Abstract
Referred to as Henry Purcell’s “favorite baritone,” the actor-singer John Bowman (ca. 1655-1739) became the leading baritone on the London stage during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Centering on the career and song performances of Bowman, this dissertation provides a fresh perspective from which to view Restoration music theater, a reorientation that shifts the spotlight away from the works themselves—the plays and their music—and away from composers and playwrights, to one that focuses on performers and their concerns. The purpose of this work is to provide an account of the performance practice of Restoration theater song using Bowman as a case study. Bowman is an excellent subject for a case study for several reasons. He sang in Purcell’s first stage commission and went on to sing many more songs by Purcell, as well as music by other significant composers of the era, including John Blow and John Eccles. As an actor, Bowman performed roles written by virtually every playwright of the late seventeenth century in England and worked with such actors as Thomas Betterton and Anne Bracegirdle.
A desired outcome of this project is that singers wishing to cultivate their adeptness in historically informed performance of Restoration song will find this a helpful resource. To this end, Chapter II focuses wholly on performance practice in Restoration theater, covering both vocal production and acting, and concludes with a very detailed application of these to a song Bowman performed. This chapter also includes a guide outlining a practical approach for historically informed performance of Restoration theater song. As this guide shows, the initial step in the process, after having located the music, is to determine how each song fit into the larger dramatic context. Subsequent chapters are thus devoted principally to uncovering and reproducing all extant, unpublished songs Bowman performed, and to describing Bowman’s characters and the contexts in which their song performances occurred.
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