Reading the Runes or Rueing the Ruins?

An article by Bernard Haunch

Spring 2003

Two years ago, the bulletin reported on a paper delivered by two academics from the University of York on the issue of boys’ and girls’ voices in cathedral choirs. One of these, David M. Howard, subsequently teamed up with another academic, Graham Welch, to examine the claim of uniqueness for the (boy) chorister. The results of their study were published last year in the Psychology of Music journal. * Perhaps, not surprisingly, the Campaign is seen as the leading proponent of the unique nature of the boy’s voice. “For some, such as the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir,” say the authors of the report, “the introduction of girls into the cathedral music ‘tradition’ is seen as a major threat, not least because they believe that distinguishable generic differences exist between the sound of girls’ and boys’ voices... The underlying premise of the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir is that there is a traditional and unique vocal timbre in a boy’s singing voice that is both generic to boys’ singing voices in general and perceivable.”

The study then went on to examine this claim, focusing in particular on:

• The physical realities underlying boys’ and girls’ singing voices
• Perceptual and acoustic similarities and differences in the singing of untrained girls and boys
• Listener identification of the sex of trained children’s choirs The available research evidence suggests, they state in their conclusions (here quoted partially), that:
• From the onset of puberty (at approximately age ten), the greater growth of males’ vocal structures compared to that of females’ produces a lower spoken pitch and a lower vocal pitch range in singing.
• With regard to untrained children’s singing voices, the younger the boy, the more likely that his vocal products are perceived as being ‘female’. Gender confusability decreases with ascending age, indicating that untrained boys’ singing voices become perceived as more ‘masculine’ as they get older.

* Psychology of Music, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2002 - Gendered Voice in the Cathedral Choir

The underlying acoustic phenomena in singing for such perceptions continue to be examined. Preliminary analyses, however, suggest that there are differences in the spectral envelope between 4 kHz and 6 kHz in untrained children’s voices whose sex was most accurately identified.

In general, there appears a correlation between children’s physical developments and adults’ abilities to discern accurate sex differences between children’s voices in both speech and singing as they get older. However, socialisation into gendered roles may also be a likely contributory factor in voice usage.

Listener identification of the sex of trained children’s choirs is more equivocal.

Correct identification appears to be related to specific musical items (or extracts of such items) and/or particular choirs. This is taken as evidence for adults to have generated a perceptual ‘stereotype’ of the male chorister voice that is matched to any specific examples that they hear. In all the published studies to date, trained girls’ voices appear to be more likely to be mislabelled as boys.

Qualitative evidence suggests that the cathedral ‘tradition’ is a powerful force that shapes the musical behaviours of its new entrants, whether they are male or female, towards an acoustic model.

The authors go on to say that “when singing as a collective within the large acoustic resonating space of the cathedral, any individual differences between singers and sexes are likely to be minimised. Consequently, the ‘audience’ (congregation) may not perceive any auditory differences between boys or girls singing the top line of the predominant four-part harmony which often has organ accompaniment. This is not to deny that acoustic differences exist between boys and girls in their singing voices. Research evidence suggests that these differences are certainly evident in older, untrained child voices and may also be present in the oldest choristers. But the effect of specialist education and training seems to allow such acoustic differences to be relative, appearing in certain pieces of music but not others, related to the particular group of individuals that make up the choir, and perceived by some listeners, but not necessarily all.”

COMMENT

First of all, I think it wise for the Campaign to recognise the importance of this and allied pieces of research. As the report says, CTCC’s existence is premised on a belief in the uniqueness of the boy’s voice. If we are wrong about that, then the whole of what we are about is largely wrong-headed, and we shall find ourselves constrained to admit as much. Any temptation aerily to dismiss such scientific studies would be foolish - for the truth would eventually out. It follows, then, that the only realistic approach is to engage seriously and vigorously with the arguments put forth by researchers.

Secondly, and as a counter-weight to the above, I think it equally important not to be overawed by such research. The elaborate scientific and statistical apparatus underpinning it does not bar us from questioning its means or methods. Nor ought it to make us reluctant to scrutinise the conclusions drawn from them. The title of the research paper, ‘Gendered Voice in the Cathedral Choir’, is a curious one. This nasty, fabricated word, ‘gendered’, suggests a result which is, in fact, only tentatively put forward in the paper’s final conclusions. Indeed, the tentative nature of the conclusions needs stressing. They contain no fewer than five ’likely/likelihood’, five ‘suggest(s)’, four ‘appear(s)’, one ‘seems’, two ‘may’ and one ’can’ in the sense of a theoretical possibility. Furthermore, it is emphasised that “Case study research is ongoing into the acoustic nature of the cathedral chorister voice (both male and female) in order to understand more clearly those features that appear to be more salient to listeners”.

Welcome though the research is, it is, in some sense, a strange activity, for it questions what for hundreds of years has been Q.E.D., namely, that the boy’s voice does indeed have something special about it, and that it is particularly apt for certain types of religious music. It simply will not do for the authors of this paper to attach the wearisome tag of “male hegemony” to this belief. After all, it was one that was held by people as diverse and celebrated as J.S. Bach and Benjamin Britten. The clear inference from all such utterances is of a centuries-long conspiracy to prevent girls singing in cathedrals, although the idea is as unhistorical as it is preposterous. Indeed, contemporary demands for girls to be given equal opportunities to sing in cathedrals would have been met with stunned incomprehension by many choristers of old. Press-ganged to serve in the Chapel Royal, dragged off to sing mass on foreign battle fields, treated as menial skivvies or simply neglected by those supposedly in charge of their welfare, they were to be pitied rather than envied.

The paper cites my own contention that “the boy’s voice is something unique”. It then states: “Such comments have to be seen in the context of discernible within-group differences between the sounds of boys-only choirs”. Of course, this must be true. No two boys’ voices sound alike, and no two boys’ choirs sound alike. There is a range of sound, and it is this which may justifiably be described as “unique”. The fact that occasionally an individual girl may produce a sound indistinguishable from that of a boy, or the reverse, does not invalidate the proposition that the range of sounds produced by singing boys in general is different from that produced by singing girls in general. Although it is no doubt true that a choir trainer can work to make girls sound more like boys, one might think that an affront to decency. Why not cherish and train their natural sound.

It is worth quoting here from an interview Malcolm Archer of Wells Cathedral gave the researchers: “The repertoire is essentially the same for both the boys and the girls, but the girls needed a lot of work on their upper register to get the same sound [as the boys]. It also required a lot of work to get the girls to sing out in the same way as the boys, they don’t take risks, but they produce a very good legato..... as a composer one thinks about the possible strengths; for example, the girls being more lyrical and the boys more rhythmic.” The paper expounds at length on the vocal anatomy and physiology of boys and girls. Comments such as Archer’s, however, ought to have made the authors wary of over-stating their case. Phonation is the product of more than the vocal mechanism. The really interesting finding of this research is that while “wide variation in the accuracy of listener identification of different excerpts” was found, “listeners’ perceptual accuracy of singer gender varies according to the stimulus”. This is a view I have long held, and it probably explains why people like myself continue to insist that, in general terms, there is a difference between the singing voices of boys and girls. I made the point in print five years ago, commenting on a previous piece of research: “The choice of This is the Truth sent from Above as a test piece was rather mystifying. The folk-song nature of this carol with its largely stepwise progress and placidity hardly commends it. Wesley’s Wash me Throughly. Wood’s 0, Thou, The Central Orb, or Fauré’s Pie Jesu for boys and The Londonderry Air for girls, might have made any contested distinctions more readily apparent.” Of course, the difference is not an absolute. In certain conditions and in certain contexts, it is either perfectly clear or not clear at all. With trained choirs, as the researchers show, the differences can be obscured to a greater extent.

While the listener identification of certain excerpts in the experiments mentioned above has isolated some very interesting facts, it has to be said that listening to snippets of music in this way does not replicate our natural listening experience. Clearly, the whole question is very complex. While research continues academics need to be restrained in their comments. A previous paper by Welch (co-authored with Sergeant) boldly declared that there was no evidence 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 change”. And in an article in The Times in 1996, Welch said: “If you don’t want to have girls in a cathedral choir it’s for social and cultural reasons, not for musical ones”. For good measure, he accused those who disagreed with him of “scaremongering”. This is hardly the voice of dispassionate and detached academic research. Now, in this paper, the tune has somewhat changed: “It is too early to say whether the influx of female choristers will modify or transform the all-male tradition.”

For many of us, however, that transformation is already taking place.

Next article |   How to join  |   Home