Can't talk about it: Non-English musician names

July 2, 2011 at 04:28 PM ·

Maybe this will help: http://nl.forvo.com/word/%C5%A1ev%C4%8D%C3%ADk/

Or this: http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=4902

On a site devoted to the great Otakar Ševcík, I read his name means "little cobbler". The "Šev" part is probably cognate with our "shoe" (my guess).

If you use Google to search for "<name> pronunciation" you will often be directed to this forvo website that has pronunciations for nearly everything. I tried it with "Gianbattista" and with "Modest" (as in Iftinchi, Moussorgsky, etc), and was lucky. "Modest" was pronounced for me in English, American, Swedish and Romanian, but not in Russian.

July 2, 2011 at 04:33 PM ·

That's a good question! With some names, it's just not easy to find a pronunciation guide. The best thing to do (I guess) would be to look up pronunciation in an online dictionary.

For Sevcik's name, according to this website  on Czech language pronunciation, it should be something close to "SHEVcheek".  But most violinists that I know, if they utter his name at all (sometimes accompanied by a shudder of remembered childhood terror), you'll usually hear "Sevchik".

July 2, 2011 at 05:15 PM ·

 I've heard Czechs pronounce it more like "CHEF-shee(k)", with a very soft "k" at the end, than "SEFF-chick" or "SEV-chick"...

July 2, 2011 at 10:54 PM ·

There was a recent discussion about the correct pronounciation of Tchaikovsky. I sure learned something in the process. It's not "Tchi" (like "ch-eye") "kovsky," but something like "Chee-kwoff-ski." Now everyone thinks I speak Russian. But I still have trouble with Vieuxtemps and Ysaye and Villa-Lobos, as well as Handel's first name (Is it like the English "George" or the German "Gay-org"?). On the other hand, I can pronounce "Paganini" but I can't play it.

July 3, 2011 at 04:33 PM ·

Here are more:

Antonín Dvorák
http://www.forvo.com/word/anton%C3%ADn_dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k/#cs

Camille Saint-Saëns
http://www.forvo.com/word/camille_saint-sa%C3%ABns/

Eugen Jochum
www.forvo.com/word/eugen_jochum/#de

Eugène YSAŸE
http://www.forvo.com/word/eug%C3%A8ne_ysa%C3%BFe/#fr

Pablo de Sarasate
www.forvo.com/word/pablo_de_sarasate/#es

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
www.forvo.com/word/pyotr_ilyich_tchaikovsky/#ru

Vieuxtemps
http://www.forvo.com/word/vieuxtemps

Also, here is a big list of names meant for classical radio announcers, but you might want to read the site owner's anti-perfection manifesto first:
http://www.pronunciationguide.info/thebiglist.html