Cathy Berberian (1925–1983) perhaps put it best herself: ‘“I hold back in private life […]. I have to because I'm bigger than life—my nature is bigger than life. I'm exaggerated in everything”’ (33). Berberian was a major influence on her collaborators – who famously included her husband Luciano Berio, John Cage, Sylvano Bussotti, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, Igor Stravinsky, and William Walton – and on her contemporaneous music world. Never a teacher in the traditional sense, she did not hold a long-term academic post, an arrangement observed by many of her composer and vocalist colleagues. But her lasting influence on subsequent generations of musicians is clear in the work of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century classical and experimental singer-composers, including Joan La Barbara, Pamela Z, and Theo Bleckmann, who were all interviewed for this volume. And shared aesthetic sensibilities and performative processes are also found in the work of composers such as Anne Lebaron, George Lewis, Kristin Norderval, and John Zorn.

A milestone in Cathy Berberian research, this edited collection is based on a 2006 conference in Amsterdam dedicated to her oeuvre. The volume is organized into three parts and bookended by an introduction and previously published, newly translated, or recently transcribed materials. The three sections focus on (i) vocal writing from a Western music composition point of view; (ii) vocal performance as a critical practice; and (iii) perspectives on Berberian's influence on vocal writing and performance from the point of view of the performer and singer-composer. The range of contributors reflects both the boundlessness of Berberian's artistry and the discursive power of her vocal and compositional work. Moreover, by curating a diverse set of texts, the editors have taken great care to illuminate the many aspects of Berberian's accomplishment. The contributors range from musicologists with specialisms in twentieth-century music, gender, opera, and electronics to composers and performers, some of whom worked directly with Berberian. Such a varied set of perspectives is immensely valuable when definitions of work, authorship, and style are at stake.

While the book's tripartite division addresses Berberian's oeuvre from diverse intellectual points of view, a few important themes unify the contributions. For example, Francesca Placanica, Rokus de Groot, and Hannah Bosma problematize and discuss the relationship between composer and singer in the context of intimate collaboration. The related issue of labour and value arises in a discussion of the performer who offers source sounds, possibly selects texts, and potentially offers such an indelible delivery that the written composition is thereafter inextricably connected to the live performance. Or, where the voice invites such complex vocal writing that the composer worries whether another singer can or will sing the music. In a letter to Louis Andriessen, Berberian recounts how Stravinsky had misgivings about writing for her ‘too-unique voice for fear that no one else would be able to perform it after she was gone’ (198). There is not only a question of vocal and performative versus written labour, but also one of gender dynamics, with ‘feminist re-reading’ (7) of Berberian's identity and impact on other performers forming another recurring theme (Placanica, Verstraete, de Groot, Bosma, Sivuoja-Kauppala, Karatonis, Norderval, Snapper, and Smith). Berberian's artistry as a Performer forms yet another theme, from her attire, relationships with fashion designers, and general interest in costumes and fashion (Sivuoja-Kauppala, Snapper); the staging of her performances; and her efforts to make contemporary classical music more inclusive through ‘salon recitals’ where she would talk with her audience between musical selections, sometimes from a chaise longue (Sivuoja-Kauppala, Karatonis, Meehan). Berberian's mission, Sivuoja-Kauppala notes, was to ‘“bring back fun and laughter to the concert stage”’ (128).

For the editors, and for some of the authors who dealt with issues related to work, authorship, and gender dynamics, a handful of theoretical works from the late twentieth century – by Edward T. Cone, Marcia J. Citron, Leslie C. Dunn, and Nancy A. Jones – served as a touchstone. This is relevant given some of this work's overlap with part of Berberian's concertizing period (which extended from, roughly, the 1970s to the 1990s). However, given that a large portion of Berberian's import is due to her influence on composers and singer-composers working beyond this period, the challenge for future Berberian research lies in understanding how her impact has been transformed as different sets of cultural, political, and economic situations arose.

Illustrations culled from the private archive of Berberian's daughter, Cristina Berio, and fellow performers Carol Plantamura and Candace Smith are invaluable additions to the volume. The figures include an illustrated text authored by Berberian (‘Creed’, xxvii), Louis Andriessen's arrangement of Lennon and McCartney's ‘Yesterday’, and a concert flyer. Especially valuable for the volume and further Berberian scholarhip are the transcriptions by Karatonis of Cathy's Solo Talk Show for KRO Dutch Radio, which capture part of the seventeen hours of taped 1979 conversations between Berberian and radio producer Frans van Rossum. The transcriptions offer a window into Berberian's wide-ranging cultural references, analysis of music culture and vocal humour.

With the growing interest in voice qua voice, not only in the service of a composition or other communicative and/or aesthetic form, in-depth work on vocal artists such as Berberian is much welcomed. As such, this volume is extremely timely in terms of the growing amount of relevant scholarship on sound and voice published over the last decade. Both newly translated (‘The New Vocality in Contemporary Music’ (1966) by Berberian, translated by Francesca Placanica; Sylvano Bussotti's ‘In Memoriam (Cathy Berberian)’, translated by John Satriano; ‘Allegory Actually. Cathy Berberian…’, translated by Placanica and Pamela Karatonis) and transcribed text (‘Cathy's Solo Talk Show’), as well as the newly written chapters, point towards many interesting areas for further Berberian scholarship. How might knowledge of her work be expanded by the new analytical perspectives, tools, and vocabulary now at hand? The editors note that the volume, largely prepared in 2013, marks the thirtieth anniversary of Berberian's passing (5). In celebration of her life and work, the authors rightly note her own contribution's freshness and novelty, perhaps slightly seduced by the title of her insightful essay, ‘The New Vocality’. However, what are written and oral vocal traditions if not based on and related to the abilities of the singers who will actually sing the music? Especially since Berberian herself was interested in a historically wide-ranging vocal repertoire, historical contextualization of her work through examination of renaissance characters like herself throughout music history would have added depth to the discussions.

Berberian plays with the classical as well as the popular music repertoire by re-arranging and re-imagining both Monteverdi and The Beatles on the same concert programme. In this way, she applies a kind of analogue recording, editing, and filtering of repertoire by selecting music for re-arranging, re-timbring, if you will, and re-contextualizing through new juxtapositions of genres, languages, and instrumentation. David Osmond-Smith's reprinted article from 2004, ‘The Tenth Oscillator: The Work of Cathy Berberian 1958–1966’, alludes to this vocal shape-shifting ability. Berio records Berberian and edits, cuts, filters and re-contextualizes the tape, while Cage simply gives her an open graphic score within which the singer is asked to select a number of different vocal styles (‘Aria for Mezzo Soprano’ and ‘Fontana Mix’). Thereafter, the colouring of the lines that indicate time and pitch serves as colour-coding for the different vocal styles.

We can think about Berberian's iconic performances of Cage as she herself selects ‘old tape’ – musical styles and voices she had absorbed and called upon for just such a compositional situation. Reflecting on Berberian's ability to reproduce such a wide range of musical styles, Meredith Monk describes her as a ‘“vocal photographer”’ (195). She also cut between and juxtaposed high and low culture. Notably, she brought popular music to the classical concert stage, but she also brought unexpected timbres to well-known and beloved repertoire. For example, it was said that she had been scheduled to sing the ‘Internationale’ in ‘Marilyn Monroe style’ to mark the centennial of Karl Marx's death on Italian television the day after her own death from a heart attack.

This volume is filled with new insights about Berberian, and offers a treasure trove of ideas for new scholarly research. But while it celebrates Berberian's vocal innovations, an expanded in-depth discussion that illuminated precisely how she contributed vocally or sonorously would be useful. Moreover, the collection features more celebration of her, and her colleagues’ appropriation of musical traditions and repertoire than critical analysis of the varying power dynamics at play. For example, Anne Sivuoja-Kauppala notes that Berberian made jokes about linguistic misunderstandings, and observes that the very programming of certain repertoire within a given linguistic context can be used as a joke. Berberian's German audiences laugh in reaction to her explanation of the phrase Deinen Schmerz und die Lust to her German audiences: ‘“You must know that in English, lust is a very naughty word”’ (135). Observations such as this about Berberian's play with and between musical styles, languages, and cultures are interesting, but they also beg for further and more detailed critical investigation into how Berberian's contemporaries might have heard her vocality within a broader cultural and political context.