Abstract
The standard singing languages for the average American collegiate singer often consist of English, German, French, and Italian. These languages contain some of the most frequently performed vocal repertoire used to develop and teach young singers. However, using recently published resources, teachers can expand their students’ repertoire choices to other languages, such as Czech. Compelling reasons for including Czech art song repertoire in the voice studio are (1) the similarities between the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols of the standard singing languages and Czech phonetics, and (2) the musical and stylistic similarities between nineteenth century Czech art song and other nineteenth century standard vocal repertoire. From this perspective, the Czech language will be shown to be approachable for students and teachers. To assist teachers in assigning this repertoire, three significant resources have been created as part of this project: (1) a phonetic chart and pronunciation guide for the new phonemes found in Czech; (2) a sample repertoire guide to nineteenth century Czech art song, graded by difficulty and; (3) transcriptions and translations of two songs by Leoš Janáček, which were previously unavailable. With these new resources, Czech art song can be used effectively as a teaching tool in the collegiate studio.