Book Review: A SINGER'S NOTEBOOK by Ian Bostridge

A Singer's Notebook by Ian Bostridge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Even small things can delight us." -- Bostridge, quoting Hugo Wolf

This is the very first book I ordered from abroad (thank you Book Depository!!!), and I spent three weeks praying nightly that the package would arrive safely from the UK! It is not available locally here in Manila, and I’ve been wanting to read it for ages, having been a huge fan for years! And I was not disappointed! The package arrived, and the book proved worth the wait.

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to write about something as intangible and abstract as music. And as if having the voice of an angel wasn’t enough, this book is proof that British tenor Ian Bostridge possesses the brain of a god as well. Reading this collection of essays (primarily on lieder and Britten but including a few book and opera reviews) was like listening to a very funny professor who blended incredible learning and vast performance experience with a delightfully hilarious sense of humor. Think Daniel Barenboim, but more opera buffa than seria.

For example, Bostridge writes: "My life is governed by phlegm to an extent that utterly disgusts my friends and family." Ahahahaha. Also, he speaks of Hugo Wolf's lieder having "Wagner's endless melody without the endlessness." Haha!

But also... Ian Bostridge’s first career was that of a legitimate historian (with a PhD from Oxford!), and IT SHOWS. The book is interspersed with a smattering of academic lingo, such as “noumenal,” “chary” and “dyspeptic,” with quotations from the likes of Wittgenstein, Jaspers, and the composers themselves. There's discussions of Teutonic "Kultur" versus French "Zivilisation" and pages where Bostridge waxes poetic over the dissolution of tonality and what it meant for Romanticism's language of irrationality.

This “notebook” brought memories of Music Literature classes in college. Ian Bostridge would have had a great career as a professor! He made me want to listen to all the recordings and works he discussed, and anyone who makes readers thirst to listen to Janacek or Hans Werner Henze FOR FUN truly has a gift.

Mind you, Ian Bostridge is no highbrow elitist, despite his qualifications. He writes of learning from Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan, and speaks of what classical musicians can learn from the best of popular ones.

Highly accessible as well as being highly learned, this book is a treat for anyone interested in music (and that’s ALL of us)! I suggest that it be read in small doses, a few chapters at a time, so you can listen to the song cycles / operas he mentions on Spotify while drinking your tea with scones and clotted cream.

I am soooo looking forward to immersing myself in Ian Bostridge’s second book this coming sembreak!



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