Vowel reduction in Russian classical singing: the case of unstressed /a/ after palatalised consonants

The paper focuses on variable pretonic vowel reduction /a/→[a~e~i] after palatalised consonants in Russian classical singing, as in /grjaˈda/ [grjaˈda~grjeˈda~grjiˈda] ‘ridge’. Faithful /a/→[a] realisation frequently occurs in classical singing as opposed to spoken standard Russian, where /a/→[i] reduction applies without exception. In this study, I examined how various lin-guistic and musical factors influence pretonic /a/→[a~e~i] realisation in 17 classical Russian art songs as recorded by 35 professional singers. T-tests were run to assess the effect of phonetic duration, which appeared insignificant in my data. The contribution of other factors was studied by constructing mixed-effects logistic regression models. Three parameters proved to be relevant: the quality of the stressed vowel, the relative pitch of the note bearing the pretonic vowel as opposed to the stressed vowel, and the singer’s year of birth. Although faithful /a/→[a] realisation is commonly attributed to orthographic influence, my find-ings suggest that vowel reduction may be affected by other factors in singing, and it is also subject to high individual variation.