John Potter (Editor) - The Cambridge Companion to Singing

The Cambridge Companion to Singing

Ranging from medieval music to Madonna and beyond, this is the only book to cover in detail so many aspects of the voice. The volume is divided into four broad areas. Popular Traditions begins with an overview of singing traditions in world music and continues with aspects of rock, rap, and jazz. The Voice in the Theatre includes both opera singing from the beginnings to the present day and twentieth-century stage and screen entertainers. Choral Music and Song features a history of the art song, essential hints on singing in a larger choir, the English cathedral tradition and a history of the choral movement in the United States. The final substantial section on performance practices ranges from the voice in the Middle Ages and the interpretation of early singing treatises to contemporary vocal techniques, ensemble singing, the teaching of singing, childrens choirs, and a comprehensive exposition of vocal acoustics.

JOHN POTTER is a member of the internationally renowned vocal groups The Hilliard Ensemble and Red Byrd. He is lecturer in music at the University of York and author of Vocal Authority: Singing Style and Ideology (1998).

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The Cambridge Companion to

SINGING

EDITED BY

John Potter

University of York

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521622257

Cambridge University Press 2000

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2000
Reprinted 2000, 2001 (twice)

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

The Cambridge Companion to singing / edited by John Potter.
p. cm. (The Cambridge companions to music)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: Popular traditions The voice in the theatre Choral
music and song Performance practices.
ISBN 0 521 62225 5 (hardback) ISBN 0 521 62709 5 (paperback)
1. SingingHistory. 2. Choral singingHistory. 3. Vocal music
History and criticism. 4. Performance practice (Music)
I. Potter, John, tenor. II. Series.
ML1460.C28 2000
782.009dc21 9932948 CIP

ISBN-13 978-0-521-62225-7 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-62225-5 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-62709-2 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-62709-5 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2006

Contents

John Potter

John Schaefer

Richard Middleton

David Toop

John Potter

Stephen Banfield

John Rosselli

John Rosselli

Stephen Varcoe

Timothy Day

Neely Bruce

Heikki Liimola

John Potter

Joseph Dyer

Richard Wistreich

Linda Hirst and David Wright

David Mason

Felicity Laurence

Johan Sundberg

Illustrations

Notes on the contributors

Stephen Banfield is Elgar Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Sensibility and English Song (1985), the award-winning Sondheims Broadway Musicals (1993) and Gerald Finzi: An English composer (1997) and is editor of the twentieth-century volume of The Blackwell History of Music in Britain (1995).

Neely Bruce is Professor of Music and American Studies, Director of Choral Activities, and former chair of the Music Department at Wesleyan University. He is a composer, conductor, pianist and scholar of American music. He was on the Editorial Committee of New World Records and was the first chairman of the New England Sacred Harp Singing. He has long been associated with the works of John Cage, Henry Brant and Anthony Philip Heinrich, The Beethoven of America.

Timothy Day was educated at Oxford University, where he was organ scholar at St Johns College. He joined the staff of the National Sound Archive in London in 1978, and since 1980 has been Curator of Western Art Music. He is currently writing a study of one hundred years of recorded music for Yale University Press.

Joseph Dyer teaches music history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is also an organist and has been a performer on historic wind instruments. He has published articles on performance practice, medieval music theory, liturgy and liturgical music, especially Old Roman chant. His special interest is the history of chant and liturgy at Rome during the Middle Ages.

Linda Hirst was a Swingle Singer and a founder member of Electric Phoenix. With both groups she toured the world, leading to an enormously varied solo career which included operatic roles, large-scale new works with symphony orchestras (Osborne, Rands, Sciarrino, Ferneyhough), and many premires by Holt, Muldowney, Knussen, Weir, Harvey, Ambrosini, Lachenmann and others. She has been active in education since 1973 and has taught at Dartington International Summer School since 1978. In 1995 she was appointed Head of Vocal Studies at Trinity College of Music, London, and in 1998 she became a Fellow of Dartington College.

Felicity Laurence was born in New Zealand and is a childrens choir specialist and composer. Her publications include Birds, Balloons and Shining Stars: A Teachers Guide to Singing with Children (1994); the childrens choral works