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 ...