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Foreword
The singer as scholar/intellectual is not a characterization that enjoys popular currency. One is far more likely to encounter demeaning references to singers’ crania as resonance chambers rather than housing the organ more commonly found there. Thankfully, that image is fading, and its eventual demise is hastened by books such as that which you now hold.
I had the pleasure of working with Gerald Phillips on several articles written earlier for the Journal of Singing—essays that find both final fruition and larger context in this volume. The author is, in fact, a singer, intellectual, and scholar—qualities uniquely wrapped in the mantel of a pedagogue.
Gertrude Stein, as she lay dying, is said to have declared, “It is better to ask questions than to give answers, even good answers.” Once a teacher, always a teacher. As in his professional career path, in his writing, Phillips is a teacher still, asking questions and patiently leading readers along the high roads and byroads of his thesis. Themes open like flowers, as simple seeds of ideas become sturdy sprouts, then complex organisms, begin to bud, and finally develop into full bloom.