The Cambridge Companion to Singing (review)

The Cambridge Companion to Singing. Edited by John Potter. (Cambridge Companions to Music.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. [x, 286 p. ISBN 0-521-62225-5 (cloth); 0-521-62709-5 (pbk.). $59.95 (cloth); $21.95 (pbk.).]

Joining sixteen previous volumes in the admirable series Cambridge Companions to Music, The Cambridge Companion to Singing comprises an introduction and eighteen essays addressing vocal performance history, styles, repertory, and pedagogy. Ably edited by Hilliard Ensemble member John Potter, who also contributed several chapters, the book exemplifies solid musicological scholarship. Potter has assembled an impressive array of contributors, each with a specific area of expertise. The result is a valuable resource, comprehensive in scope and enlightening in range and breadth, a welcome addition to the field of voice history, science, and criticism.

The book is well organized into four main sections. The first, "Popular Traditions," investigates a range of vocal traditions in world music (from qawwali, "the devotional music of Pakistani Sufism" [p. 11] to Tuvan throat singers), rock singing, the evolving language of rap, and the first hundred years of jazz singing. Part 2, "The Voice in the Theatre," explores stage and screen entertainers in the twentieth century, the beginnings of opera, and grand opera in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Part 3, "Choral Music and Song," considers European art song and English cathedral choirs in the twentieth century and offers an overview of sacred music in the United States. The concluding section, "Performance Practices," embraces an eclectic mix of topics, including choral singing, ensemble singing, the voice in the Middle Ages, pre-romantic and contemporary singing techniques, voice pedagogy, children's singing, and voice science.

"Bias" may be too strong a word to describe this collection, but there is a noticeable slant toward singing in English- speaking countries; of the seventeen contributors, there are ten from the United Kingdom, one from New Zealand, three from the United States, two from Scandinavia, and one from Germany. "English Cathedral Choirs in the Twentieth Century" and "Sacred Choral Music in the United States" are worthy chapters, but no equivalent discussion considers, say, German Lutheran choral singing, a noticeable omission. There are other omissions as well. This old "folky" missed any analysis of the American folk-music craze of the early 1960s; the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, and other acts all had distinctive and influential vocal "stamps" but are almost completely overlooked here. Bob Dylan and the "early 1960s folk-revival and folk-protest milieu" (p. 31) receive passing mention in Richard Middleton's essay "Rock Singing," but it is surprising that, while Middleton mentions David Bowie and Mick Jagger, others of historical significance are missing-- the Beatles (John Lennon and Paul McCartney), the Supremes (Diana Ross), and the Beach Boys (Brian Wilson and Mike Love), for example. Likewise, cabaret singing, a genre unto itself personified by Edith Piaf, is reduced to Stephen Banfield's passing reference in his comment on "the overtly osculatory (or worse) relationship between lips and microphone that now pertains in pop singing, having passed through variety, cabaret and musical in what is essentially a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon" (p. 72). Nevertheless, it is to be expected that not every facet or style of singing could possibly be covered in exhaustive detail in a volume such as this.

Unless the reader is voracious for all things vocal, some chapters will appeal while others will receive only a cursory glance. Mindful of the reviewer's responsibility to offer informed opinion, I dutifully made my way through the contributions on rock, rap, and jazz, but eagerly devoured those in part 2, "The Voice in the Theatre," and part 4, "Performance Practices," especially the informative essays by Richard Wistreich ("Reconstructing Pre-Romantic Singing Technique") and David Mason ("Teaching (and Learning) of Singing"). Yet the function of a companion such as this is to provide an eclectic and broad-based overview of its subject--in this case, the phenomenon we call singing. Though some will be enticed to read the book from...