A inteligibilidade do português brasileiro cantado na canção de câmara brasileira: uma investigação analítica perceptivo-auditiva e acústica

Abstract

This work investigated the intelligibility of a Brazilian Art Song from the perspective of singers, acoustic-phonetics and listeners. For this end, five independent studies were conducted, four of which were directly related to the theme. Study 1 constitutes a literature review on Brazilian Portuguese classical sung music between 2007 and 2018, and aimed to observe the state of the art of research on song in Brazil in this time context. From this study, we decided to study the intelligibility of the text through practice, therefore, the other articles refer to the intelligibility of the sung text. Study 2 investigated the possible causes of unintelligibility of the sung text in Brazilian Art songs in the opinion of the singers themselves. Initially, a literature review was carried out on the topic and then 110 opera singers responded to an online form containing objective and discursive questions about intelligibility. It was concluded that the high pitch of the song is the main factor for unintelligibility in the song, especially in the voices of soprano singers. Furthermore, poor diction, excessive vocal imposition and excessive vibrato were also highlighted as influencing factors in this regard. In Study 3, the sound differences between the vocal emissions of ten sopranos who sang the same song in a performance for a chamber and another for a Grand theater were investigated, in order to verify the relationship between the location of performance and intelligibility. After perceptual-auditory, acoustic and phonetic analysis, it was concluded that the vibrato and intensity aspects differ in both performances and that vibrato is a factor that interfered in the measurement of formants, therefore influencing the identification of vowels. In Study 4, the intelligibility of the sung text was researched from the perspective of instrumental musicians and non-musicians. To do this, three singing teachers listened to the audio of ten sopranos performing an Art song. After listening, they selected a less intelligible singer and a more intelligible one. With these two recordings in hand, 40 listeners were invited, 20 instrumental musicians and 20 non-musicians. The division of listening was done as follows: ten musicians and ten non-musicians listened to the least intelligible singer and ten musicians and ten non-musicians listened to the most intelligible singer. It was, therefore, found that being a musician or not had no impact on the understanding of the text. What really influenced the listener's understanding was the interpretation, musicality and, mainly, the vocal technical ability of each singer. Finally, Study 5 investigated whether different environments of performance influence the duration of the voiceless plosive consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ in the context of the sung voice. Furthermore, the Voice Onset Time -VOT values of two singers were compared, one considered the least and the other the most intelligible. The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the VOT value when comparing the environments of performance. However, when comparing the VOT value of the least intelligible singer and the most intelligible one, it was noticed that the singer considered more intelligible had a lower VOT value. This data made us consider that having a shorter duration of the voiceless consonants may have positively influenced the better intelligibility of the sung text. Based on the studies carried out a priori, a discussion and a general conclusion were made that relate them to the intelligibility of the text in Brazilian Art Song.