the study demonstrates the relevance of objective measurements in descriptions of vocal styles.
ISSN:0892-1997
1873-4588
1873-4588
DOI:10.1016/j.jvoice.2016.06.014