Richard DingwallSinging Historian: A Memoir, by Edmund Bohan (Canterbury University Press, 2012), 236 pp., $30.
As an eight year old Edmund Bohan’s wanted to be both a singer and an historical writer. This is the story of how, by talent, hard work and self-belief, that childhood ambition was realised. It is full of detail and incident from the author’s life, but it lacks any sense of intellectual direction.
Edmund Bohan’s mother’s was eager for him to have the academic training that was denied her, and he gained entry to Canterbury University where he studied History. Her encouragement of his love of singing meant that by the time he graduated he was immediately able to embark on a career as a professional singer, a career that took him to Australia in the early 1960s, and then to Europe where he established himself as a reliable and popular concert tenor. He also sang opera, most notably with Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group and Kent Opera, but preferred to think of himself as a ‘general practitioner of singing’, able to take on a wide range of repertoire rather than specialising.
Bohan’s childhood, spent growing up in Christchurch and Invercargill, was a happy one – he had a close family who were supportive of his academic and musical aspirations. His mother was a Scots-born Protestant and his father a New Zealand Irish Roman Catholic. This so-called ‘mixed’ marriage was censured by both sides of what was seen as a religious divide. The censorious Irish nuns and the grim Irish priests of the New Zealand Roman Catholic Church were particularly unrelenting in their disapproval: when Bohan was not sent to a Catholic school his father had to forgo communion during those years that his son attended high school. This withdrawal of religious grace is a reminder of the chill provincialism of New Zealand in the immediate post-war years. Some writers have made careers out such material but Bohan, in this memoir at least, does not come across as a reflective man and we get no sense of how these tensions shaped him.
Bohan’s childhood, spent growing up in Christchurch and Invercargill, was a happy one – he had a close family who were supportive of his academic and musical aspirations. His mother was a Scots-born Protestant and his father a New Zealand Irish Roman Catholic. This so-called ‘mixed’ marriage was censured by both sides of what was seen as a religious divide. The censorious Irish nuns and the grim Irish priests of the New Zealand Roman Catholic Church were particularly unrelenting in their disapproval: when Bohan was not sent to a Catholic school his father had to forgo communion during those years that his son attended high school. This withdrawal of religious grace is a reminder of the chill provincialism of New Zealand in the immediate post-war years. Some writers have made careers out such material but Bohan, in this memoir at least, does not come across as a reflective man and we get no sense of how these tensions shaped him.
Bohan liked the London life – he was a professional musician based in England from 1964 to 1987 – and the central section of the book is full of shop talk: jobs secured, roles sung, who was good to work with who was not. We get names and dates, what he sang and with whom, the usual comic stage business – the sword that wouldn’t draw during Don Giovanni, the costume that disintegrates during a performance of Dido and Aeneas – but there are too many roles, too much detail. Sometimes we may suspect the writer of emptying his diary onto the pages: the name of his childhood cat, his favourite Laurel and Hardy movie, the first time he was stung by a bee, too much!
The year (1965) he spent working with Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group provides a welcome interlude for the reader. This was not a particularly happy time for Bohan, he did not enjoy the atmosphere at Aldeburgh and the sycophantic, court-like admiration of the great man – those cast from the inner circle were declared ‘dead’ – yet here at last the pace of the narrative slows down and we can all catch our breath. While finding Britten himself an unsympathetic figure, Bohan enjoyed singing many of his compositions, the Spring Symphony is his favourite (he found that the more he performed the War Requiem the less he liked it), and there is a generous portrait of Peter Pears whom Bohan describes as ‘a great artist’, suggesting in this phrase that Pears in performance could on occasion transcend considerations of technique, carrying the music and his audience to new heights. Has he ever experienced this as a performer? Perhaps, but he doesn’t tell us.
In parallel with his singing Bohan quickly developed a career as a broadcaster and writer, presenting a series of talks on musical themes for the NZBC, the ABC in Australia and the BBC. (Amongst his closest friends was the Scottish baritone Ian Wallace who became well known for his participation in the long running radio quiz My Music.) In the late 1960s he wrote several adventure stories for children achieving notable success with The Buckler (1972) set in the Scottish borders in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Flodden (1513). An engagement with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra lead to his family making a permanent move to New Zealand in 1987.
It was back in New Zealand that he returned to serious historical research. He published a series of historical biographies of nineteenth century politicians: on Edward Stafford (1994), on James Fitzgerald (1998), and on Sir George Grey (1998). In this he was highly successful and was twice a finalist in the Montana Book Awards – as well as being awarded a Stout Fellowship in 1995. At the same time he published a series of popular historical mystery novels featuring Detective Inspector O’Rorke, beginning with The Opawa Affair (1996).
Edmund Bohan is a man of admirable energy and enterprise (he mentions in passing as he leaves England for New Zealand that he was a partner in a wine business), but does not seem to have much time for reflection as he moves on to the next project. As a student at Canterbury he studied under the ‘much-feared’ Professor of History, Neville Phillips, whose ideas were shaped under the great British parliamentary historian Sir Lewis Namier, one who believed that political change arose from the individual concerns and interests of politicians rather than through the clash of ideas. Like his mentors, Bohan is a ‘facts’ man and at one point he describes some friendly rivalry between himself and the noted historian Keith Sinclair: Auckland versus Christchurch, facts versus ideology. Yet as a details man and a musical historian one would have expected Bohan to correctly spell the name of the pianist Michael Houstoun.
Bohan deplores what he sees as ideology in historical research. While showing a grudging admiration for James Belich’s work on the New Zealand Wars, he discounts what he sees as the narrow focus of much New Zealand historical research. In his own general history the Climates of War which deals with the years 1859–1869 he is at pains to show a continuity with what was happening elsewhere in the British Empire. Intellectually, this is a respectable argument. However, the weakness in his system is that it cannot always winnow out the important facts from the chaff of day-to-day living, however fascinating. One last example will serve. There are five pages devoted to the sea journey to England in 1963. There is a thumbnail portrait of Aden in Southern Sudan during the last years of British occupation, there is a shipwreck when their sister ship Lakonia catches fire with 128 dead (some survivors join their ship at Madeira), and there are fancy dress parades.
In fact, none of these particular events – be they great, dramatic or trivial – contribute insights into his personal journey as a musician or a historian, or serve to increase to our enjoyment of the design of his memoir.
RICHARD DINGWALL is a Dunedin writer and musician. He was formerly a regular arts columnist and reviewer for the Otago Daily Times.
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