This artifact really sums up what I do. I am a teacher of singing. As such, I deal with texts, and the problem of students singing texts. Central to this skill set, there are phonological and semantic concerns. This two elements are defined in music as style. Style is everything! It is what fixes a piece of music to a time and place. So a song by Schubert is tied to the early part of 19th century Viennese style. Schubert was Catholic, he studied with Salieri, he loved Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Haydn (who didn’t!), his BFF was a Cantor, etc……The text in the pop quiz is a Christian Hymn, probably originally 19th century, set by Jacob Niles. This is a quiz I gave to collaborative pianists, or pianists who accompany singers. They must know how to guide singers in various styles. This pop quiz could be the basis of a book. Whether it’s the use of IPA, good or bad, the notion of what diction really is, the notion of intonation, or suprasegmentals in understanding the differences between a sung text and a recited poem, or teaching semantics, metaphor, and paraphrasing to L2’s, you could see how students might be overwhelmed. Poor things, and all they want to do is sing. Ha! The truth is, all the great singers I have known can navigate this world. They might not know or care about the metalanguage (and they really don’t necessary need to know it), but they can successfully convey style in song.