Some soundings on an important issue

Research into Boys and Girls' Voices

A fuller picture
by Bernard Haunch

A curious experiment took place at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh some years ago. It involved the girl and boy choristers singing from behind a curtain to members of the Cathedral Organists’ Association and their wives. The task of the latter was to see if they could distinguish who was singing at any one time: girls only, boys only or girls and boys together. The results were surprising: in their ability to discriminate accurately, it was the wives who scored highest!

In 1992, another experiment, this time using published recordings of three cathedral choirs, was carried out by Judith Pearson, as part of a B. Ed. (Hons) course at Bretton Hall College (University of Leeds). Of the seventeen participants who took part in her experiment, only four were able to identify all three choirs correctly. She concluded that the reason for not having girl cathedral choristers was based on “a traditional prejudice and a fear of change throughout the Church”.

A year earlier, in a dramatic break with custom, Salisbury cathedral had established a girls’ choir. Despite Pearson’s attribution of a fear of change in the Church, it was not long before other cathedrals followed suit. While many greeted the new choirs with wild enthusiasm, the reaction of others was of muted concern. Slowly, however, the implications the move held for the choral tradition began to be voiced. Proponents of girls’ choirs countered that it surely did not matter whether girls or boys sang the top line if most people could not tell the difference.

Interest in the question grew apace. Enthusiasts of cathedral music, keen to prove or disprove for themselves the hypothesis that the singing of young girls and boys is indistinguishable, undertook their own mini-experiments. Then, in 1996, Desmond Sergeant and Graham Welch, two academics from the Centre for Advanced Studies in Music Education at Roehampton Institute, London, published Perceived Similarities and Differences in the Singing of Trained Children’s Choirs. This time, the academic apparatus brought to bear on the matter was qualitatively and significantly greater.

Their experiment involved participants listening to recordings of fifteen choirs of young singers (representing the categories ‘boys only’, ‘girls only’ and ‘mixed’) singing in unison the first verse of the carol melody, This is the Truth sent from above. The results were unwelcome news to those who thought boys’ voices were different, for the two researchers concluded: “Listeners were not able to identify the correct gender categories of the choirs at above chance level.” The Times, reporting the findings, asked David Flood, Master of the Choristers at Canterbury Cathedral, what he thought. Flood said: “A boy’s voice in the year or so before it breaks has a particularly magical quality to it.” Professor Welch, however, insisted that “if you do not want girls in a cathedral choir it is for social and cultural reasons, not for musical ones.” He was supported by Richard Shepherd, Headmaster of the Song School at York Minster, who declared: The battle is now won!”

Radio Three’s In Tune also got in on the act, devoting part of a programme to the subject. Again, as was now becoming standard procedure, recordings were played and listeners were asked, rather in the manner of the old Stork margarine advertisement, if they could “tell the difference”.

Welch and Sergeant’s final reflection was that there was “no evidence in these results that the introduction of girls into cathedral choirs will necessarily have any effect on the choral tone that is produced, nor that the much valued Anglican choral tradition will be changed.” Even so, many remained unconvinced, preferring instead to believe the evidence of their own ears. I myself was one such.

Whilst generally welcoming the Roehampton study, I felt that there were both technical and musical objections to its conclusions. A short account of my reservations was published in the 1998 issue of Choir Schools Today. Among other matters, technical queries related to the recording and play-black environments, the age spread of singers and the proportion of girls to boys in the mixed choirs. From a musical point of view, the choice of This is the Truth sent from above seemed an odd choice as test piece. Had Wesley’s Wash me Throughly and The Londonderry Air been used, contested distinctions might have been more readily apparent.

Despite the academic rigour brought to the question by the Roehampton study, it failed to make its point convincingly enough. People remembered Dr Richard Seal’s remark to the Friends of Cathedral Music: “I am tired of people saying ‘Ooh! You cannot tell the difference’. You can!” For the record: it was Dr Seal who was the prime mover behind the girls’ choir at Salisbury Cathedral. Others, too, recalled that no less a musician than Benjamin Britten championed the unique quality and character of a boy’s voice. As we know, he also wrote for children’s choirs, but he considered those a different sound from a different instrument.

Now, at last, with the publication of Listener perception of girls and boys in an English Cathedral choir by David Howard and John Szymanski of the University of York (Music Teacher, February 2001), a different picture has begun to emerge. Listeners, after all, it was shown, could differentiate – the ability to differentiate being statistically significant - between girl and boy singers.

Repertoire was indeed found to affect the process of discrimination, with correct judgements more likely in some pieces than others. All in all, it seems clear, the researchers took pains to address the kind of concerns previously raised by investigations into this subject. Particular instances of this were the care given to ensuring listening conditions remained constant during each test and to the selection of music to be sung. Other claims outside this piece of research remain to be contested. Professor Welch has stated for instance that “vocal physiology is pretty much identical in children (between the ages) of 7 and 10” (Time magazine, July 12 1999). This would seem to imply a greater determinant role for vocal physiology in phonation than is perhaps justified.

Research continues, but where does it all leave us? The first thing to note is that serious inquiry is not best done behind curtains! As in all reputable scientific studies, replicability remains the gold standard. Interestingly, therefore, the York results have been confirmed quite separately in a study carried out in the U.S.A. Secondly, the research is neutral as to claims for equal opportunities for girls in cathedral choirs. In fact, it does not bear on the question at all. Therefore, all talk of a ‘battle won’ is premature.

The really important issues in musical education lie outside these research projects. The bald fact – as all music teachers know – is that far too few children are singing at all today. In his well-known “Reasons briefely set downe by thi author, to perswade every one to learne to sing” William Byrd wrote:

“Since singing is so good a thing I wish all men would learne to sing.”

That surely encapsulates the beliefs of most music teachers. Singing, euphonious and intelligent, ought to be central to the humane education of all our children – girls and boys. The task of the music teacher in the modern world, however, is not easy, since pupils are frequently led to believe that the only kind of singing worthwhile is the raucous and unpleasant grunting and screeching of their pop idols. Singing decent music in unison or parts is, all too often, an alien world to them.

In recent times, the primacy of singing in a musical education has gained greater acceptance among professionals. It makes more sense, many now agree, to learn an instrument after one has gained some skill in singing. The added advantages to this approach are that it can be more fun to make music together - and there are no expensive purchases of instruments to be made.

Girls, it seems, are much more easily cajoled into joining a choir than boys. This is particularly so for mixed children’s choirs. Invariably, the blended sound obtained is sweet and girlish, since the boys, either purposely or inadvertently, are encouraged to abandon their characteristic boyish tone. In any case, as boys grow older, it is usually no longer ‘cool’ for them to sing. Girls dominate most children’s choirs, and such boys as there are tend to be no older than about eleven. After that, they take to their heels! While much more needs to be done to encourage all children to sing, particular attention needs to be focused on boys. They will sing, if it can be made a boys’ club thing, and if it can be made exciting. Once they have achieved something creditable in performance, of course, there will be no stopping them. Only political correctness can demand that girls and boys will always sing together.

Parish church choirs, right up to the sixties, were flush with boys singing the treble line. A Times report from 1963 shows 180,000 boys still turned out every Sunday to sing the top line, but it also noted a rise in the number of girls singing alongside them. Since then, the decline has been inexorable. Today, there are fewer than 100 parish churches boasting the traditional choir of men and boys.

A variety of factors account for the disappearance of boys from school and parish church choirs and for the slump in the numbers of girls and boys learning to sing properly. Society has changed out of all recognition since the sixties. Dare it be said, too, that some music teachers have simply given up? For some, the feeling has been - if you cannot beat them, join them!

The difficulties often seem disheartening, yet there is a growing understanding of what needs to be done. Political correctness or trendy ideas must not deter us from providing what is right and necessary for all our children.