CE Ripon Cathedral 13th July 2011

[ardcarp]

Begs the question though as to whether boys and girls voices should be mixed

I think there may be social reasons why boys and girls should rehearse and (usually) sing separately. (There was something about gender differences in the way boys v. girls learn on R4 today. I was driving at the time and din't listen all that carefully, but it was something along the lines of boys being inherently impulsive and risk-taking, whilst girls prefer discussion and method.) From a point of view of the sound choristers make, I think the difference in gender has become much less didtinct, and there have been some fantastic 'combined effort' services and concerts. I have quoted before Malcolm Archer's last carol service at Wells. As Draco says, it may be a case of 'needs must' in many places. I for one had no reservations whatever about Ripon's treble sound this week. More power to their elbows!

[Keraulophone]

the sound of the future

...surely depends on the younger boys and girls gaining experience by singing/standing with years 6-8 in services, concerts, broadcasts, webcasts, tours, etc? DM slightly alluded to this in msg#11. It is quite understandable why some DoMs like to combine the best of their best top lines for a broadcast, but I have to agree with VCC's acknowledged wish to hear the boys' and girls' individuality brought out by singing separately. (Let's leave aside the argument that girls can be trained to sing/sound more like boys, or whether they should be allowed to sing/sound like girls.) We combined with the Ripon boys and men a few years ago for the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy at St Paul's, and they gave a good account of themselves in Tomkins's great anthem 'Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom' - no girls in sight (or sound).

I enjoyed this service very much, particularly the psalms, one of PM's best anthems, and that glorious instrument with four tubas. I was taken to the RFH as a young boy to hear an old blind Frenchman give an afternoon recital... Jean Langlais played this Te Deum as an encore, and I have never forgotten the experience. Judging only from the balance on the i-player, the combined year 6-8s in the front row certainly made a more powerful effect than those behind them, and what often came through the loudspeakers was an upper/lower voices balance of f/mf, mf/mp, mp/p. This is by no means uncommon in cathedral choirs with strong top lines, where one can find 18 trebles balancing a single alto, tenor or bass on divided parts in a treble-friendly acoustic.

[Magnificat]

Keraulophone,

I think we should hear the boys and men whilst such choirs continue to exist.

Unfortunately, I believe that mixed boys and girls on the top line will be inevitable everywhere except perhaps in some very wealthy parts of the country as young couples from backgrounds that are likely to provide choristers are not going to be able to start families until they are able to buy a house and this is becoming nigh impossible even in places such as London, Winchester and St Albans until they are well into their 30s ( even renting is difficult ). How does it look in Truro?

The number of boys available will inevitably decline quite substantially and boys and girls will have to combine to keep up the numbers. Eventually, of course, the girls will then take over completely as the parish churches have found.

Sorry to be so pessimistic but I can't see how it can be otherwise at present. There is evidently a baby boom in some areas but mainly in immigrant families.

VCC

[ardcarp]

Magnificat. You seem to be saynig (rather in line with my point in #16) that there are social reasons why all-male choirs should be given a helping hand by positive discrimination. But do you have any musical reasons?

[DracoM]

The point I can see for such 'support' is oddly in the name of 'authenticity'.

Until very recently, like well post 2WW, almost all those who wrote for cathedral-style choirs had the ranges, timbres, strengths and fragilities, elemental risk-taking thrill of boys' voices in their mind's ear when writing for them. Biology, social pressures, dropping birth rates among likely candidate classes, financial constraints in both families and foundations, particularly foundations of lesser excellence - yes, I know that may seem harsh - mix in then girls' sense of their own place in society/religious foundations, all serve to weaken the imperative for boys alone to be recruited.

If you then couple that with record companies / ensemble managers etc who see a big market in [a] the pull of the repertoire on stress-driven middle classes and the therapeutic incentive to buy such renaissance polyphony etc, and thus as a result their need [b] to recruit ensembles less subject to the whims of biology, and even thuser [c] to recruit professional women led ensembles who will have settled voices, can all travel and record together without rampant CRB etc etc etc parameters and thus ensembles which make more economic sense, then you can see why we ought to treasure, record, cosset and sustain boy-led ensembles. Boy-ledchoirs are frankly an endangered species.

The very best trained choirs will always manage to go on recruiting excellent boys because the bottom line is the huge kudos in being in such high-prestige ensembles eg NCO, and thus in a place to instill at an earlier age love for music, the discipline of team work, and to launch professional musical careers. In so doing, such foundations are keeping us all mindful of what / why composers are and have been so regularly drawn to write for them. There is that irreducible something about hearing boys in choirs that I cannot articulate, but helps me to understand know why a millennium's worth of composers have explored the very special qualities those ensembles bring to the repertoire.

[cantenor2]

Thank you Keraulophone - I was beginning to think I was a lone voice here. I acknowledge that I am not as articulate as some of the contributors on this forum but I do speak candidly and from the gut.

I understand from friends and acquaintances in education that it has nearly always been the case that when boys are forced into competitive situations with girls they lose interest or they drop out completely. However, putting the educational, philosophical, and social arguments to one side for a moment and getting back to basics; haven't we forgotten the PC zealots of 15 years or so ago who were hell bent that it should not be boys alone who were allowed to sing in Cathedral and Collegiate Choirs...

The then Deans and Chapters rose to the bait so as not to be accused of being non PC. Ok, so nothing wrong in having a separate choir of girl choristers in a Cathedral. But then what happened? The PR discrimination started. Any Cathedral that had a TV appearance, major concert, radio broadcast, recording etc. always showcased its girl choristers - a situation supported I must add by the BBC. And so it continues to this day. At the same time didn't the Lay Clerks at a major foundation, whose name escapes me (Salisbury?), withdraw labour for a while because they felt the boys were being unfairly discriminated against?

Yes, sadly we are going to see boys disappear from the scene altogether if we pursue this experiment of combining, mixing and matching boys and girls voices on a regular basis. The true magic of the English Cathedral Choral sound - that very special harmonic created between 12/13 year old boys voices and male alto voices will be lost. Now there's a musical reason for you ardcarp. I acknowledge that some places may not have a choice but conversely many others fortunately do still have a choice. If Cathedrals do not return to choral basics it will not bode well for the future supply of male altos, tenors and basses in our treasured and envied choral heritage. What a legacy to leave behind!

I fear much of what we are now reaping is from the seed sown by the PC fanatics and their supporters rather than from social engineering!

[cantenor2]

Sorry I didn't mean Keraulophone. Of course I was responding to the point made by Magnificat. Sorry again....

[Gabriel Jackson]

The point I can see for such 'support' is oddly in the name of 'authenticity'.

Until very recently, like well post 2WW, almost all those who wrote for cathedral-style choirs had the ranges, timbres, strengths and fragilities, elemental risk-taking thrill of boys' voices in their mind's ear when writing for them.

As someone who regularly writes for cathedral choirs (with boy or girl trebles, or both) collegiate choirs, adult amateur choirs and adult professional ones, I think the relationship between the composer and the soundworld of the choir in question is a bit more nuanced than this. Certainly if I am writing a piece for, say, Truro Cathedral Choir (which I've had he pleasure of doing four times) I will write very different music than I would in a piece for the BBC Singers but that has as much, if not more, to do with the specific requirements of a piece for liturgical use, the particular abilities and (with no disrespect to one of the finest choirs in the country) limitations of the choir, practical issues to do with rehearsal time, rather than the gender of the sopranos. Certainly I don't write any differently for a choir whose trebles are boys than I would for one whose trebles are girls, the important factor being that in both instances they are children.

It is worth remembering that modern all-male performances of, say, Taverner have no more "authenticity" than performances by mixed-voice groups, save for the gender of the sopranos. The distribution of voice parts among singers in the 16th century was almost certainly different from that distribution today, and, most importantly, we have absolutely no idea what the choir of Cardinal College, Oxford sounded like. And their is nothing "authentic" about modern cathedral choir performances of Byrd's Masses and late(r) Latin music which were, almost certainly, written for performance by ad hoc consorts whose sopranos were women.

[Triforium]

Finally had a chance to listen to this broadcast. I enjoyed the sound of the top line, and think the mix of boys and girls worked very well. Psalms and canticles were lovely. The Moore was well done - the last section is a particular favourite of mine. In fairness, I must say that the baritone solo in that piece is deceptively difficult to sustain. Many thanks to all involved.

[Magnificat]

Magnificat. You seem to be saynig (rather in line with my point in #16) that there are social reasons why all-male choirs should be given a helping hand by positive discrimination. But do you have any musical reasons?

ardcarp,

The point I was making was purely a demographic one.

There will soon just not be sufficient numbers of boys to go round certainly from the usual type of background. I dearly wish that cathedrals/colleges were able to recruit from the working classes for want of a better phrase. There is, I am sure, a vast untapped source of talent there but this is just impossible as the latter don't go to church and there are cultural barriers too big to surmount.

As one who started out very unconvinced by the advent of girls choirs in cathedrals ( little girls will always sound like little girls etc.) I have long been converted to their usefulness and talents ( it's the training that matters mostly ).

I have enjoyed hearing the girls sing with the men at St Albans immensely and mixed with the boys on special occasions - wonderful sounds. But boys and girls are different as are men and women. I am no male chauvinist but it annoys me when people try to say that everybody is the same. They are not and not just for the obvious reasons.

To mix boys and girls on a permanent basis will end up with the few boys left leaving our choirs for the reasons above but the real problem for the forseeable future is not a social one so much as where is the supply of boys going to come from in most places.

VCC

[AscribeUntoTheLad]

There will soon just not be sufficient numbers of boys to go round certainly from the usual type of background.

Why not? Have parents from "the usual type of background" stopped having boys then?

I am no male chauvinist but it annoys me when people try to say that everybody is the same. They are not and not just for the obvious reasons.

Ah, that small but important "but"...

[AscribeUntoTheLad]

I fear much of what we are now reaping is from the seed sown by the PC fanatics and their supporters rather than from social engineering!

When you say "PC fanatics", do you mean "non-sexists"?

[decantor]

There surely are at least a few grounds for optimism with regards to boys’ continuing to sing in cathedrals, at least in the medium term. When the pressure mounted for girls to be admitted, most foundations took the favourable (but expensive?) option of simply adding a girls’ section. The paymaster C of E clearly understands the value of its traditional music. It seems to me that the decision might have had the marginal bonus of facilitating the recruitment of boys by lightening their workload.

Demographically, quite small cathedral cities can still field very respectable boys’ units or even twin units. Ripon and Truro have a population of around 20,000 each, and, even if their catchment is wider still, it will only be into the surrounding rural areas. St David’s can (I believe) still find singing boys from city (pop. 2000) and county combined. It is true, though regrettable, that the social stratum from which choristers are drawn is limited, but that stratum is not dwindling in absolute terms. I know that recruitment, especially for the ‘minor’ foundations with no kudos to offer as bait, is still tough, but it remains rare to hear of an all-male choir withering entirely, and just occasionally we hear of a new one starting up. DoMs do heroic work outside the song room as well as within.

Therefore I would have thought that a greater threat came from the expense: for how long can cathedrals find the £300,000 or so yearly to maintain a full working choir that includes children’s voices, and for how long will the squeezed middle classes be able to afford even heavily subsidised school fees? Bristol have innovated by sending their choristers to a newly-established academy, but that option will not be open everywhere.

But why bother to maintain boys’ singing in the tradition? In addition to all the obvious reasons – they sound good, they look right, the musical training, the back history, the future adult voices, and so on – I would suggest that it’s worthwhile because they are good at it, and most find they relish the teamwork, the buzz on the inside, the sense of power, the equality with adult singers, the sense of achievement, the sheer ‘specialness’. And the walls of the cathedral, like the walls of some musical schools, shield them from the downward cultural pressure on boys’ singing that pervades much of our society. I believe we should keep the opportunity open for their sake as much as ours. And the answer to any charge of élitism is to start up some community choirs and see how many boys turn up.

[Magnificat]

[QUOTE=AscribeUntoTheLad;67970]Why not? Have parents from "the usual type of background" stopped having boys then?/QUOTE]

There have been many reports in the papers that middle class first time buyers are now unlikely to be able to afford to buy a house until well into their 30s if at all in some really expensive areas of the country and are unwilling to have children before they have settled accomodation.

As far as I can see the result of this is going to be that since choristers tend to come from middle class homes there will be, in the reasonably near future, a much, much smaller pool of recruits than cathedrals/colleges have been used to for many years and even that pool has decreased considerably in recent times because of cultural changes in society generally. Girls being more willing to join choirs will probably continue to do so in reasonable numbers but, as I said, will there be enough boys? Personally I think prospects look quite ominous.

VCC

[ardcarp]

[QUOTE]If Cathedrals do not return to choral basics it will not bode well for the future supply of male altos, tenors and basses in our treasured and envied choral heritage. [QUOTE]

Now that, cantenor2, is the best possible reason for boys' choirs continuing to thrive.

This business of 'class' has worried me for a very long time. I have known 2 choristers to have 'made it' from a working class background (for want of a better expression)...one indeed has achieved very considerably in an adult musical career.. but this is unusual. It makes me and Mrs Ardcarp weep when we think about the un-tapped musical talent in our grand-child's local primary school. Multiply that by a nationwide factor and it becomes a scandal. And if one broadens out the argument to include not just music but all other abilities (artistic, dramatic, sporting) the lack of expectation, the inability of teachers to identify and then to foster talent, well