How is initial "ps" pronounced in ecclesiastical Latin?
There are several ways to pronounce Latin. Ecclesiastical Latin is the one used when singing sacred music. I've found several guides for how to pronounce ecclesiastical Latin, but none have described how to pronounce "ps" when it occurs at the beginning of a word like psalite. Is the P silent or not? The discussion threads I've found lean strongly toward a silent P, but without any definitive references.
Also, does it make a difference if it is not phrase-initial, such as in bene psalite?
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No definitive reference here, but my madrigal group is singing Praetorius' "Psallite, unigenito" this season, and our director made us a diction guide that gives it as a silent p (I could ask him for a source). Slight wrinkle is that, it being Praetorius, it's also in Germanicised Latin, which I didn't even realize existed until last week. That apparently changes a few things: e.g. a hard 'g' in unigenito, and a 'ts' sound instead of 'ch' for the 'c' in 'jacenti'.
If I trust my Latin dictionary, psallo means playing on the zither and derives directly from Greek ?????. The letter ? also remains in numerous words of Greek origin like psychology. There is little reason to assume, that the p was ever silent in Roman empire or Greece.
Wikipedia states, that church Latin moved its pronounciation towards Italian (most noticable in combinations like ce, ci, where the c is currently assumed to have been pronounced as k by native Romans, and ge, gi). Italian with its simple pronounciation has practically no silent letters (aside from "h" in combinations like ghe). Psicologia (Italian for psychology) is pronounced with ps.
This leaves two possible (somewhat questionable) reasons:
English pronounciation drops the p at the start of Greek words (on the other hand English has not the best track record of preserving original pronounciation). See related English language forum answer.
It is awkward to sing
For sure it makes no difference, whether ps is at the beginning of a word (or sentence) or somewhere in the middle.
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