Quotable Quotes from my favorite tenor, Ian Bostridge

    Ian Bostridge is a rarity in the singing world, in that his original career was that of an academic. He studied history and philosophy in both Cambridge and Oxford, he's got a scholarly book published and everything... and jumped to a singing career after getting his PhD from the latter school.

     I must confess, he is the only tenor I listen to for exceedingly long periods of time. I simply never get tired of hearing his voice! I have four of his albums now and won't rest until I have them all. Not only does he have a throat touched by God, but his intelligence and musicality all contribute to masterful performances that pierce me to my core.

    Some quotable quotes from him in his interviews:

    Interviewer: Presumably, music is fundamentally irrational? 

    Ian: Which is why I'm so attracted to it. We're masquerading as rational people while being deeply irrational. Music is a way of letting out irrationality in a measured way. I'm an agnostic who wishes he was a theist. Music is my religion.

     Interviewer: Do you feel that ego sometimes gets in the way with other singers?

  Ian: Yes! I won't say who, but I think that it can. In spite of the fact that Fischer-Dieskau has a beautiful voice, you always feel that the voice is at the service of the music.

Interviewer: Do you find your academic background, the natural scholarly inquiry, informs your approach to new works?

Ian: It depends. If I'm interested in the genesis of the piece and I want to know about the period that it's written in, then I will read around it. But sometimes I'll just learn the music, fall in love with the tune and get on with that... Most of what I developed about the piece came out of the process of rehearsal — and I'm actually very loath to turn that into an intellectual process. I've always had a tendency to treat theater too intellectually, to think that if we find out the intention of the dramatist or composer then we solve the problems. What you really need to do is find the internal logic of the work that's actually written into the piece.

Interviwer: Do you have to consciously turn your mind off, then?

Ian: Sometimes. You can't sing intellectually; you have to sing with your body. Learning to sing over the past years has largely been a matter of trusting the physical side of things and realizing that a lot of it is athletic rather than intellectual. I don't think singing is ever really an intellectual thing.

Ian may not believe in God but I cannot help but thank His Creator each time I hear this marvelous lyric tenor in song. 

(For the youtube video of Ian singing composer Ralph Vaughan Williams' setting of the Rosetti poem SILENT NOON, click here.)