Author Description

Jane Manning, a leading interpreter of 20th-century music, has chosen over 70 songs to serve as an introduction to contemporary vocal music. She briefly describes each song and gives advice on its performance, showing where potential problems lie and how best to approach them. Manning also makes suggestions on how to program each piece in a concert. With some 100 music examples, the book is useful both as a guide in choosing repertory and as a tutor on the practicalities of performance. Manning (born 1938) studied at the Royal Academy of Music (1956–60), at the Scuola di Canto in Switzerland (1964), and with Frederick Jackson and Yvonne Rodd-Marling. She made her professional début in London in 1964 singing Webern, Dallapiccola and Messiaen, and has continued to specialize in 20th-century music, to which her gifts – clear tone, precise pitching and an enthusiastic aptitude for new ‘effects’ – are well suited. Some of the problems, and joys, of performing modern works are discussed in her essay ‘Contemporary Vocal Technique’, The Composer, No. 38 (1971) and she has contributed to The Messiaen Companion (London, 1995). Particularly associated with new British music, she has given the first performances of works by Bennett, Birtwistle, Davies, Hopkins, Le Fanu, Maconchy, Anthony Payne (whom she married in 1966), and others; in 1973 she received a special award from the Composers' Guild of Great Britain and in 1988 she founded the group Jane's Minstrels. Her recordings, with them and as a soloist, include works by Schoenberg, Lutyens, and Payne, the complete song cycles of Messiaen, and the complete vocal works of Satie. Extensive work for the BBC has taken her from light music to Pierrot lunaire and Milton Babbitt's Philomel. As a member of The Matrix she has performed Perotinus and Cage, and she has also appeared in oratorio and opera. She teaches at the Royal College of Music where she became Visiting Professor in 1995.