Tenor: History of a Voice will be reprinted in paperback by Yale University Press later this year. The bibliography/videography/discography (known as the Tenorography) will be updated on the web from time to time, and readers will be invited to send corrections and updates to tenorvoice@john-potter.co.uk (see blog posts on the News page). Copies can be ordered from Amazon, where you can also discuss John’s work. There are plans for a substantial 2nd edition in a year or two.

Vocal Authority and The Cambridge Companion to Singing are now both available from Cambridge University Press in paperback.

John and Neil Sorrell are steaming ahead with their singing history for Cambridge UP, and hope to have it finished by the end of the summer. John has also contributed chapters to two forthcoming Cambridge Histories: the History of Musical Performance and the History of Medieval Music.

select bibliography

Tenor: History of a Voice (Yale University Press, 2009)

‘Early Music Discoveries and Experiments’ Horizons Touched: the Music of ECM ed Steve Lake & Paul Griffiths (Granta Books, 2007)

‘The tenor-castrato connection’ Early Music XXXV/1 (February 2007)

‘The Communicative Rest’ Music & Silence ed. Losseff & Doctor (Ashgate, 2007)

‘‘Beggar at the Door: the Rise and Fall of Portamento’ Music & Letters 87/4 (2006)

‘Magister Leoninus: the first great polyphonist?’ Goldberg (October 2005).

‘Harmonious Meeting: Arvo Pärt and the Hilliard Ensemble’ Booklet on the occasion of the composer’s award of an Honorary Doctorate (University of Durham Oct 2003).

'Baroque Singing', in Burton, A (ed) ABRSM Handbook (London, ABRSM, 2003).

‘Past perfect & future fictions’ Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis XXVI (2002).

The Cambridge Companion to Singing (ed) (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
[‘Singing at the turn of the century’; ‘Jazz singing: the first hundred years’; ‘Ensemble singing’]

‘Qawwali singing’ in Songlines (Gramophone Publications) summer 1999.

Vocal Authority: Singing Style and Ideology (Cambridge University Press, 1998)

'Reconstructing Lost Voices' in Knighton & Fallows Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music (Dent 1992, rpr OUP 1998).

'Speaking in Tongues' Dance Theatre Journal 13/1 (1996)

‘John Potter introduces a new label’ Early Music News 212 November (1996).

'Louis Armstrong: Swing and Subtext' AOUG Journal (1995/6)

'The Singer, not the Song: Women Singers as Composer?poets' Popular Music 12/2, (Cambridge, 1994).

Review essays

Emmons & Thomas: Power Performance for Singers
Music & Letters 81/2 May 2000.

James Stark: Bel Canto: a history of vocal pedagogy
Music & Letters 82/3  August 2001.

Richard Shusterman: Performing Live
Music & Letters 83/1  February 2002.

Vocal treatises by Garcia, Vaccaj & Hiller Music & Letters 84/2 May 2003. 

Mimi S. Daitz: Ancient Song Recovered: The Life and Music of Veljo Tormis
Classical Music March 2005

CD booklet essays

Walter Frye (ECM, 1993): ‘The music of Walter Frye’

Giovanni-Felici Sances (ASV 1997)

Lassus (ECM 1998): ‘Lassus and the Sibyls’

John Dowland (ECM 1999): ‘In darkness let me dwell’

Words of the Angel (ECM, 2001)

Care-charming Sleep (ECM, 2003): ‘The Dowland Project and its music’

Soir dit-elle (ECM 2004): ‘A timeless present’

Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire - Roger Marsh (NMC 2007) ‘Working with Roger Marsh’ (NMC 2007)

Romaria (ECM 19707) ‘Is recording a performance?’