Sprechgesang

Sprechgesang, or speech-singing, is a vocal technique that blends speaking and singing by delivering text with varied pitch, rhythm, and timbre rather than sustaining fully sung tones. It emphasizes the intelligibility of the text, expressive inflection, and a flexible pace, often moving between declamatory speech and melodic elements.

Historically, Sprechgesang emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within German-speaking experimental music and theater. It became associated with expressionist aims to convey intense psychological states and dramatic rhetoric. The term can describe a range of practices, from more speech-like declamation to passages with quasi-m melodic contours. A closely related and more specific concept is Sprechstimme, the technique Schoenberg developed for Pierrot Lunaire, where the voice is not meant to sustain precise pitches but to glide away from them in a speech-like manner.

Differences between Sprechgesang and Sprechstimme are matters of notation and performance practice. Sprechstimme denotes a controlled glide away from notated pitches, creating a speech-like quality while preserving musical context; Sprechgesang is the broader practice of using speech-inflected vocalization within musical settings, which may or may not follow Schoenberg’s exact method.

Notable uses include Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912), which popularized the approach in modernist music, and Kurt Weill’s collaborations with Brecht, such as The Threepenny Opera, where speaking-singing features prominently. Alban Berg’s Wozzeck also employs declamatory, speech-like passages within a demanding musical framework.

Today, Sprechgesang continues to influence contemporary vocal performance, experimental theater, and genres that fuse spoken and sung language, highlighting the limits and possibilities of vocal expression beyond traditional singing.