ROBERT TOFT

Vocal Coach

Historically-Informed

Re-creative Performance

Treatises from the 16th to 19th centuries document the old practices of singing, and Robert Toft uses these sources to show performers how to complete the creative process the composer began. In workshops and master classes, singers explore period-specific historical techniques of interpretation to turn inexpressive, skeletally notated scores into passionate musical declamation, whether frottole, English lute songs, or opera arias.

Without altering their vocal production, performers learn to set staples of the repertoire in completely new guises through a variety of interpretive devices: accent, emphasis, grammatical and rhetorical pauses, cadence, staccato, legato, portamento, tonal contrast, messa di voce, tempo rubato, and ornamentation.

Robert has coached singers for thirty years and first became interested in coaching 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 people studied historical approaches to singing, so he embarked on a long and rewarding journey to recover the old principles, writing a PhD dissertation and several books along the way. He is Professor of Music at Western University in London, Canada.

Master Classes and Workshops held at:

USA (Early Music Institute—Indiana University)

Switzerland (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis)

UK (University of York, University of Birmingham)

Ireland (University College Dublin)

Canada (University of Toronto, Western University)

Comments from participants:

‘the best vocal coaching I have ever had’

‘if you can’t stay, could you at least leave your brain for us to use?’

‘I have learned more from you than anyone else’

‘you have transformed me as a singer’

Author of five books on vocal performance practices:

Heart to Heart: Expressive Singing in England 1780-1830 (2000)

‘all should read this book to dispel modern myths about bel canto’ (Notes)

‘it is essential’ (Opera Quarterly)

Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart: The Art of Eloquent Singing in England 1597-1622 (1993)

‘required reading for all voice students’ (Albion)

‘important for interpreting this lost art [rhetoric] to the modern performer’ (Early Music News)

Aural Images of Lost Traditions: Sharps and Flats in the Sixteenth Century (1992)

‘obligatory reading’ (Parergon)

‘valuable for clarifying the diversity of sixteenth-century practices’ (Historical Performance)

Forthcoming:

Bel Canto: A Performer’s Guide (in press for 2012)

Performing Sixteenth-Century Vocal Music, Cara to Dowland (in preparation)

Contact: rtoft@uwo.ca