Word of the Day: Sprechgesang

In which we learn about the band English Teacher and frontwoman Lily Fontaine.

English Teacher

**sprechgesang**

(German ˈʃpʀexɡəˌzɑːŋ)

noun

music

a type of vocalization between singing and recitation in which the voice sings the beginning of each note and then falls rapidly from the notated pitch. It was originated by Arnold Schoenberg, who used it in *Pierrot Lunaire* (1912).

During that period, English Teacher’s members — completed by drummer Douglas Frost and bassist Nicholas Eden — circled each other on Leeds’ live music scene, playing with various other bands before settling on their current line-up.

Their breakthrough came with 2021’s R&B, their official debut single, where [frontwoman Lily] Fontaine addresses the challenge of being a woman of colour fronting an indie band: (“Despite appearances, I haven’t got the voice for R&B”).

It’s a perception she struggled with herself as a teenager, frustrated that she wasn’t capable of “the kind of the vocal runs that the black singers I looked up to were able to do”.

As a frontwoman, she developed her own style — a droll mixture of sprechgesang and her fluttering, airy upper register. But she still encountered prejudice.

“There’d be times where I told people that I made music, and they’d give a certain expression when I said that it was guitar music or it was indie music,” she says.

“There were a lot of small comments after gigs. People would come up and say, ‘Oh, that’s not what I was expecting at all’,” adds Whiting.

Fontaine is careful not to make too big an issue of it. “I think I’ve got a lot of privilege, because I’m quite a light skinned woman of colour,” she says.

“I think if I was dark skinned it would be even harder — but it did affect me, not seeing people who looked like me in bands.

“I think it made me start a band later in life. Maybe I would have started when I was a teenager, and not when I was leaving university.”

| Mark Savage, *BBC Sound of 2025: Indie band English Teacher kick off list at number five*