Mike,
You might enjoy a post that I wrote on the Trumpet Herald web site called
Don’t Drop the Ashtray. I’m amazed at how differently I approach a piece of music when I’ve considered the vocal interpretation as well as the actual diction. In one of the pieces that Cecelia Bartoli performs on the CD that I mention in that thread, she sings the words “Pah so ray aylo” (sorry, this is phonetic as I don’t know the Italian and I don’t have the words available to me right now). When she gets to the word that begins with Pah, there is a very strong accent that is dictated by the lyrics, but is not printed in the part. When that line is repeated with different lyrics (without the strong P sound), there is no accent.
If I were to hear that piece without the accent, I would think, “there’s something missing there!” David Krauss discussed this in detail at his talk at the ITG conference in Denver. One of these day’s I’m going to finish putting together my synopsis of that part of his presentation.
Great topic!