The Oxford Handbook of Singing

Singing has been a characteristic behaviour of humanity across several millennia. Chorus America (2009) estimated that 42.6 million adults and children regularly sing in one of 270,000 choruses in the US, representing more than 1:5 households. Similarly, recent European-based data suggest that more than 37 million adults take part in group singing.

The Oxford Handbook of Singing is a landmark text on this topic. It is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wishes to know more about the pluralistic nature of singing. In part, the narrative adopts a lifespan approach, pre-cradle to senescence, to illustrate that singing is a commonplace behaviour which is an essential characteristic of our humanity.

In the overall design of the Handbook, the chapter contents have been clustered into eight main sections, embracing fifty-three chapters by seventy-two authors, drawn from across the world, with each chapter illustrating and illuminating a particular aspect of singing. Offering a multi-disciplinary perspective embracing the arts and humanities, physical, social and clinical sciences, the book will be valuable for a broad audience within those fields.

Graham Welch Ph.D. has held the UCL Institute of Education (formerly University of London) Established Chair of Music Education since 2001. He is a Past President of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) (2008-2014) and elected Chair of the internationally based Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE). He holds Visiting Professorships at universities in the UK and overseas and is a former member of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Review College for Music (2007-2015). Publications number approximately three hundred and fifty and embrace musical development and music education, teacher education, the psychology of music, singing and voice science, and music in special education and disability.

David M Howard was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2016 and in that same year he became the Founding Head of the new department of Electronic Engineering at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he has set at its heart the principle of nurturing creativity in the context of group working for practical projects in each of the first two years. This is supported with a creative thinking space, prototyping lab and fabrication lab with 3-D printers and laser cutting machines for realising prototype designs. He has been Editor-in-Chief of Logopedics, Phoniatrics, Vocology and is on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Voice, Forensic Linguistics, Organised Sound, International Journal of Research in Choral Singing and Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. In 2014, David was made an Honorary Member of the Association of Croatian Choral Directors in which guise he acted as a judge for the International choir competition in %Sibenik in Croatia in May 2018.

John Nix has a bachelor of music (voice performance, University of Georgia), a master of music education (arts administration, Florida State University), a master of music (voice performance, University of Colorado), and a certificate in vocology (University of Iowa). He is professor of voice and voice pedagogy at the University of Texas-San Antonio, and has an adjunct appointment in the Department of Speech Language Pathology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio. His mentors include Barbara Doscher (singing, pedagogy) and Ingo Titze (voice science). His students have sung with the Santa Fe, Arizona, Chautauqua, St. Louis, Nevada, Omaha, and San Antonio opera companies, and two of his current or past students have been master teachers in the NATS Intern Program. In addition to his active voice teaching studio, he performs research in voice pedagogy, literature, and acoustics, having produced 38 published articles and 8 book chapters.

PART 1: The Anatomy and Physiology of Singing
1. Structure and Function of the Singing Voice, Gillyanne Kayes
2. Voice Dysfunction and Recovery, Tara K Stadelman-Cohen and Robert E Hillman
3. The Healthy Voice, Lifestyle and Voice Protection (including Exercise, Body Work and Diet), John S Rubin and Ruth Epstein
4. Physiology and its Impact on the Performance of Singing, Filipa M B La and Brian P Gill
PART 2: The Acoustics of Singing
5. Breathing in Singing, Alan Watson
6. The Sound Source in Singing: Basic Principles and Muscular Adjustments for Fine-tuning Vocal Timbre, Christian T Herbst, David M Howard and Jan G Svec
7. The Vocal Tract in Singing, Brad Story
8. The Acoustics of Different Genres of Singing, Johan Sundberg
9. The Developing Voice, Desmond Sergeant
10. Perceptual Features of Singing, David M Howard and Eric J Hunter
11. The Impact of Location on the Singing Voice, Harald Jers
PART 3: The Psychology of Singing
12. The Neuroscience of Singing, Boris A Kleber and Jean Mary Zarate
13. Intonation in Singing, Johan Sundberg
14. Singing and Emotion, Eduardo Coutinho, Klaus R Scherer and Nicola Dibben
15. Perceived Quality of a Singing Performance: The Importance of Context, Evangelos Himonides
16. Defining and Explaining Singing Difficulties in Adults, Karen Wise
17. Vocal Performance in Occasional Singers, Simone Dalla Bella
18. Singing as Inter- and Intra-personal Communication, Graham F Welch and Costanza Preti
19. Digital Libraries for Singing: The Example of the AIRS Project, Annabel J Cohen and Karen M Ludke
PART 4: The Development of Singing across the Lifespan
20. Socio-cultural, Acoustic, and Environmental Imperatives in the World of Singing, Robert Walker
21. Fetal, Neonatal and Early Infant Experiences of Maternal Singing, Sheila C Woodward
22. Mothers as Singing Mentors for Infants, Sandra E Trehub and Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir
23. Singing and Invented Song-making in Infants and Young Children's Early Learning and Development: from Shared to Independent Song-making, Margaret S Barrett
24. Children Singing: Nurture, Creativity, and Culture. A Study of Children's Music-making in London, UK, and in West Bengal, India, Valentine Harding
25. Singing and Vocal Development, Graham F Welch
26. Boys' Singing Voice Change in Adolescence, Jenevora Williams and Scott Harrison
27. Adolescent Girls' Singing Development, Lynne Gackle
28. The Effects of Gender on the Motivation and Benefits Associated with Community Singing in the UK, Diana Parkinson
29. Voice Management and the Older Singer, Jane Davidson and Lynne Murray
PART 5: Singing Pedagogy
30. Systematic Development of Vocal Technique, John Nix
31. Addressing the Needs of the Adult "Non-Singer" ("NS"), Susan Knight
32. Teaching the Professional Singer, Jean Callaghan
33. Mental Preparation for the Performer, Alma Thomas
34. Conservatory Teaching and Learning, Mary King and John Nix
35. Pedagogy of Different Sung Genres, Jeremy Fisher, Gillyanne Kayes and Lisa Popeil
36. The Extra-normal Voice, Michael Edward Edgerton
37. Vocal Music and Pedagogy of Chinese, African and Indian Genres, Yang Yang, Aaron Carter-Enyi, Nandhu Radhakrishnan, Sophie Grimmer, and John Nix
PART 6: The Collective 'Choral' Voice
38. Contemporary Concepts and Practices of Choral Singing, Ursula Geisler and Karin Johansson
39. The Youth Choir, Joy Hill
40. Cultural History and a Singing Style: "The English Cathedral Tradition", Timothy Day
41. Perspectives on Choral Conducting: Theory and Practice, Colin Durrant and Maria Varvarigou
42. Group Singing and Social Identity, Jane Davidson and Robert Faulkner
43. Intonation and Staying in Tune in A Cappella Choral Singing, David M Howard
44. Choral Singers' Perceptions of Musical Leadership, Dag Jansson
PART 7: The Wider Benefits of Singing
45. Can Singing have a Beneficial Effect on Lung Function and Breathing for People with Respiratory Illness?, Stephen Clift and Rebekah Gilbert
46. Singing and Psychological Needs, Jane W Davidson and Sandra Garrido
47. The Effects and Benefits of Singing Individually and in a Group, Tores Theorell
48. Unchained Melody: The Rise of Orality and Therapeutic Singing, June Boyce-Tillman
PART 8: Singing and Technology
49. Historical Approaches in Revealing the Singing Voice, Part 1, Harm K Schutte
50. Historical Approaches in Revealing the Singing Voice, Part 2, Harm K Schutte
51. Ave Verum Pentium: Singing, Recording, Archiving and Analysing within the Digital Domain, Evangelos Himonides
52. Practical Voice Analyses and their Application in the Studio, Garyth Nair (decd), David M Howard, and Graham F Welch
53. Future Perspectives, Peter Pabon, David M Howard, Sten Ternstrom, Malte Kob and Gerhard Eckel