One hundred years ago, suggests former Hilliard Ensemble tenor John Potter, “a song was just a song”.
Any music could be popular. And then, he says, within a generation or two, “we invented art song”.
His written words gloss over one of the major changes involved, that most professional performances of popular songs use microphones, but those of art songs do not.
The lute- accompanied singing on this CD, whether of material old (Campion, Warlock, Moeran) or new (John Paul Jones, Tony Banks, Sting) is heavily dependent on the soft, breathy vocalisations that first became viable through the use of electronic amplification from the mid-1920s on.
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If you liked Sting in Dowland, this may be just for you.
