THE BOY CHOIR AND ITS PROBLEMS
[Sidenote: THE PROBLEMS]
The two special problems connected with directing a boy choir are:
1. Becoming intimately acquainted with the compass,
registers, possibilities, and limitations of the boy's
voice.
2. Finding out how to manage the boys themselves so as to
keep them good-natured, well-behaved, interested, and hard
at work.
To these two might be added a third--namely, the problem of becoming
familiar with the liturgy of the particular church in which the choir
sings, since male choirs are to be found most often in liturgical
churches. But since this will vary widely in the case of different
sects, we shall not concern ourselves with it, but will be content
with giving a brief discussion of each of the other points.
[Sidenote: PECULIARITIES OF THE CHILD VOICE]
The child voice is not merely a miniature adult voice, but is an
instrument of quite different character. In the first place, it is not
nearly so individualistic in timbre as the adult voice, and because of
the far greater homogeneity of voice quality that obtains in
children's singing, it is much easier to secure blending of tone, the
effect being that of one voice rather than of a number of voices in
combination. This is a disadvantage from the standpoint of variety of
color in producing certain emotional effects, but it is in some ways
an advantage in the church service, especially in churches where the
ideal is to make the entire procedure as impersonal and formal as
possible. In the second place, the child voice is good only in the
upper register--the chest tones being throaty, unpleasant, and
frequently off pitch. In the third place, the child voice is immature,
and his vocal organs are much more likely to be injured by
overstraining. When directed by a competent voice trainer, however,
the effect of a large group of children singing together is most
striking, and their pure, fresh, flutelike tones, combined with the
appearance of purity and innocence which they present to the eye,
bring many a thrill to the heart and not infrequently a tear to the
eye of the worshiper.
[Sidenote: THE BOY VOICE IN THE CHURCH CHOIR]
In many European churches, and in a considerable number in the United
States, it is customary to have boys with unchanged voices sing the
soprano part, men with trained falsetto voices (called male altos)
taking the alto,[32] while the tenor and bass parts are, of course,
sung by men as always. Since the child voice is only useful when the
tones are produced with relaxed muscles, and since the resonance
cavities have not developed sufficiently to give the voice a great
deal of power, it is possible for a few men on each of the lower parts
to sing with from twenty to thirty boys on the soprano part. Six
basses, four tenors, and four altos will easily balance twenty-five
boy sopranos, if all voices are of average power.
[Footnote 32: In many male choirs the alto part is sung by boys; but
this does not result in a fine blending of parts, because of the fact,
as already noted in the above paragraph, that the boy's voice is good
only in its upper register. It may be of interest to the reader to
know that in places where there are no adult male altos, these voices
may be trained with comparative ease. All that is needed is a baritone
or bass who has no particular ambitions in the direction of solo
singing (the extensive use of the falsetto voice is detrimental to the
lower tones); who is a good reader; and who is willing to vocalize in
his falsetto voice a half hour a day for a few months. The chief
obstacle that is likely to be encountered in training male altos is
the fact that the men are apt to regard falsetto singing as
effeminate.]
[Sidenote: THE NECESSITY OF BEING A VOICE TRAINER]
There is one difference between the mixed choir of adult voices and
the boy choir that should be noted at the outset by the amateur. It is
that, in the former, the choir leader is working with mature men and
women, most of whom have probably learned to use their voices as well
as they ever will; but in directing a boy choir, the sopranos must be
taught not only the actual music to be sung at the church service,
but, what is much more difficult, they must be trained in the
essentials of correct breathing, tone placement, _et cetera_, from the
ground up. Hence the absolute necessity of the choirmaster being a
voice specialist. He need not have a fine solo voice, but he must know
the essentials of good singing, and must be able to demonstrate with
his own voice what he means by purity of vowel, clearness of
enunciation, _et cetera_. These things are probably always best taught
by imitation, even in the case of adults; but when dealing with a
crowd of lively American boys, imitation is practically the only
method that _can_ be used successfully. We shall not attempt to give
information regarding this highly important matter in the present
volume, because it is far too complex and difficult to be taken up in
anything short of a treatise and because, moreover, the art of singing
cannot be taught in a book. The student who is ambitious to become the
director of a boy choir is advised, first, to study singing for a
period of years, and second, to read several good books upon the
training of children's voices. There are a number of books of this
character, some of the best ones being included in the reference list
in Appendix A (p. 164).
[Sidenote: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE VOICES OF BOYS AND GIRLS]
The child's larynx grows steadily up to the age of about six, but at
this time growth ceases, and until puberty the vocal cords, larynx,
and throat muscles develop in strength and flexibility, without
increasing appreciably in size. This means that from six until the
beginning of adolescence the voice maintains approximately the same
range, and that this is the time to train it as a _child voice_.
The question now arises, why not use the girl's voice in choirs as
well as the boy's?--and the answer is threefold. In the first place,
certain churches have always clung to the idea of the _male_ choir,
women being refused any participation in what originally was strictly
a priestly office; in the second place, the girl arrives at the age of
puberty somewhat earlier than the boy, and since her voice begins to
change proportionately sooner, it is not serviceable for so long a
period, and is therefore scarcely worth training as a child voice
because of the short time during which it can be used in this
capacity; and in the third place, the boy's voice is noticeably more
brilliant between the ages of seven or eight and thirteen or fourteen,
and is therefore actually more useful from the standpoint of both
power and timbre. If it were not for such considerations as these, the
choir of girls would doubtless be more common than the choir of boys,
for girls are much more likely to be tractable at this age, and are in
many ways far easier to deal with than boys.
At the age of six, the voices of boys and girls are essentially alike
in timbre; but as the boy indulges in more vigorous play and work, and
his muscles grow firmer and his whole body sturdier, the
voice-producing mechanism too takes on these characteristics, and a
group of thirty boys ten or twelve years old will actually produce
tones that are considerably more brilliant than those made by a group
of thirty girls of similar age.
[Sidenote: THE COMPASS OF THE CHILD VOICE]
To the novice in the handling children's voices, the statement that
the typical voice of boys and girls about ten years of age easily
reaches a´´ and frequently b´´ or c´´´ [music notation] will at first
seem unbelievable. This is nevertheless the case, and the first thing
to be learned by the trainer of a boy choir is therefore to keep the
boys singing high, beginning with the higher tones [music notation]
and vocalizing downward, instead of _vice versa_. The main reason for
the necessity of this downward vocalization is what is known as the
_movable break_. In an adult voice, the change from a low register to
a higher one always takes place at approximately the same place in the
scale; but the child's voice is immature, his vocal organs have not
formed definitely established habits, and the chest register is often
pushed upward to c´´, d´´, or even e´´ [music notation]. This is
practically always done in singing an ascending scale loudly, and the
result is not only distressing to the listener, but ruinous to the
voice. In former days this type of singing was common in our public
schools, the result being that most boys honestly thought it
impossible to sing higher than c´´ or d´´ [music notation] this being
the limit beyond which it was difficult to push the chest voice. The
head voice was thus not used at all, and the singing of public school
children in the past has in most cases been anything but satisfactory
from the standpoint of tonal beauty. But most supervisors of music
have now become somewhat familiar with the child voice, and are
insisting upon high-pitched songs, soft singing, and downward
vocalization, these being the three indispensable factors in the
proper training of children's voices. The result is that in many
places school children are at the present time singing very well
indeed, and the present growing tendency to encourage public
performance by large groups of them makes available a new color to the
composer of choral and orchestral music, and promises many a thrill to
the concert-goer of the future.
It is the head register, or _thin_ voice, that produces the pure,
flutelike tones which are the essential charm of a boy choir, and if
chest tones are to be employed at all, they must be made as nearly as
possible as are the head tones, thus causing the voice to produce an
approximately uniform timbre in the entire scale. This may be
accomplished with a fair degree of ease by a strict adherence to the
three principles of procedure mentioned in the above paragraph. In
fact these three things are almost the beginning, middle, and end of
child-voice training, and since they thus form the _sine qua non_ of
effective boy-choir singing, we shall emphasize them through
reiteration.
1. The singing must be soft until the child has learned to
produce tone correctly _as a habit_.
2. Downward vocalization should be employed in the early
stages, so as to insure the use of the head voice.
3. The music should be high in range, in order that the
child may be given as favorable an opportunity as possible
of producing his best tones.
When these principles are introduced in either a boy choir or a public
school system, the effect will at first be disappointing, for the tone
produced by the boy's head voice is so small and seems so
insignificant as compared with the chest voice which he has probably
been using, that he is apt to resent the instruction, and perhaps to
feel that, you are trying to make a baby, or worse yet, a girl, out of
him! But he must be encouraged to persist, and after a few weeks or
months of practice, the improvement in his singing will be so patent
that there will probably be no further trouble.
[Sidenote: THE LIFE OF THE BOY VOICE]
Boys are admitted to male choirs at from seven or eight to ten or
twelve years of age, but are often required to undergo a course of
training lasting a year or more before being permitted to sing with
the choir in public. For this reason, if for no other, the director of
a boy choir must be a thoroughly qualified voice trainer. He, of
course, takes no voice that is not reasonably good to start with, but
after admitting a boy with a naturally good vocal organ it is his task
so to train that voice as to enable it to withstand several hours of
singing each day without injury and to produce tones of maximal beauty
as a matter of habit. But if the choir leader is not a thoroughly
qualified vocal instructor, or if he has erroneous ideals of what
boy-voice tone should be, the result is frequently that the voice is
overstrained and perhaps ruined; or else the singing is of an insipid,
lifeless, "hooty" character, making one feel that an adult mixed choir
is infinitely preferable to a boy choir.[33]
[Footnote 33: Even when an ideal type of tone is secured, there is
considerable difference of opinion as to whether the boy soprano is,
all in all, as effective as the adult female voice. Many consider that
the child is incapable of expressing a sufficient variety of emotions
because of his lack of experience with life, and that the boy-soprano
voice is therefore unsuited to the task assigned it, especially when
the modern conception of religion is taken into consideration. But to
settle this controversy is no part of our task, hence we shall not
even express an opinion upon the matter.]
Adolescence begins at the age of thirteen or fourteen in boys, and
with the growth of the rest of the body at this time, the vocal organs
also resume their increase in size, the result being not only longer
vocal cords and a correspondingly lower range of voice, but an
absolute breaking down of the habits of singing that have been
established, and frequently a temporary but almost total loss of
control of the vocal organs. These changes sometimes take place as
early as the thirteenth year, but on the other hand are frequently not
noticeable until the boy is fifteen or sixteen, and there are on
record instances of boys singing soprano in choirs until seventeen or
even eighteen. The loss of control that accompanies the change of
voice (with which we are all familiar because of having heard the
queer alternations of squeaking and grumbling in which the adolescent
boy so frequently indulges), is due to the fact that the larynx, vocal
cords, _et cetera_, increase in size more rapidly than the muscles
develop strength to manipulate them, and this rapid increase in the
size of the parts (in boys a practical doubling in the length of the
vocal cords) makes it incumbent upon the choir trainer to use extreme
caution in handling the voices at this time, just as the employer of
adolescent boys must use great care in setting them at any sort of a
task involving heavy lifting or other kinds of strain. In the public
schools, where no child is asked to sing more than ten or twelve
minutes a day, no harm is likely to result; but in a choir which
rehearses from one to two hours each day and frequently sings at a
public service besides, it seems to be the consensus of opinion that
the boy is taking a grave risk in continuing to sing while his voice
is changing.[34] He is usually able to sing the high tones for a
considerable period after the low ones begin to develop; but to
continue singing the high tones is always attended with considerable
danger, and many a voice has undoubtedly been ruined for after use by
singing at this time. The reason for encouraging the boy to keep on
singing is, of course, that the choirmaster, having trained a voice
for a number of years, dislikes losing it when it is at the very acme
of brilliancy. For this feeling he can hardly be blamed, for the most
important condition of successful work by a male choir is probably
permanency of membership; and the leader must exercise every wile to
keep the boys in, once they have become useful members of the
organization. But in justice to the boy's future, he ought probably in
most cases to be dismissed from the choir when his voice begins to
change.
[Footnote 34: Browne and Behnke, in _The Child's Voice_, p. 75, state
in reply to a questionnaire sent out to a large number of choir
trainers, singers, _et cetera_, that seventy-nine persons out of one
hundred fifty-two stated positively that singing through the period of
puberty "causes certain injury, deterioration, or ruin to the after
voice." In the same book are found also (pp. 85 to 90) a series of
extremely interesting comments on the choirmaster's temptation to use
a voice after it begins to change.]
Let us now summarize the advice given up to this point before going on
to the consideration of our second problem:
1. Have the boys sing in high range most of the time. The
actual compass of the average choir boy's voice is probably
g--c´´´ but his best tones will be between e´ and g´´ [music
notation]. An occasional a´´ or b´´ or a d´ or c´ will do no
harm, but the voice must not remain outside of the range
e´--g´´ for long at a time.
2. Insist upon soft singing until correct habits are
established. There is a vast difference of opinion as to
what soft singing means, and we have no means of making the
point clear except to say that at the outset of his career
the boy can scarcely sing too softly. Later on, after
correct habits are formed, the singing may, of course, be
louder, but it should at no time be so loud as to sound
strained.
3. Train the voice downward for some time before attempting
upward vocalization.
4. Dismiss the boy from the choir when his voice begins to
change, even if you need him and if he needs the money which
he receives for singing.
[Sidenote: THE BOY HIMSELF]
The second special problem mentioned at the beginning of this chapter
is the management of the boys owning the voices which we have just
been discussing; and this part of the choirmaster's task is
considerably more complex, less amenable to codification, and requires
infinitely more art for its successful prosecution. One may predict
with reasonable certainty what a typical boy-voice will do as the
result of certain treatment; but the wisest person can not foresee
what the result will be when the boy himself is subjected to any
specified kind of handling. As a matter of fact, there is no such
thing as a _typical_ boy, and even if there were, our knowledge of boy
nature in general has been, at least up to comparatively recent times,
so slight that it has been impossible to give directions as to his
management.
[Sidenote: HOW TO HANDLE BOYS]
In general, that choir director will succeed best in keeping his boys
in the choir and in getting them to do good work, who, other things
being equal, keeps on the best terms with them personally. Our advice
is, therefore, that the prospective director of a choir of boys find
out just as much as possible about the likes and dislikes, the
predilections and the prejudices of pre-adolescent boys, and
especially that he investigate ways and means of getting on good terms
with them. He will find that most boys are intensely active at this
stage, for their bodies are not growing very much, and there is
therefore a large amount of superfluous energy. This activity on their
part is perfectly natural and indeed wholly commendable; and yet it
will be very likely to get the boy into trouble unless some one is at
hand to guide his energy into useful channels. This does not
necessarily mean making him do things that he does not like to do; on
the contrary, it frequently involves helping him to do better,
something that he already has a taste for doing. Space does not permit
details; but if the reader will investigate the Boy Scout movement,
the supervised playground idea, and the development of school
athletics, as well as the introduction of manual training of various
sorts, trips to museums of natural history, zoölogical and botanical
gardens, _et cetera_, school "hikes" and other excursions, and similar
activities that now constitute a part of the regular school work in
many of our modern educational institutions, he will find innumerable
applications of the idea that we are presenting; and he will perhaps
be surprised to discover that the boy of today _likes_ to go to
school; that he applies at home many of the things that he learns
there, and that he frequently regards some teacher as his best friend
instead of as an arch enemy, as formerly. These desirable changes have
not taken place in all schools by any means, but the results of their
introduction have been so significant that a constantly increasing
number of schools are adopting them; and public school education is to
mean infinitely more in the future than it has in the past because we
are seeing the necessity of looking at things through the eyes of the
pupil, and especially from the standpoint of his life outside of and
after leaving the school. Let the choir trainer learn a lesson from
the public school teacher, and let him not consider the boy to be
vicious just because he is lively, and let him not try to repress the
activity but rather let him train it into useful channels. Above all,
let him not fail to take into consideration the boy's viewpoint,
always treating his singers in such a way that they will feel that he
is "playing fair." It has been found that if boys are given a large
share in their own government, they are not only far easier to manage
at the time, but grow enormously in maturity of social ideals, and are
apt to become much more useful citizens because of such growth.
Placing responsibility upon the boys involves trusting them, of
course, but it has been found that when the matter has been presented
fairly and supervised skilfully, they have always risen to the
responsibility placed upon their shoulders. We therefore recommend
that self-government be inaugurated in the boy choir, that the boys be
allowed to elect officers out of their own ranks, and that the rules
and regulations be worked out largely by the members themselves with a
minimum of assistance from the choirmaster.
Let us not make the serious mistake of supposing that in order to get
on the good side of boys we must make their work easy. Football is not
easy, but it is extremely popular! It is the motive rather than the
intrinsic difficulty of the task that makes the difference. The thing
needed by the choir director is a combination of firmness (but not
crossness) with the play spirit. Let him give definite directions, and
let these directions be given with such decision that there will never
be any doubt as to whether they are to be obeyed; but let him always
treat the boys courteously and pleasantly, and let him always convey
the idea that he is not only _fair_ in his attitude toward them, but
that he is attempting to be _friendly_ as well.
Work the boys hard for a half hour or so, therefore, and then stop for
five minutes and join them in a game of leapfrog, if that is the order
of the day. If they invite you to go with them on a hike or picnic,
refuse at your peril; and if you happen to be out on the ball ground
when one side is short a player, do not be afraid of losing your
dignity, but jump at the chance of taking a hand in the game. Some one
has said that "familiarity breeds contempt, only if one of the persons
be contemptible," and this dictum might well be applied to the
management of the boy choir. On the other hand, it is absolutely
necessary to maintain discipline in the choir rehearsal, and it is
also necessary to arouse in the boys a mental altitude that will cause
them to do efficient work and to conduct themselves in a quiet and
reverent manner during the church service; hence the necessity for
rules and regulations and for punishments of various kinds. But the
two things that we have been outlining are entirely compatible, and
the choir director who plays with the boys and is hailed by them as a
good fellow will on the whole have far less trouble than he who holds
himself aloof and tries to reign as a despot over his little kingdom.
[Sidenote: REMUNERATION _ET CETERA_]
In conclusion, a word should perhaps be added about various plans of
remunerating the boys for their singing. In some large churches and
cathedrals a choir-school is maintained and the boys receive food,
clothing, shelter, and education in return for their services; but
this entails a very heavy expense, and in most smaller churches the
boys are paid a certain amount for each rehearsal and service, or
possibly a lump sum per week. The amount received by each boy depends
upon his voice, his experience, his attitude toward the work, _et
cetera_, in other words, upon his usefulness as a member of the choir.
Attempts have often been made to organize a boy choir on the volunteer
basis, but this plan has not usually proved to be successful, and is
not advocated.
When the boys live in their own homes and there are Sunday services
only, the usual plan is to have them meet for about two rehearsals
each week by themselves, with a third rehearsal for the full choir.
Often the men have a separate practice also, especially if they are
not good readers.
If the organization is to be permanent, it will be necessary to be
constantly on the lookout for new voices, these being trained partly
by themselves and partly by singing with the others at the rehearsals
through the period of weeks or months before they are permitted to
take part in the public services. In this way the changing voices that
drop out are constantly being replaced by newly trained younger boys,
and the number in the chorus is kept fairly constant.