Caveat: This will only play for folks in the UK . . . for those of us in the Colonies, oh well . . .

Ian,

Not a problem. I'll keep my eyes peeled on our domestic public broadcasting channels and also BBC America (cable service).

Although I don't recognize the choir trainer's name, I have no doubt that he can get those boys singing in no time. I've personally seen Barry Rose in action, and notice a distinct difference between a choir trainer, a choir director and a music teacher. I started referring to myself as a choir trainer, not a choir director as a result.

I've seen the way boys behave, especially in Catholic school mixed choir situations where the bulk of the choir is girls, and especially if the teacher is also female. I'm not being sexist here, I'm observing the way a female teacher treats the female members of the choir. I know that if I were a boy in this dynamic, I'd find the "cutesy" teaching techniques, warm-ups and the like to be infantile and embarrassing. By that same token, I've seen a nationally-recognized children's choir "teacher" (a man, btw) use what he has marketed as (and those of you in the US will recognize to whom I'm referring) the "music teaching toy box" which employs the use of various children's toys to teach music, including my personal favorite, the "punching nun" puppet, used to teach rhythms. (!!!)

I think what it gets down to is this: if we continue to perpetuate the idea that music is a form of entertainment, and learning to sing is a mere diversion, then we'll never get people to take music and music literacy, in the church or otherwise, seriously. We're fighting a culture war, and those of us in church music are in the front lines.

Although the document is equivocal on many issues, SttL makes a very important case for teaching the music from the treasury to the students in the Catholic schools. It's a start, but the trick will be finding music teachers who themselves have been properly trained in and exposed to the music of the tradition, who won't be tempted to reduce the training of it to a slickly marketed box of toys.

Jscola,

You're right about the association of singing and effeminacy in many boys' minds. It's something that's highlighted in the documentary (that you can't watch!), where the chosen school has a strong sports specialism, and many boys begin the series either seeing singing in those terms, or with concern that that's what their peers believe. At that stage the male teachers aren't much better.

It's something that needs to be addressed head on, especially in those schools and parishes where the the music department has minimal male presence.

I think we may be correct in assuming that exposing children to the real musical tradition of the Church from an early age is important. I have personally taught both boys and girls who learn to sing on pitch, and learn to sing and recognize the beauty of the Gregorian repertoire.

But there's another point that hasn't been addressed in this conversation: at a time when girls are becoming young women, right before their eyes, boys begin undergoing a similar change. While the girls retain their ability to sing, boys lose much of theirs, seemingly overnight. So the underlying social and cultural lesson to these boys is that singing is something girls can remain successful in doing. Boys, well, it will take a few years to regain a foothold.

A boys' program that understands the biological difficulty, as well as continue to place value on beauty and tradition might be the answer. Ok, it's not always possible, but what how would boys benefit? Boys wouldn't have to compete with the girls who are excelling in that particular area. Allowances would be made for their changing voices and personae, allowing them the freedom to continue to explore music not only vocally, but through other disciplines.

Similar experiences for girls are cited for girls, after all: a girls only institution is sometimes preferable if the girls of this age are to excel in sports and mathematics. There are all kinds of cultural expectations that come along with this transitional period where boys and girls begin questioning what it means to be a man or a woman.

Are men, in the end, less able to sing than women? No. Are women less capable of performing well in math and science classes? I don't believe it for a second.

Coed schools (especially public schools), where peer pressure to succumb to what kids consider to be adult temptations are the status quo, and where education for its own sake has been abandoned in favor of political correctness are doing nothing to help our children, musically or otherwise.

Ian -

Part of the difficulty in addressing both boys and girls is a combination of physiological and social issues. They are the reasoning behind the reality that the Vienna Boys Choir will never be the Vienna Childrens Choir.

Boys' voices (as trebles) mature at about age 12. Girls' voices continue to develop and peak at about age 17. Even at this point there are significant tone quality differences, but it is a reasonable blend. However, the social difference between 12 year old boys and 17 year old girls can be intimidating if not downright overwhelming and the boys won't sing.

It may go against the political grain, but this is a case in which separate or apart, things are by nature unequal. Accepting that, and providing boys and girls the independent opportunities to make music, could be the course you seek.

"An adult male presence in the children's choir, whether director or accompanist, can model for the boys the fact that males can sing without compromising masculinity."

Amen!

I can't (nor would I, now that I've gotten over thinking I ought to be a priest,) do anything about the fact that I am a gyno-American, so from time to time I get one of our better baritones to drop in "to find something" he "forgot" in the loft, while I am rehearsing a children's choir (all trebles.)
Hey, we're working on this canon I might do later with the adult choir, will you sing with that part while I sing with this?

(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)

I can only say, with Richard, that if this series become available in the US it will be worth your while looking it out. And not just for its conclusion, but also the fascination of some of the waypoints. For example, the amazement on the faces of the boys as they listen to the King's Cambridge choir, and then sing with them. Priceless.

(expletive deleted). I posted the above comment on the wrong thread. Moderator, please delete the above comment and this one. Sorry.

Well done, Angela! Aside from the social pressures and differential between maturation rates betwixt girls and boys, there is the exceedingly difficult problem of maturation for boys causing the voices to change or "crack" from treble/mean ranges to lower ranges - in a way that is perplexing to the young male singer whose high voice becomes a sort of falsetto and "cracks" in a hoarse-sounding way and drops way down (often an octave) - or jumps back and forth between high and low, even in speech. Going through this change requires special nurture for any male who might have singing aspirations.

I don't, for the life of me, understand why this stuck with me, but it did.

I do have one experience that bears directly on this thread. I was for the longest time associated with a church that was a mission of the Mennonites. It in fact evolved into a fairly standard educated Evangelical church, but we had a connection with what they always called the "real" Mennonites. They are raised singing four part harmony. I mean, everybody. Standing inthe middle of a "real" Mennonite congregation singing the old German hymns is quite an experience.

Given the fact that English is technically a sung language (that's what I do for a living, teach English, so I would be happy to provide details on that point), and given that Anglo-Saxons have provided a lot of wonderful popular music that surrounds us, combined with immersion in the German hymn tradition, you would think their teenaged boys would be the control group for cultural influences on teenaged male singers, and I think they are.

When they hit college, they tend to discover and be pleased with this distinctive Mennonite trait, and can be a little show-offy in a pleasant sort of way.

But as kids, they act like kids.

I never noticed that their teenagers were the most attentive singers during service, probably because THEY WEREN'T. Also, they don't exactly have what the Amish (a form of Mennonite) give their kids, the rumpfspringen ("running around spring") that is so overhyped by a leering media. (It amounts to little more than relief of Sunday obligation and letting them hang out with other kids, so they get in normal kid trouble, only sometimes serious.) However, although I was never a Mennonite teenager, I could see the adults obviously let out the line a little.

And basically, if you're not in Church, you are not singing four-part harmony.

While there are certainly any number of social factors that determine how students learn--not least, the ones provided by themselves in relation to each other--it bothered me somehow that in a Catholic forum there is any notion that absolutely normal male development has anything to do with acculturation. "And God created man in his own image. Male and female created He them," if I am not going to be pilloried for quoting the KJV.

I have been teaching international students for nearly 20 years, and for longer I have worked in the "special events" business (for "special events" read "large fundraising dinners"). I have managed large staffs and taught students from nearly every corner of the globe. If there is a significant difference between males from anywhere, I haven't seen it, nor have I seen it among women. Cultural differences, yes, enormous, but when you get everyone on the same page, with the same expectations of conduct and performance, it (not all magically) becomes the same experience.

And in a culture where you don't have to teach them a thing about choral singing, the trouble you have is getting them to do it, same as with every kid all over the globe.

Blessings to those who can teach kids who are NOT used to choral singing how to do it.

Now that I got THAT off my chest. (-:

Then you did your job, very well. I can get my boys to sit still, but I had to yell at them today. Probably can't do that for schola. I never said they WOULDN't sing, or if I did, I was wrong: I said you have to make it something comfortable for them...and it sounds like you did. But if a kid sounds like a frog, wait a year.

I'm not sure I'd kick the frog out for a year...that voice can suddenly click and begin working...rather have that happen in the choir instead of the bleachers at a football game...

I take frog stuff personally.

I was told once (I think by David Willcocks) that in English choirs (or at least, in one English choir in some specific era), that boy choristers learned the organ while their voice was changing.

I am at the beginning of my tenure in my current position. There are some 250 boys in the school and perhaps another 150 in the parish. Competing with sports is difficult and the image of boys singing is not good here.So, as in Angela's case, I am off to change it. I agree, teamwork (I use the Boy scout model of working together) and challenge are the elements at play. Being a male helps, but that is not everything. I think that working with them early in age helps tremendously (I have a boy's training choir here) and involving strong men be present to them. I will have some of my adult male basses and tenors come to their rehearsal.

It is a long road to get there and will take several years of hard work, personal conversations with boys to re-negotiate that image.

Great advice, Ossian, thanks. I admire what you've been able to do with them in just a year.

Does anyone remember the page of links someone posted (maybe Jeff Tucker) a few months ago about lesson plans aimed at getting boys to sing? It seems to me it was put together by a British musician, but I may be wrong.

I know this is many years after the initial post but here is an idea of the "Boys Don't Sing" video with grown-ups. It is with the same conductor. It is on TV Ontario, so you may not get it in America.
http://ww3.tvo.org/video/162906/choir-episode-1

The main problem today is that children don't grow up singing and music is not a normal activity. Today, music is treated as an amusement or merely a form of entertainment and not a pursuit on its own. We see the same problem with less and less people taking music lessons or even learning to play a guitar well. Another problem is the rise of the pop-star image. People don't want to sing unless they can show themselves to have the talent like a pop-star. Some of the best new choristers at my college schola have absolultely no background in music before diving straight into sacred polyphony. They muck it up for a while, but sooner or later they get the idea and sing well. A handful of moderately good choristers singing well together is always more impressive than a soloist, and because it is a group, praise goes to God for beautiful music and not to an individual for their abilities.

Andris, you're spot on. 5 years ago, I would have never considered singing in public. Now, after hearing my bishop, pastor, and a few choirmasters I really admire, I've made a 180 turn, mainly because of that.

Not only can boys sing, and serve, but they DO! We have a corps which, given the size of the parish and their desire to help, will serve or sing, depending on who is on the schedule. No altar girls. Music includes Tallis, Byrd and Palestrina, among others.

When will we finally learn from the British that the sound of boy choirs is the purest in the world?

The ideal of the boys choir was not founded on sonorous superiority but rather because girls were not educated. Funny how people forget that. Thanks be to God girls can now have an education- including a music/ choral education.

I serve as DoM in a FSSP parish. We have 26 choristers, 10 of whom are boys. At our chant camp last year, we had 72 children, 34 of whom were boys. Though I am a woman, our organist is a man and our three priests are involved with the program and encourage all the choristers.

It is true that boys and girls dont want to be in too close of company for activities. However, good teachers and priests will be able to minimize awkwardness and successfully engage girls as well as boys in their classes.

I completely support not having girl servers. Girls can't grow up to be priests, and I have no issue with that.

But girls can grow up to be good and great musicians. Their ability to learn music and to sing is on par with boys. There is no good reason to exclude girls from a choir and schola that sings outside the sanctuary.

BachLover2 wrote "When will we finally learn from the British that the sound of boy choirs is the purest in the world? "

Well, as a singing British Catholic (ex-Anglican) I would say that, despite politically & pragmatically motivated attempts to blend them, boys and girls are best equally encouraged to develop their own distinctive musical sounds and cultures. The results can be equally satisfying.

That was in response to an old question about why I said Englush is sung.

Hi, I'm new to this forum.
I just wanted to express some thoughts on this thread on boys choirs. I agree that boys and girls should have equal musical opportunities. What I object to is when people seem to think it ideal that there should be one big children's choir and not give any thought to the dwindling enrollment from boys in why they aren't joining these children's choirs, because this always seems to happen. I'm from Toronto and I'll use the Toronto Children's Chorus (TCC) as an example. TCC has a huge enrollment of girls, I think around 300 and about 30 boys, or less. I've noticed that when the choir advertises for auditions on posters in magazines they mostly have pictures of girls, none of boys and there's no separate boys choir, except one that gathers all the boys from the 4 choirs for occasional concerts. I think it's the responsibility of the choir director to ensure that boys are made to feel welcome and accepted and there should be a boys choir for treble voices but also a boys choir for changing voices, because the boys are going to look upon this choir as being mostly girls and they are going to be hesitant about joining. I think it's an especially awkward time around age 11 and older and they need to feel supported instead of being ostracized, especially considering the boys are kicked out of the TCC at age 13-14, whilst the girls can remain until age 18 - another reason for such an unequal imbalance.
Just a few pondering thoughts.

I found that pointing out, for high-school age boys, that there are 10 girls for every boy in the choir works wonders. If they want to meet girls, that is the place to be. Underhanded? Perhaps, but it works.