At 07:44 AM 11/23/99 -0500, Tim Romano wrote:
>The merkun R is almost swallowed up, a non-entity. It is produced with the
>mouth almost closed, the lips slightly pursed, so that the passageway for the
>air is almost non-existent. It is as a result very brief in duration,
>UNSUSTAINABLE, unmusical.
 
This aesthetic judgment is not shared by everyone.  In the singing of
rock 'n' roll, there are two R-approaches available: first, what TR calls
"merkun" and second, the drawl found in British, Black American, and
Southern American speech patterns.  The rolled R is very rarely observed in
pop music.  B.B. King has never uttered a Merkun R, and Neil Young has
never failed to (he's a California Canadian).  Both ways can work just
fine.  In classical singing, however, the rolled R is the norm.  In jazz,
they swing both ways - listen to Johnny Hartman on the classic Hartman &
Coltrane set - he makes the Merkun R sound like acres of velvet.  For
another R entirely, one that cuts like a scalpel, check out Sinead
O'Connor on "The Lion and the Cobra" - and enjoy her uncredited but
very good steal from Yeats.
 
Having said all that, I find EP's cited reading of Canto I impossibly
mannered and a disservice to the work.  Inside my head, Canto I speaks
itself in a relatively uninflected conversational tone, and a lot faster
than EP takes, better to reveal the rythms, which are awfully nice.
 
But then composers are often lousy conductors of their own symphonies
(cf Stravinsky).  -Tim