Pronouncing
Dictionary of Music and Musicians©
Copyright WOI Radio, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
(Second Edition, 2002)
Pronouncing the titles of classical
music and the names of composers and performers is a daunting task for many
Americans because so many of the words are foreign to us. Adding to the
difficulty is the fact that some of the names that look familiar are not
pronounced as we would pronounce them. This dictionary provides some help in the
form of pronunciations by a phonetic system devised by E. Douglas Brown of the
staff of WOI Radio at Iowa State University. Many of the pronunciations in the
dictionary were derived from tape-recorded pronunciations made by foreign
nationals who were were speaking their respective native languages.
Prepared primarily for the announcing staff of WOI, the dictionary has been
found useful by them and is being made freely available to others who may find
it of value. Although imperfect and far from complete, the dictionary, with its
30,000 entries, is the most extensive of its type now available. See the
Preface and Pronunciation Conventions for more
information.
The dictionary includes a file for each letter of the alphabet. The files can be
accessed individually online. The dictionary is available in the Acrobat
Portable Document Format (PDF) which may be downloaded and viewed free of
charge.