There was a letter in the Church Times this week lamenting the increasing presence of girls in Cathedral choirs.
The correspondent went on to regret the redundancy of the boy soprano voice and the loss of it's 'unique' sound. He also said that the male alto will also soon be replaced by the female chorister.

It seems to me that the boy soprano and male alto as a species will only become redundant if they stop offering themselves for the choir.
What exactly is so 'unique' about a boy's voice compared to that of a girl? Can anyone really tell the difference because I don't think I can.

I'd be interested in the views of people on here who manage choirs because the church/cathedral choirmaster may have priorities somewhat different from someone who runs a recreational choral ensemble.

Personally I would admit a singing hedghog to our choir if they were willing to make up the numbers and could read - I'd even make them a red robe to match the others, so you will understand I am a bit bewildered as to why an all-male choir is seen as the ideal. (Unless it is just tradition, again.)

There is a definite difference in a boys voice. From a purely biological point of view, the shape and strength of the chords are different to a female child. It's not surprising that the most prestigious choirs are all male. Even the girl choristers at Salisbury and Wells are only offered a minimal award. That is not to say that a girls voice is not as good but the particular sound a boy treble makes is better for sacred hymns.

We live in a culture where singing is deemed to be a feminine pastime and the only way to recruit boys is via financial incentive. Most parish churches cannot offer financial incentives large enough to attract boys. There are also limited opportunities, sometimes none, in small churches for choristers to sing in concerts or other events and if this was on offer, via the choral director networking, then there may be more recruitment.

I’m not sure your point about financial incentive being the only motivating factor to recruit boys to choirs is true. Most of the boys I’ve met at the choir so far (OK, it hasn’t been long, and I haven’t met them all yet) are there because they really love singing and want to do it for it’s own sake. The financial incentive may well be meaningful to their parents, but the drive to do it in the first place mostly seems to have come from the boys themselves.

I think the people who dislike the idea of female choristers are probably from the same camp who don’t like female clergy - yes, the sound is subtly different with boys and girls, but surely it just comes down to personal preference and tradition?

No it isn't.

Recruitment is about a lot more than financial incentive.

For a start a tradition helps. Following this it's essential that the whole church (anywhere) community overtly supports and treasures their choir. This must be set by the senior clergy all the way through to the most recent member of the congregation.

From this network there needs to be a matrix of people who will give of their time to support the choir and especially younger choristers in activities, and by providing care and supervision. Too many churches fall at this hurdle by imagining that it can all be left to one person - the choir director. It can't, though leadership comes from him or her, and he or she is responsible for the whole endeavour.

All of that matrix need to be dynamic, alert to changing needs and opportunities for engaging young choristers.

............ But it is different! Boys voices have a crystal clarity which few girls have, but that is not to say that girls voices are inferior - just different!

As for boys (or girls for that matter) joining church choirs, most that I know of have been put off by the adults in the choir, who simply don't want the status quo disrupted by 'newcomers'.

SB

There are other factors including less people at church and most boys team sports training happening at 10am on a Sunday morning.



I disagree!

'
There is no such thing as a typical 'boy's voice and therefore neither a boy's nor a girl's voice is especially suitable for sacred music.' Experiments have shown, beyond all doubt, that even experts cannot tell the difference between boys and girls singing.

Moreover, there has been a huge change in the way boys have been taught to sing over the past seventy or so years. Stephen Beet's superb recordings show this.

Regrettably, the 'Campaign For The Defence Of The Traditional Cathedral Choir' has done immense damage to the concept of boys singing in choirs by its rather in appropriate focus of a particular type of tone of recent development.

Sports on a Sunday morning do affect the availability of boys to sing in choirs, but there are many other factors that influence the existence and success of all male choirs. The issues cannot be reduced to one or two matters. It is very complex.

I get very worried indeed by the attention paid by some of the protagonists of all male choirs to the 'innocence' of the boy soprano'. It seems quite unhealthy.

Barry Williams

Err yes. We have had experience of this, although not in a choral setting.

I have to say I did wonder about the motives behind this particular item given past experience.

SB

This is true. I think I can tell the difference on the radio between, say, the Salisbury girls and the boys most of the time and the same - and the same with other cathedrals that have teams of both - but I wouldn't want to bet money on it. Either way, they sound so alike that it just isn't worth getting aerated about what little difference in tone there might be.

Please tell more!

Nicely put - and you're not the only one.

One is perfectly entitled to prefer boys over girls, or vice versa, but there is no case for claiming that one is better than the other and, since there is so little difference, to claim a preference on purely musical grounds does seem to me rather irrational. Both boys' and girls' top lines are perfectly viable.

Of course the real tragedy is that there is no scope for the average parish church to have two different top lines as some cathedrals do.

One must admit, though, that the point about male altos is a very good one. If you haven't got boys, where are you going to get a male alto line? Here I think there is a very real difference between male and female. In English church music all the alto parts up to at least the end of the nineteenth century (and, of course, many beyond) were written to be sung by a voice high in its tessitura (not necessarily a falsettist). An ATB verse with the top part sung by a voice confined to a lower tessitura while the tenor and bass sing in a much higher tessitura never sounds satisfactory - and can't.

I'm reassured that my hearing is not at fault, and I'm not guilty of Philistinism. S Beet was unknown to me until the weekend when, as I'm sure you know, he wrote the letter to the CT.

I do rather suspect that it is a case of preferring what one knows, and getting a fuzzy glow at the sight of choirboys in their ruffs and avuncular basses and tenors.

I've just seen VH's point about male altos. How long can a male remain an alto or is it a specific voice type? I presume it's not just an interval when a soprano is on his way to becoming a tenor/bass if my memory of my sons' breaking voices is reliable.(Not that they ever sang!)

Is it fair to imply that mixing girls' voices with boys' will somehow contaminate the sound quality? To me it sounds like misogyny but I have never trained a boys' choir (or any proper choir, come to that.)

Again, there are complex issues here for male altos do not sing in quite the same way that they did years ago. Some interesting scientific studies were done on the difference between male altos and counter tenors, concluding that there was only a difference in style, not voice.

It is possible to gain some (only some!) impression of the tone of singing in Tudor times from the paintings. It was probably very different to present day style and technique.

Mr Vox Humana's point about tessitura is significant and this is the type of constructive criticism that makes this discussion worthwhile - unlike the 'Campaign For The Defence Of The Traditional Cathedral Choir', whose writing,s by and large, lack scientific basis.

Barry Williams

I don't know if it's misogyny, after all women rule the world and are rapidly taking over mens roles in most areas. It would be nice if some traditions could be maintained and male culture valued music more. It's not surprising that the specialist music schools are also girl heavy and on the whole teenage male music tends to only get as far as bass guitar, saxophone or drum kit.

I'm sure I couldn't tell the difference between a choir of boy trebles and one with girls of a similar age but surely there is a difference if the girls are older? I gather girls in Winchester (as an example) stay until the age of 17. I would have thought a choir of mainly 16 and 17 yr old girls would sound very different from a choir of 10 - 11 yr olds (whether boys or girls).

I think the answer to that is that they can do. They don't have to. I've heard ex-cathedral girls of that age do a perfectly heavenly Stanford in G as pure-toned as any boy - and then, in a different environment, produce a perfectly fine operatic soprano. A properly trained voice should be able to produce different types of tone at will.

Have to disagree here MNW - there are also many different types of boys' and girls' voices! And aside from that each "major" choir seems to have its own sound...

The emphasis here must be on the words 'properly trained'. and applies to both boys and girls, as well as adults.

Very few choirmasters have had training themselves as singers and this can (and often does) lead to the most unfortunate results. It is not sufficient to watch someone else training choirs. Personal training as a singer is essential for any choir trainer. Much harm has been done to voices by organists who think that the acquisition of ARCO or FRCO, LRAM or ARCM, etc., in just organ playing, qualifies them to train choirs.

Good singing is good singing, irrespective of where is it delivered. There is no such thing as 'church ' singing, just singing. The different types of tone relate to different styles, not places.

Barry Williams

Barry Williams

Of course they do. I find it strange that there is a dispute in this. As vocal chords grow, develop, change and strengthen a different sound is produced. Many conservatoires prefer to offer places to female singers above the standard entry age because the female voice does not normally fully develop until the age of 25.

Actually, my experience is the exact opposite... so there you go!

When I hear a girl of age 7-12 sing, on the whole, it sounds like a little girls voice whereas a trained boy chorister sounds like a wonderful instrument. Of course there are exceptions.

Glad to be vindicated by an expert!


Actually, where I live football matches are on Saturdays for the under-12s, so it doesn't affect too many boy choristers. Rugby and cricket are Sundays... except when they're not. Tradition is a pain in the backside in sports as well (you talk to any Rugby parent about why they can't play on Saturdays and all you get is "because they have always played on Sundays") - it's not just the CofE that's hidebound!





Maybe you've never heard a trained 7-12 year old.

Nor does a male's. I will always remember getting into conversation with a singer during my first weeks at the RCM. I asked him what voice he was. His answer surprised me: "I don't know; my teacher hasn't decided yet." That, as I learnt, is not so very unusual. Also, it isn't just singers, female or otherwise, who are able to enter at an age "above the standard entry age". Plenty of students do - so long as they are able to pay the fees!

The British male alto voice is just a highly developed falsetto. Nothing more, nothing less. It makes no difference whether it is the fat hoot that many of us oldies will remember from the old altos of our youth, or the cleaner, more edgy tone in the Alfred Deller tradition. They are all falsettists. (There are a very few high tenors on the concert circuit who have no difficulty taking lowish alto parts, but they are not choral altos in the sense under discussion.)
The RCO are rather under the impression that their CHM diploma qualifies you though.
But just what is the "traditional" cathedral choir? Is it the situation prior to c.1460 when any polyphony was sung only by three or four professional, adult, male soloists and everyone else just sang plainsong? Is it the choirs of the Tudors, confined to boys, tenors, baritones and basses (no falsettists in their choirs), with men regularly drunk, all singing as loudly as possible (so Thomas Morley hints) with probably no attempt at balance and blend? Or is it the choirs of the nineteenth century: still no concept of standards as we understand them, the men turning up only when they felt like it, everyone still "bawling" (as one would-be reformer put it) their heads off and the organist drowning the choir without any notion of forming a musical entity with them - and, in at least one case, taking high umbrage should anyone try to persuade him otherwise?

Yes, churches do have a long tradition of all-male choirs, but as far as refined musical standards go, then these are only a relatively recent notion, dating back no further than John Stainer's reforms at St Paul's at best.

I've just had a quick look at the CDTCC site and it does seem to be very soft-focus in its outlook. It seems to base the notion of the 'taditional' church choir as having evolved from Levite men and boys' choirs singing psalms in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem from the time of Herod. For many of us it will conjure up a picture of something from the time of Stanford and Howells.

The site contains an article on this very topic i.e is there a difference in the sound of boys' and girls' voices, and it may well make interesting reading when I have the time. It is unlikely to be on the site unless it supports the thesis and it will be interesting to see how they measure the quality of the sound. Even if thy do uncover an empirical difference, how can it conclude which is 'better'?

By mixing boy and girls choristers' voices, will it muddy the sound? If so many of us fail to tell the difference between them then what is the point of tradition? Does it echo some monastic ideal?

The biggest threat, possibly is that when girls take part in something, the boys flee. It may be observed when female clergy are appointed; many men in the pews vote with their feet.

Hi all,

I sing in a local church choir (Holy Trinity Guildford) and we have just created a girls top line, as well as a boys line. This has actually improved things like attendances as, rather than doing two services every week, the boys only really do one. Furthermore, by having more practice time on fewer pieces, standards have gone up! We also occasionally have services of ATB alone and the youth choir. I know not every parish has these possibilities, but surely spreading the load could help in sustaining all types of church singing?

Nick Graham

Hello, Nick

How interesting! I had actually been pondering how practical having two top lines would be in a parish situation. How do you work it? Do the boys always sing, say, the morning service and the girls the evening, or do you have a system of alternation?

too many jokes...

A distinguished cathedral organist (now retired) told me that the main difference between the boys and girls choirs was that, after a long rehearsal, the boys would go and play football whereas, the girls asked for another rehearsal!

It is not at all uncommon for singing teachers to decide that a voice is not what it first seemed. That happened to me. I took several bass arias to my first singing lesson, only to find that I was a high tenor. (It was a huge disappointment!)

A friend of mine, long since passed away, went to the Guildhall School of Music in 1912, aged sixteen years. She was not permitted to have her first singing lesson until she was almost twenty years old. (The earlier years were spent on musicianship, ear tests, sight singing, etc.) It was thought then that twenty was plenty early enough to start vocal training.

I do encourage Board Members to listen to the CDs produced by Stephen Beet. ('The Better Land'.) There are about six CDs, all re-mastered recordings of boys from the 1920s to the late 1950s and not all church singers. A few of the 'boys' are still around and conversation with them is most interesting. The striking feature of these recordings is that none of these boys sang in the current church style. They tend, by and large, to sound like little Italian tenors with impressive technique and huge volume, not to mention significant muscianship. Quite a few earned money in theatres and revues as solists in their own right.

All this shows that the present trend for a sound akin to the onomatopoeic craving for a dove is a thoroughly modern phenomenon.

It can also be observed by comparing the older recordings of Kings College Cambridge (under Boris Ord) to the late recordings under David Willcocks. A similar comparison can be made between the Temple Church Choir under the late Sir George Thalben-Ball and under John Birch's direction.

Examination of paintings of singers in Tudor times suggests that the singing technique then was very different and that the tone was probably rather harse and nasal. Of course, we will never actually know, though some pundits opine on the matter with certainty!

There are good reasons for having boys and girls a separate top lines in many circumstances, but I have never read or heard any cogent argument on this from the protagonists in 'The Campaign' whose approach seems entirely based on an emotional stance. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)

I worry about the willingness of organists to undertake choir training with children. Whilst the child protection rules protect adults from false accusations, school teachers in particular have found that one fals accusation can wreck a career, notwithstanding the paucity of evidence. (It is almost impossible to get an entry removed from a CRB these days.) Such issues affect all work with children, not just musical activities and is sad.

Nick Graham's account of the work at Guildford is exciting and represents a positive way forward with an increase in standards. Approaching the issue in that way is surely best, when there are sufficient children to permit separate top lines.

Barry Williams

physiologically there is nothing different between boy trebles and girl trebles. Stick a scope down their naso-pharnangeal tract ans start taking measurements and from those measurements you can not tell the difference. Even the trace amounts of testosterone that boys produce at various ages prior to puberty art unlikely to affect their vocal quality.

The big change happens at transition when the male pharangeal tract grows longer the folds grow substantially more and men develop an 'adams apple' whilst women do not.

The choir training that trebles get means they sound different across the world too. There are some girls choirs that sound more masculine than some all boys choirs. The Vienna Boys Choir typically produces a more feminised sound due to their choral tradition than what might happen to be in the water.

The introduction of Girls Choirs is just a result of the demand on the behalf of girls who would like to be involved in Cathedral Music.

As for the counter-tenor sound it is completely different from the Contralto/Mezzo Soprano sound as it is a Male Falsetto rather than a deep female voice. It blends differently with men and works well with trebles (boys and girls) and the developed soprano voice in a completely different way to the Contralto/Mezzo Soprano.

I would not want to see it lost from English Cathedrals since so much repertoire was written specifically for it and sounds wrong when sung by women altos as the harmonics are in the wrong place.

As for trained sopranos singing music originally written for trebles, this can be done successfully, however the sopranos need to remember to aim for clarity.

Trebles will always have a place. The really good ones do have a clarity and I believe that a girl can be trained to have that clarity. She would have to be very dedicated and have just as good an ear as her male counterpart.

I was with you until this bit, but it is interesting to read about the physiology and to have a singing teachers' perspective. Never did quite understand about harmonics.

I'm not saying never, just that in Quires and Places where they sing in the great cathedrals that things like Purcell Anthems sound completely different when sung by male alto, tenor and bass rather than contralto, tenor and bass, and that as the blend that Purcell wrote for did not include women but did include male altos, then long live our Cathedral Tradition complete with Counter-tenors.

What goes on in other places where quires sing is up to them. The harmonics are going to be different as women are singing using full voice whereas counter-tenors are baritones singing falsetto.

Thank you, Jod, for this superb analysis and your thoroughly professional comments. You may join me as an honorary non-member of 'The Campaign'. (I have received 'hate mail' from those people!)

Barry Williams

No hate mail from me! Everyone has there own opinions on the matter, even if you're all WRONG!

To be honest, it is quite experimental this year as the girls are in the process of learning a whole new load of repertoire! The plan though, I believe is to have boys and girls both singing 3 times a month (2 mornings/one evening or vice versa) and then having 1/2 ATB services if needed. Generally it would be one service a week but this may be changed if the choirs prefer having alternate sundays 'off'! There is a different person in charge of boys/girls so they rehearse concurrently in different spaces with adults switching between them. Or at least this is how it should work!

Nick

I suspect you're spot on. Far better then to keep them separate.

I should hope so. It always sounds so insipid sung by a boy. Give me a dramatic soprano any day - preferably singing it in German. Of course, nothing can rescue the awful complacency of that "dove" section. Mendelssohn really didn't understand what the psalmist was about there, did he?

If they're that keen they'll stick around...

Of course. But how many will be that keen?

In a similar vein, my girls play in a small local string orchestra on Saturdays. There are about 12 children aged about 11-14. Only one is a boy. Most of them have grown up playing together and he doesn't seem to mind, but I can imagine it would put other boys off. Similarly, I don't think my girls would want to be the only girls in an otherwise boys' orchestra.

Yes, but the original version was for a tenor soloist, not a boy soprano.

Barry Williams

Well, well. I didn't know that!

This is an interesting discussion.

We are members of the "Friends of Cathedral Music" and attended a gathering in York Minster a few days ago. Both Precentor (Peter Moger) and Director of Music (Robert Sharpe) were very clear in their policy that the Minster has one choir, but that choir has two treble lines: one of boys and one of girls, which are totally equivalent. The Director of Music is responsible for training both top lines, although he has a lot of help.

The weekend workload expected of the top line of such a choir is tremendous if there was only one group, so they alternate and have what they call "heavy" and "light" weekends. On a heavy weekend, one line sings Evensong on Saturday and the two morning services on Sunday, while the other line sings Evensong on Sunday. This allows parents to plan other activities around choir committments and is much appreciated.

Very few cathedrals now have only one top line of boys. Hereford is one I know something about, as FCM had a gathering there last October. Geraint Bowen said then that would love to have a second top line of girls (his previous post was in St Davids which has a mixed top line), but Hereford doesn't have the resources in terms of space and money to finance someone to train the girls.

FCM does have some members who are also vocal members of the 'Campaign For The Defence Of The Traditional Cathedral Choir'. I firmly support the opportunities for girls, so ended up having a spirited discussion with a member of the 'Campaign' in York. (He said he would walk out of the Sunday evensong if the girls were singing. The girls were on a "heavy" weekend, so he didn't!) He did acknowledge that the York girls were the best group he had heard.

I am still deeply resentful that the doors opened by choral scholarships were firmly closed to me and my sister purely on gender grounds.

Not quite sure I'd say I was resentful about closed doors but I would have loved to have sung in our local cathedral choir and to have had the training and developed the skills that would have gone with it.

Just born 40 years too late!

Very hard to know what to do for the best if you have children of both genders - do you give the boys the chance to be a chorister if they are able and your local cathedral only takes boys?

So that's where Peter Moger has ended up. His wife is an extremely fine recorder player. Not only is Peter a priest, but he also knows quite a bit about music. Ely Diocese were sad to see him leave. I would have loved to have sung in a Cathedral Choir, sadly in the 1970s and 1980s there were not the opportunities available that there are now.

Given my vocal quality as a treble and range at the age of 12 I'd like to have found the lad who could have sung a better Allegri Miserere even at John's choir. Most Ash Wednesday even the one picked cracks one top C yet mine was solid. Maybe the Traditionalists should be aware that just as there are exceptional boys there are exceptional girls. Unfortunately for too many years we have been kept out of the limelight.

And - where do you send your daughter to get the tuition from age 7 that will get her into the girls' choir at 13?

Someone I know recently got into a Cathedral girls' choir at 13. She'd had singing lessons and had sung in her school choir (girls' independent), but I don't think had any experience of a church type choir.

This is not just a cathedral problem. There are still quite a few parish church choirs that struggle to maintain a 'boys only' top line and are rather rude to any girls who dare to ask if they might sing too.

The boys choir 'thing' often attracts vociferous support and a slightly worrying attitude: "...
so ended up having a spirited discussion with a member of the 'Campaign' in York. He said he would walk out of the Sunday evensong if the girls were singing." (Quote from Barry Toner, earlier today.) Regrettably, this sort of thing is still far too common and has a slightly unhealthy 'feel' about it.

It seems, generally, to be wrong for a parish church to turn away the children of its own members from singing in the choir purely on the grounds of gender, unless provision is made for then to sing separately, as is done at Croydon Parish Church, for example and at Guildford, as Nick has already written.

Some years ago in a local parish rather musical boy and girl twins of a church family wished to join the choir. The organist & choirmaster said (very rudely) that there was never, ever, a place for girls to sing in churches, so the family left the church. They were made welcome elsewhere - actually the whole family joined the choir in their new church. It was as much the way in which they were spoken to as anything else -somewhat in the same way as happened to Barry Toner in York. (The organist & choirmaster was also of that ilk, though he has now been replaced.)

All of this is very worrying and does nothing to maintain the music of the church.

There is more to being in a traditional cathedral choir, for it is the whole ethos of the place, the education, the team spirit, far more than can ever happen even in a large parish church. Is it right to deny the girls the opportunity? I think not and Richard Seal showed the way at Salisbury, where the girls have enhanced rather than diminshed the musical tradition. (Perhaps someone will recount for us the lovely Spur Money story of the girl head chorister at Salisbury.)

Barry Williams

Please! Words have genders, people have s.ex. Where do you send the average 7 year old girl to get the right sort of vocal training? There are some singing teachers around that understand the treble voice both in boys and girls who when asked to teach with a view to producing choristers rather than singers who want to sing for fun are quite able to do the job.

What is a necessary pre-requisite is that they understand the physiology of the children's voice so that they do no harm. Selecting suitable repertoire is a doddle as the RSCM produce lots of training material, hymn books are a good place to start as are unison anthem settings provided the range is appropriate.

As with all singing training the teacher needs to use their ears. Some Parish Organists have the know-how. However you are better using a singing specialist with an understanding of the Church Choral Tradition and Children's Voices. Even St Paul's Cathedral consults Jenevora Williams about this matter. She is a singing teacher and not and Organist and now advises the Sing-up Programme.