It doesn’t lessen the experience of enjoying the music for me….

@Marionville It shouldn't - the voice is kust another instrument making musical noise. Understanding the lyrics however engages the brain even more.

@FrayedBear I know the voice is a musical instrument…my music teacher instilled in us the value of the human vocal instrument which we all carry and can put to use to make music to a greater or lesser degree depending on ability. She said that we who are particularly gifted vocally are lucky because we have the ability to carry our instrument around with ease, unlike a musician who plays an instrument, but we must take care not to lose it…not by theft, but by not taking care of it by overuse or by abuse.
Btw…listening to music is less about engaging the brain and more about feeling the emotions it creates within us. It’s not a mental but a deeply felt emotional exercise, both in making and listening to music.

@Marionville & understanding the lyrics is the only way to be emotively engaged in the message of the lyrics. The music does not always reflect the emotive value of the lyrics & is frequently only a styalised representation not a true complement.

@FrayedBear Not necessarily so…why do you think people who love opera but don’t understand or speak French or Italian but still they find they are moved to tears by it? Why are people also often moved to tears listening to instrumental music?
It is because It connects emotionally with something elementally human at our core being. It speaks to us because music needs no language it itself is a language, an emotional one.
That doesn’t mean that lyrics are not important too, and very powerful when used in songs which stir the emotions…but that takes us back again to the topic of emotional connectivity. Both music and lyrics connect us all as humans in an emotional and elemental way, but knowing and understanding the words of a song sung in a foreign language, whilst useful, are not entirely necessary to make it sonically pleasurable to the listener.

@Marionville in opera you have the visuals to give you clues plus if you're lucky the intonation of the words.

I am well aware from performing poetry that many people do not comprehend the value of intonation. Look at the way accents are becoming homogenised into blandness. How people are now admonished for not being sheeple which is what your argument is all about Marge. Your statement "not entirely necessary to make it sonically pleasurable to the listener" does not persuade me that you strive to achieve the highest standards possible. . . As a singer how can you sing a foreign word if you do not know what it means - ffs you could be laughing whilst singing "meine geliebte Mutter wurde gerade von einem Panzer überfahren" if you didn't know that the words meant that "my beloved mother has just been run over by a tank".

@FrayedBear I’m not talking about the singer not knowing what the words mean..I’m talking about the listener not needing to understand the language being sung, Of course as a singer we need to know the meaning of the lyrics of a song, I wouldn’t be able to sing it otherwise. I’ve sung many songs in French and Italian, German too..although I don’t speak any of these languages fluently, I have enough knowledge through reading the translations of the lyrics to understand the meaning and emotion required to sing and do it justice.
I think at times you go out of your way to be deliberately obtuse Richard as you well know it’s the listener’s experience we’re discussing and nor the singer’s.

@Marionville the singer is the horse to the cart. If the horse has no feet it will have problems pulling the cart particularly if the cart similarly has no wheels.

Yes..I thought so too..