The Voice: A Memoir

The Voice is the profoundly inspiring memoir of one of the most sought after and admired classical singers in the world--a man who has arrived at the summit of his artistry by overcoming extraordinarily daunting odds.

Thomas Quasthoff, the German bass baritone, stands a shade over four feet tall, his severely underdeveloped arms and hands the result of thalidomide poisoning while he was in his mother's womb. But through stunning determination enlivened by an impish sense of human, Quasthoff has overcome his physical limitations and Dickensian childhood, cultivating his musical genius and thrilling classical music lovers with his sublime voice.

What shines through Quasthoff's astonishing story is his staunch refusal to wallow in self-pity, to see himself as a victim. Whether he is evoking a harrowing childhood marked by multiple agonizing surgeries, relating folksy family anecdotes, expressing his devotion to his students as a professor of voice, expounding on his love of jazz and American popular music (he is a great admirer of Stevie Wonder), or unburdening himself of his wickedly outspoken views on art and disability, Quasthoff's unerring sense of humanity, boisterous conviviality, and fierce honesty are always on display.

The Voice is utterly winning--a memoir to both marvel at and enjoy.

"In November 1959, Quasthoff's parents were completely unprepared to welcome into the world a child born with birth defects. One of thousands of German mothers to have taken thalidomide during her pregnancy to ease morning sickness, Quasthoff's mother gave birth to a young boy who, according to the doctors, looked just like a young seal with flippers for hands and crippled feet. The doctors told his parents that young Tommy would never be able to walk, but Quasthoff's inspiring memoir is a story of steely determination and a paean to the human spirit. With lively humor and unerring honesty, Quasthoff energetically regales readers with the challenges he faced growing up as well as his many triumphs as one of the world's most famous classical singers. His parents refused to treat his disabilities as a barrier to his success and taught him to walk, supported him through boarding school, lobbied on his behalf with music teachers and applauded his success when he debuted at Lincoln Center. Discovering his love of music during his boarding school days, Quasthoff, with the help of his parents, built a career as a bass-baritone lied singer, who also sings jazz, and he continued to teach voice and to perform upwards of 40 concerts a year around the world. Quasthoff's splendid memoir is not simply about overcoming the odds but about the power of music and one man's loving tribute to his powerful instrument. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Since Thomas Quasthoff is a concert baritone by profession, the appropriate metaphor to describe this invigorating memoir might be to say that he strikes one clear note, and then holds it. The note is at once jaunty and pedantic (he is a teacher as much as a singer). Quasthoff — who is almost 50 — is an extremely successful interpreter of German lieder. He's been in a few operas, won three Grammys... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) and has been awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit. He also was born a thalidomide baby.

This narrative could have moved in a dozen different ways. But it is, as I said, jaunty. Its first and last chapters refer to wonderful German restaurant-bars. In the first, Quasthoff and his brother Michael discuss whether it's worth it for Thomas to write his autobiography as they down rounds of pilsner like thirsty anacondas. Why not, Michael jests, ironically. "Thalidomide victim who was denied admission to the Music Academy sings his way from body cast to Grammy. What a story! It has everything: intense childhood, battle against the monster bureaucracy, drama, love, insanity. Finally, triumph in America, the land of limitless possibility! The republic can always use success stories."

All this is laid out for us in the first two pages, and it tells the reader several things. First, we won't have our hearts broken — far from it. Second, we won't have to sit around and be inspired. Third, after what must have been some trying times, these brothers are still close friends. And fourth, we're going to find out, from the inside, what it's like to live the life of a concert singer.

The next chapter begins, not with the "intense childhood," but the night before Quasthoff's debut, in 1998, with the New York Philharmonic. Thomas, Michael and Michael's girlfriend took on the town. They stayed up half the night in their hotel, drinking and joking, and the next morning ate pastrami sandwiches for breakfast at the Carnegie Deli because Woody Allen goes there. Thomas was already well enough known that people asked him for his autograph. He's not hard to recognize. Here's how he describes himself as he stood that morning on a footstool at the hotel bathroom sink: "A four-foot three-inch concert singer without knee joints, arms, or upper thighs, with only four fingers on the right hand and three on the left. He has a receding hairline, a blond pig head, and a few too many pounds around his hips, and he is in a superb mood. All he needs now is a shave."

Then came the concert, which was a tremendous success. He needed a particular podium, a couple of steps and a chair. "Well do I recall," he remembers, "the many nights I had to focus on maintaining my balance atop a stack of fruit crates while trying not to wake the cultural official snoring blissfully in the first row." This night was different. His singing colleague, Inger Dam-Jensen, was superb; the musicians and their conductor were marvelous. And Quasthoff was terrific. There were seven curtain calls. Then he endured the physical drudgery of shaking hands with hundreds of patrons of the arts. And then the original three — Thomas, his brother and that girlfriend — escaped, first to a Chinese restaurant, ending the evening at the Tavern on the Green. Triumph, indeed.

So later in the book, Quasthoff's recollections of a childhood trapped in a body cast are not so killingly sad. Nor is learning how his mother taught him to walk by offering him chocolate. Nor how his father taught him to fall in such a way that he wouldn't hurt himself. Nor the years in a special school for the disabled, where a sadistic matron dealt with unruly children by strapping them to their beds and leaving them in freezing hallways — until one of them died. Nor when his entire high school glee club sneaked off on a field trip without him. Nor when his fellow law school students left him to fend for himself in the cafeteria when he couldn't reach the silverware. Nor when the head of the music academy wouldn't admit him because the school required students to be proficient in two instruments, and Quasthoff's voice was his one and only instrument.

Yes, he was disabled, but he had this great voice and great learning and great strength. "The Voice" is filled with concert-tour stories, explications of lieder-texts and guarded accounts of several of his girlfriends. He frames his disability in his own terms. The author refuses to give value to suffering. He saves his attention for art and fun and work, which makes this book a joy to read.

Reviewed by Carolyn See, who can may be reached at www.carolynsee.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Thomas Quasthoff was born in 1959 in Hildesheim, Germany. In 1988 he won first prize as the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich, which launched his career. He has performed with the world's most distinguished orchestras and conductors (including Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle). He has won three Grammy Awards: for best classical Vocal Performance in 2000, for his Bach cantatas and Schubert lieder in 2004, and for Best Choral Performance in 2008 for Brahms's Ein Duetsches Requiem. Quasthoff is a professor at the Hans Eisler School of Music in Berlin. He performs and records throughout the world.