Robert Toft
Robert Toft arrived at Western in 1989, but he has also taught at universities in Australia, Ireland, and the UK. For the past three decades, he has focused his work on the performance practices of singing and has given master classes, workshops, and lectures on historical principles of interpretation in the USA, Switzerland, Canada, Britain, Ireland, and Australia. He first became interested in coaching singers as an accompanist (lute), when he realized that he could help vocalists animate songs in exciting ways by rooting their performances in period treatises. In the early 1980s, very few researchers studied historical approaches to singing, so he embarked on a long and rewarding journey to base his vocal coaching on older principles of interpretation.
Along the way, he wrote a PhD dissertation (King’s College London) and several books, first on the problems of deciding what notes performers actually sang in Josquin’s motets (Aural Images of Lost Traditions: Sharps and Flats in the Sixteenth Century, 1992) and then on eloquence in the first golden age of English song (Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart: The Art of Eloquent Singing in England 1597-1622, 1993). He next turned to the bel canto style of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Heart to Heart: Expressive Singing in England 1780-1830, 2000) and has just finished putting his many years of coaching and research into a practical guide (Bel Canto: A Performer’s Guide, in press).
In addition to his interests in the history of singing, Robert took the lead role in developing the Faculty’s undergraduate programs in Popular Music Studies and Music Administrative Studies, and for the past decade, he has added research in popular music to his activities. He has been keen to break down the barriers that exist between ‘classical’ and ‘pop’ and has published several articles that demonstrate specific ways in which these two rich traditions are closely related. In 2011, Continuum published his first book on popular music, Hits and Misses: Crafting Top-40 Singles, 1963-1971.
As a teacher, he coaches singers who wish to become immersed in the style of singing practiced between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in his course ‘Bel canto from Handel to Rossini’, but he also works with pop and jazz singers.
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