John Potter's first book, Vocal Authority, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1998, and he is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Singing (2000). His book Tenor: History of a Voice was published in 2009. He has contributed articles to many academic journals and chapters to other books, including The Cambridge History of Medieval Music (forthcoming) and The Cambridge History of Musical Performance, published in 2012. He is Reader Emeritus in Music at the University of York (having stepped down from his lectureship in 2010 to focus on his portfolio of freelance projects). As a singer John has partnerships with instrumentalists in various parts of the world, notably the Argentinian lutenist and vihuelist Ariel Abramovich, the American medieval harpist Jan Walters and the British electro-acoustic composer Ambrose Field. He also sings with Red Byrd, The Dowland Project (which will release a fourth album in 2012), the Gavin Bryars Ensemble and the German group The Sound and the Fury. His most recent venture is Cantum Pulcriorum Invenire, a research project at the University of Southampton, which will see the release of three CDs of twelfth-century music on Hyperion and a multimedia live version with tenor Christopher O'Gorman and video artist Michael Lynch. John spent 18 years with the Hilliard Ensemble (whose CDs include the million-selling Officium); his complete discography runs to some 150 titles. He also coaches vocal ensembles all over the world, and chairs the ensemble contest jury at the Tampere Vocal Festival (Finland).

Introduction; Part I. Imagined Voices: Mythology and Muses; Part II. Historical Voices: 1. The genesis of the Western tradition; 2. The emerging soloist and the primacy of text; 3. The age of the virtuoso; 4. The nineteenth-century revolution; Part III. Recorded Voices: 5. A great tradition: singing through history - history through singing; 6. Classical singing in the twentieth century: recording and retrenchment; 7. Post-classical: beyond the mainstream; 8. The emancipation of the popular voice; 9. Sung and unsung: singers and songs of the non English-speaking world; Part IV. Sources and Reference: 10. Sources; Bibliography.