Pronunciation- Israel in The First Nowell
  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 429
    I’m listening to an older recording from Christmas Eve of a choir I used to sing in. I noticed that each chorus of The First Nowell “Israel” is pronounced differently. It sounds like we either couldn’t decide which was correct and just alternated between the two, or this was a compromise between two stubborn men.

    Can anyone tell me what the correct pronunciation of Israel is when singing The First Nowell? We’re alternating between Is-rye-el and Is-ray-el. Which one is it?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,430
    Your choirmaster is the final authority for you.
    And it is his or her job to see that all sing the same vowel.
    I have always sung 'Is-ray-el or Is-rah-el - - but never Is-rye-el
  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 429
    This is more for congregational singing.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,142
    I suspect Is-rye-el is by far the most common in the pews. For a choral-only performance, I'd avoid that because the diphthong of the long-I encourages flatness on a descending line.

    The other pronunciation issue is the nature of the S: a pure S, or a Z?
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  • FSSPmusic
    Posts: 304
    The "pure S" pronunciation is nonstandard and affected. One doesn't pronounce the words is that way, and certainly not as! I see that the "rye" pronunciation has made it into Wiktionary however.
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  • SponsaChristi
    Posts: 429
    Having just finished listening to Neil Diamond, who is Jewish, sing various Christmas carols with the word “Israel”, I have come to the conclusion that the most correct pronunciation is “Is-ray-el”.
  • oldhymnsoldhymns
    Posts: 233
    A few years ago I was at the start of a recording session being conducted by a teacher from St. Paul's Archdiocesan Choir School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The choir of mixed singers were to sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel with the first verse being sung in Latin. The conductor instructed the singers to pronounce "Is-rye-el" in the Latin verse and "Is-ray-el" for the remaining English verses.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,440
    I know that many people even people who actually know Latin well enough to not need a handmissal with facing translation use the first pronunciation, but it's bad. It should be /a/ (I think that this covers those who might be inclined to use /ɑ/ in somewhat free variation with /a/ — but for my money, /ɑ/ is how Swiss speakers of French pronounce "â" and is not to be used in ecclesiastical Latin, although apparently a popular American textbook of diction for singers includes it…)
  • FSSPmusic
    Posts: 304
    Latin is another matter. Many singers are in the habit of using triphthongs in words like Israel and Sabaoth, but there should be no i/j/y sound (rye, bye) when passing from one syllable to the other. I constantly have to remind some of my singers that Deus, meus, etc. aren't the same as ejus with a consonant in front, but then they sometimes hypercorrect the latter into eus. Sigh. I'm not sure /a/ occurs as a pure vowel in American English, but the first vowel sound of now gets us there easily enough.

    The Iz-rye-el singing pronunciation in English (and Iss-rye-el even more so!) is peculiar because nobody speaks the word that way.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,440
    Yeah. I hear “eus” too.
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