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Scordatura

Musical Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Scordatura is an intentional nonstandard tuning of a string instrument to obtain unusual pitches or resonances.

Detailed Definition
By retuning an instrument, scordatura changes the available intervals, fingerings, and overtones, producing colors that ordinary tuning cannot provide. In poetry, the term can describe a deliberate disturbance of familiar language, syntax, or expectation so that ordinary materials resonate differently. A poem written in scordatura may bend idiom, alter grammatical emphasis, or adopt an unfamiliar perspective, making the reader hear common words as strange and newly charged.
Example
Example in poetry:
In a scordatura poem, the poet deliberately retunes familiar language so that an ordinary phrase sounds strange; Replacing “home” with “the room that remembers me” creates a scordatura-like distortion of a common poetic register; A sonnet written with unexpected syntax and altered rhyme can imitate an instrument whose strings have been retuned; The speaker in a scordatura poem might describe love through dissonant images rather than expected romantic ones
Additional Notes
Scordatura is a deliberate retuning of a string instrument away from its standard tuning. The altered tuning can extend range, create drones, change fingering patterns, or produce unusual resonance. As a poetic analogy, scordatura suggests purposeful deviation from an expected pattern, voice, or norm.
Also Known As
Altered Tuning Retuning
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