Author's Introduction

“What’s Beethoven doing in his grave? Decomposing of
course.”

Choirboy joke book

If you are the parent, teacher or conductor of a boy who loves singing, or a student who may come into contact with such boys, you may find this book useful. It is made available as an open-source publication – that is to say, one that can be studied without cost by anybody with access to the internet. I thought long and hard about another conventional hardback, but the subject is niche and the cost to the reader therefore substantial if not prohibitive. There is another advantage to the open-source format. It is possible to include audio illustrations. The reader will be able to hear for themselves what is being described. That is no small advantage in a book on singing.

I was once accused by a campaign that wished to exclude girls from previously boy-only choirs of “wanting to make boys sing pop music”. Nothing could be further from the truth! Hence the pairing of living boys with dead composers. “Dead composers”, of course, is a euphemism for what is often referred to as “classical music” and can sometimes imply with no little disparagement the fixation of a stuffy world of elderly, “posh” people upon Beethoven and Bach. It is no secret that my personal tastes would be considered “classical” (or more specifically, pre 1750 “early music”) but throughout my working life that was always a secondary consideration. The more important “Living Boys” element stems originally from a critique of masculinity that my early years as a classroom teacher led me to believe was necessary.

At the outset I need to make it quite clear that I am strongly in favour of co-education and have never objected to the introduction of girls to cathedral choirs. What I objected to throughout my working life were attitudes and practices that discouraged or rejected boys or, worse still, resulted in boys growing up with misogynistic attitudes and no interest in anything other than what Máirtín Mac an Ghaill so aptly dubbed the “3Fs” (fightin’ fukin’ n football”).  That remains the case very much, but it is now for others younger than me to respond to the fact that, for too many boys, choral singing is still “uncool”. I have dealt with the reasons for that in various publications throughout my working life, and they remain fundamentally unchanged since the appearance of How High Should Boys Sing? in 2009.

I make no attempt to disguise the fact that the present work has been a retirement project, a personal indulgence in matters that many people, even in the music world, would not consider important.  With “retirement” has come the opportunity to indulge interests that were never considered worthy of public funding. Rejection was the inevitable consequence of any application perceived as supporting already privileged boys, who sadly constitute a disproportionately high proportion of the performers of the works of “dead composers”. Rewording applications in terms such as “widening young male participation in choral singing” with the promise of improving music education and reaching out to excluded groups resulted in funds flowing generously. Perhaps that is where the “pop music” accusation came from.  Whatever the reviewers of my grant applications may have thought, I had hoped quite genuinely that through improving the quality of singing in schools and increasing the opportunities for boys from all walks of life to progress through local, regional, and national youth choirs, some at least would come to enjoy the works of dead composers whilst at the same time all would receive at least some worthwhile choral education.

To prioritise boys’ educational needs over excellence in the performance of choral music is, after all, what those who paid my salary over the years might reasonably expect of a professor in education rather than musicology. There is no cynicism here. Social inclusion and equality of opportunity has always been in accord with my personal values and motives for spending years in classrooms. I know of other, younger folk who have now very ably taken on the onerous but worthy burden of developing boys through choral singing. They will not have the time, as busy practising teachers, to indulge in the kinds of enquiry that I have done during ten years of retirement. I hope, therefore, they have been useful years.

Since retirement I have worked with Professor Gary Butler, a consultant paediatrician at London’s University College Hospital. I have sought through this to understand better the topic of puberty which is so relevant to the question of how high boys should sing. I have also worked with Dr Andrew Johnstone and spent time with him and one of his PhD students at Trinity College in Dublin. Through that fruitful period, I have come to understand what is known as “quire pitch” and the singing ranges of boys during the glorious years of renaissance polyphony. That of course is another dimension of the how high should boys sing question, and one no less important. By no means least, I have continued the longitudinal field studies of boys that I began in 2005. Boys recruited to those studies at the ages of ten and eleven are now young adults and some of them I have seen regularly throughout their adolescence. Their changes in singing range, vocal quality and musical tastes have been uniquely captured. Where information has been missing or in need of clarification, I have spoken to teenagers not previously involved in my research.

The majority of treble singers of the future will be girls, but some boys will still sing. Those boys need to be encouraged and their legitimate needs must be met. Older boys who may never have sung as treble choristers also need to be encouraged to explore what choral singing may have to offer them. I hope that you, the parent, teacher, conductor, friend or mentor of any such young people will find what I have written to be of interest and be encouraged in your own vocation or mission.