The great British countertenor James Thomas Bowman died on March 27 at the age of 81. He ended his career in May 2011 with a London concert at Wigmore Hall, after retiring from the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace in London. Naturally spiritual, gifted for life, Bowman has always possessed a warm and powerful voice (compared to those of his colleagues), a pure vocal line, a perfectly mastered style and a medium with shimmering colors, qualities which he had been able to preserve beyond the passage of time.
Following the pioneer Alfred Deller (1912-1979), he contributed for three decades to drawing the contemporary image of the countertenor: a voice returned from ancient times since, as he liked to recall, “countertenors have always existed: they sang in the choirs of Christian churches”.
Born November 6, 1941 in Oxford, this pure product of the English musical tradition had studied between 1951 and 1960 in the choirs of the King’s School, in Ely (Cambridgeshire). After a hiatus during his transformation, he returned to the bass section before giving his first public performance as a countertenor in 1959 to a group of schoolchildren in the Lady Chapel. He then began studying history at New College in his hometown, joining the New College Choir and the Christ Church Cathedral Choir.
Surprising Abilities
The early 1960s saw him seriously tackle the work of vocal technique, consolidating his surprising aptitude (and a certain taste) for the countertenor register which he would soon approach in baroque operas and oratorios. A single audition, when he was still a student, convinced composer Benjamin Britten to engage him in his English Opera Group, with which James Bowman made his debut in March 1967 for the inaugural concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. The same year, he recorded with the Choir of King’s College Cambridge and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by David Willcocks, the Midnight Mass de Charpentier, which will be a huge success.
Benjamin Britten once supported the legendary Alfred Deller, for whom he wrote the role of Oberon in the Dream of a summer night composed in 1960. A role that James Bowman took on in 1967 at the Aldeburgh Festival (Sussex), before exporting it to Paris the same year, at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, taking it around the world and then late recording, in 1990, with Richard Hickox. Until his death in 1976, Britten would write for him, from Canticle IV « The Journey of the Magi » on a text by TS Eliot, created on June 26, 1971 (with the composer at the piano and the tenor Peter Pears, his companion), in the voice of Apollo in the opera Death in Venicegiven its world premiere on June 16, 1973, alongside Peter Pears in the role of Gustav von Aschenbach.
You have 58.01% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.