Talk:Etudes Australes

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E acute?[edit]

Being a French title, I would assume it's Études, not Etudes. But Cage and/or the publishers may have wanted it a different way. Do we know for sure exactly how he spelled it? -- JackofOz (talk) 15:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Edition Peters edition uses no é's, neither on the title page nor in the instructions (written by Cage himself). --Jashiin (talk) 18:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think I may be able to throw some light on this. In French orthography, capital letters (especially at the beginning of a word, as in this case) may optionally drop the accent mark normally found there. This is a matter of choice for the publisher and typesetter, since those accents may either intrude into the space in the line above (possibly colliding with descenders from lowercase letters) or, depending on the typeface involved, result in an accented capital letter of a different size from the identical letter without an accent. Cage was fluent in French, and certainly would have been aware of this convention. Another element here, however, is that according to French practice in titles, the word "australes", should not be capitalized. If Cage does so on the title page and in the instructions, then he would have been aware that he was anglicizing the format. In any case, since the title is in French, the composer's arbitrary deviations from the norms of that language should be disregarded, just the same as if he had decided to write (or his publisher decided to print) the title on the cover all caps, or all lowercase. Such matters are to do with cover design, not language norms.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, what you're saying is that we should title our article "Études australes", and refer to the work thus throughout the article? I'm also thinking of Schubert's Moments musicaux, which were printed as "Moments musicals", but that's never stopped music writers from correcting it. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Um, the title isn't really French, because "australes" is Latin. So it is an anglicized version of "études" combined with the Latin word "australes". As a matter of fact, I consulted people who study Latin as to whether "australes" is grammatically correct (it is), and they were quite confused by the title "Etudes Australes". With or without the accent mark. Its not French, because "australes" is a Latin word, but neither is it Latin, because "etudes" isn't Latin. Its anglicized French. To add to the confusion, while Revill and Pritchett both refer to Cage's etudes without using the accent mark anywhere, in some of Cage's interviews collected in the Kostelanetz book Cage DOES use the accent mark. And in some he does not. Did the editors add the accent or remove it? The New Grove article on Cage adds the accent mark only when referring to "Cage's études" in general, but omits it when naming the actual works. My guess is that Cage himself did use the accent mark, but his editors, and those who edited the interviews, omitted it, and so many scholars today are used to the anglicized version. What this implies for the article, I have no idea. --Jashiin (talk) 21:27, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As you rightly point out, étude is not a Latin word. However, you are quite wrong about australes being strictly Latin. It is found in French as well (which is hardly surprising since, as a Romance language, the bulk of French words are descended from Latin). Further, I have some doubts about the reliability of the Latinists you consulted, since the correct form of an adjective depends in part on the gender of the noun being modified. Although the masculine and feminine plural nominative form of australis is australes, the plural neuter is australia. Since the noun in this case does not exist in Latin, it is doubtful what the correct form should be for such a "loan word". Etymologically, of course, "étude" descends from Latin "studium", which is neuter, though the sense of the word is perhaps closer to the Latin "exercitatio", which is feminine.

I should point out that a similar problem exists in the title of the sister article, Etudes Boreales, which is missing an accent aigue as well as incorrectly capitalizing the second word. I should be Études boréales (and, yes, this adjective also is a perfectly French word, even if it does also exist in Latin). As to capitalization, there are no Latin-language norms for this, since there has never been a "capital/lowercase" distinction in that language, except as imposed upon it by later-language manuscript and printing practices.

JackofOz is quite right to cite the Schubert example. A typographical error or illiteracy on a title page does not automatically set that form in concrete. I do not believe that Schubert's pieces were originally published in France, nor were they typeset by a Frenchman, who would have known better.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:05, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weren't the words "australes" and "boreales" derived from Latin words by Cage? It kind of seems a stretch that he would take a Latin word (i.e. from "Atlas Australis"), and proceed to find a French form of it to use... but perhaps you're right and he did. Anyway, I wouldn't mind if we renamed the articles. The only problem I can see is that, as I have pointed out earlier, most Cage scholars, not to mention his publishers, seem to be in agreement in using "Etudes Australes" and "Etudes Boreales". It would be impossible to find any references to back up the grammatically correct forms if anyone asks why we differ from New Grove, Edition Peters and major texts on Cage's music. --Jashiin (talk) 22:27, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, Latin is actually a red herring. Regardless of their origins, both words are French words, and that's the main point here.

It would be impossible to find any references to back up the grammatically correct forms - it seems that Cage himself did (sometimes) use the "correct" form of Étude. But there again, these were "Cage's interviews collected in the Kostelanetz book", which I presume were oral interviews, so it would have been up to the transcriber to get the spelling right. Why did some transcribers use the accent and others not? Did some of them look up the title in a reference work, or ask Cage how he spelled them?

Kostelanetz' book is a collection of bits and pieces from various interviews. Some were radio broadcasts, others were published, etc. So yes, there's no way of knowing who added the accent and who removed it. For what it's worth, here's a list of interviews he quotes that mention the compositions we're interested in:

Snyder, Ellsworth. "A Conversation with John Cage", 1975, Interview for Wisconsin Public Radio ("Études Australes". Since it is a radio interview and no publication details are given, I understand that it has never been published, and the accent was added by Kostelanetz himself while transcribing.)
Darter, Tom. John Cage. Keyboard (September 1982). ("Etudes")
Gagne, Cole, and Tracy Caras. An Interview with John Cage [1975]. New York Arts Journal 1, no. 1 (May 1976). ("Etudes Australes")
Cope, David. An Interview with John Cage. Composer Magazine 10-11 (1980). ("Etudes Australes")

Perhaps some of these people read Silence, it may be helpful to post the question there. --Jashiin (talk) 23:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since the acute does appear in some places, what I'd suggest for now at least is to include a note in the article that comments on it. Something like: "The work appears as Études australes or Études Australes in some references". -- JackofOz (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a good idea to me. --Jashiin (talk) 23:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:08, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cautious, but perhaps caution is warranted under the circumstances. Just to clear up one point, Cage did not take a Latin word and find a French form of it. Look in any French dictionary. My Petit Robert, for example, finds testimony of its presence in Franch as early as 1372, and gives the etymology "lat. australis, de auster« vent du midi »)", and defines the word as "Qui est au sud du globe terrestre". The antonym, boréal, is also given there. If the recordings of Cage's interviews could be accessed, it would be a simple matter to discover whether he was thinking in French or in Latin, since the identically spelled words are pronounced quite differently. French is something like "oh-STRAHL", whereas Latin is more like "ow-STRAHL-ees" (the final E is long in Latin).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:06, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This just occured to me: should we include a similar "appears as.." notice at Freeman Etudes? I.e. for the "Freeman études" option. Or do I misunderstand something about French grammar again? --Jashiin (talk) 12:10, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does the title of the Freeman Etudes ever appear with the accent? Don't forget that the word "etude" appears in English as a naturalized loan-word, in which case it does not bear the accent mark. The forms of the titles Études australes and Études boréales are purely French, and would be rendered in English as something like "Austral Etudes" and "Boreal Etudes" (without the accents, naturally). Supposing that Freeman études is a correct French form, how would you translate it into English? I think that is the proper test.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:38, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure that's right, Jerome. Pieces of this kind are referred to either as "studies", or "études". The latter word has not become assimilated into English and dropped its accent, the way "café" has, as "cafe", for example. I'd argue that "première" is now a fully English word, in which case it should be spelled "premiere". Other WP editors obviously disagree. Not so for "étude". It's hard to see how people can argue for the grave in "première", but not argue equally as strongly for the acute in "étude". If it's spelled "etudes", that seems to me to be a misspelling. But there are various examples of this: see Studies on Chopin's Etudes, which says they're "a set of 53 arrangements of Chopin's Études". It could hardly be a different spelling in the title as compared with the description, but we seem to be having it both ways at the moment. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(PS. I've just moved that article, and fixed a number of other errors in it, so by the time you click on it, the title problem will have been corrected. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Also, Étude (which has, admittedly, been Etude in earlier versions), says nothing about "etude" or "Etude" being acceptable spellings in English contexts. My take on all this is that the word should normally be spelled with the acute accent, whether in French or English contexts. The only qualification is the matter you raised up above: accents in upper case letters can sometimes be problematical for type-setting, and so they're sometimes omitted in those contexts. But that doesn't have any implications for the formal spellings of the words in general. I strongly suspect this is what caused Cage's publishers to dispense with the accent; but we're not inhibited by any such considerations, so we should always include it. That Cage himself sometimes spelled the name of his own work without the accent is neither here nor there; Beethoven may have misspelled Eroica as "Erotica" in his private writings, but that doesn't mean it's now the "Erotica Symphony". -- JackofOz (talk) 23:50, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I accept your argument. Although the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language gives only the unaccented form for English (while explaining it comes from the French étude), both the OED and the Merriam-Webster Abridged dictionary attest to the accented form, and I am more incline to follow these authorities than the AHDEL.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted the question to Silence yesterday and here's the reply I got from someone who knew Cage personally and discussed the piece in question with him: [1]. --Jashiin (talk) 12:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. A little ambiguous, but it does sound as though Cage was thinking of "australes" as a Latin adjective, and so "Etude" must be a typo for "Exercitaties" ;-)—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I wouldn't go quite that far, Jerome. :) There are many examples of musical titles that use a mixture of languages. One that leaps to mind is Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien. Capriccio is Italian, the French equivalent of which is Caprice (m.). Italien is French, the Italian equivalent of which is Italiano. A fully French title would be "Caprice Italien"; and a fully Italian title would be "Capriccio Italiano". Tchaikovsky had a completely different title in the Russian name he gave the piece, and a later publisher did a hatchet job on it, but that later name has stuck. We ought to make it clear that "Australes" in this case is indeed Latin, and is pronounced with 3 syllables.

That leaves us with the original question, about the accent on Etudes. Cage may not have used an accent in the book mentioned at Silence. But did he insist that it should always be spelled that way? Was he intending to create a word that was different from "étude"? Or was he simply copying the trend, of which there's lots of evidence, of doing without the accent? In some cases, that would have been a deliberate decision on the part of the writer/publisher; but in other cases it would have been simply ignorance/lack of awareness. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:58, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]