German Aria for SDSU audition

[endless p r e l u d e]

Hello everyone, I am auditioning for San Diego State university tomorrow and Beethoven's "Ich Liebe Dich" is one of my audition pieces.

For those of you unfamiliar with the standard aria here it is:



Any german speakers out there? I fear my pronunciation for most of these words sound uuuber American XD

[Kea of doom]

Not that familiar with this particular aria, but my advice for German is to always overdo the consonants (but don't sacrifice legato!), and make sure you have pure vowels. I think that's the two biggest issues for American singers especially.

Either way, good luck on your audition!

[Whom]

Hope you did well on your audition! To imitate pronunciation it's best to listen to recordings by native speakers. Fritz Wunderlich has a great recording of this song. If you're interested in lieder this one of the best albums out there:

Schumann: Dichterliebe / Wunderlich, Giesen

[Sionja]

I just saw this so I'm sorry I couldn't help in time, but here are some tips to keep in mind:

One thing that most Americans (myself included) tend to do, especially on ich- and achlauts, is make the vowels fall back in their mouths. In actuality, German vowels are high in the mouth and a lot more forward than you'd think. Also, make sure you don't add any umlauts to words with pure "u"s (like "guten" is "goo" not "goe" ).

If possible, try to make sure your ichlauts are proper "ich"s and not "ick"s. "Ick"s are more Scandinavian than German.

Hope that helps for the future.

[Kea of doom]

Sionja

I just saw this so I'm sorry I couldn't help in time, but here are some tips to keep in mind:

One thing that most Americans (myself included) tend to do, especially on ich- and achlauts, is make the vowels fall back in their mouths. In actuality, German vowels are high in the mouth and a lot more forward than you'd think. Also, make sure you don't add any umlauts to words with pure "u"s (like "guten" is "goo" not "goe" ).

If possible, try to make sure your ichlauts are proper "ich"s and not "ick"s. "Ick"s are more Scandinavian than German.

Hope that helps for the future.

That is really excellent advice! I will also have to keep that in mind for the future...
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