[silence] Etudes Australes and Etudes Boreales spelling

[kkrka kr]

Dear Silence members,

there is an ongoing debate at the English Wikipedia article about Etudes
Australes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etudes_Australes, the debate is at
the talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Etudes_Australes) as to
whether the title of this work and Etudes Boreales should be spelled with an
accent. Prof. Jerome Kohl, whom some of you will know, argues that
"e'tudes", "australes" and "bore'ales" are all French words, and so the
correct titles are in French and should be spelled "E'tudes australes" and
"E'tudes bore'ales". However, such spelling is only rarely encountered, and
it seems that the accepted norm is to use no accents whatsoever, probably
because "australes" and "boreales" aren't French, but derived from the Latin
titles of star charts Cage used, and the word "e'tude" is frequently
encountered in English without the accent.

The question I'd like to ask is, has anyone ever heard Cage himself speak
about these works? As Mr. Kohl pointed out, I quote, "If the recordings of
Cage's interviews could be accessed, it would be a simple matter to discover
whether he was thinking in French or in Latin, since the identically spelled
words are pronounced quite differently. French is something like
"oh-STRAHL", whereas Latin is more like "ow-STRAHL-ees" (the final E is long
in Latin)." Perhaps some of you have spoken to Cage about these works, or
heard an interview in which he discussed them?

Any help would be greatly appreciated; replies are welcome both here and at
the talk page specified above.

- Jashiin
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