"Dear Sir,--I have had about eighteen years' experience with alto boys, and although I have had some exceedingly good ones, one or two as good as it is possible, I think, to have, yet I must say that, in my opinion, it is a bad system to subst.i.tute boys for men, especially in cathedral music. The reason why the change was made here was that about the year 1872 three of our men altos were failing, and I happened to have three boys with good low voices, who took alto well. In consenting to this change I had no idea of its being a permanent one, but owing to the agricultural depression our Chapter have been quite prevented doing what they would like to do with the choir. The general effect of the change has been this--that I have been always weak in trebles. We are limited to Peterborough for our choristers, and, as a rule, there is not one boy in a hundred who knows even his notes when he enters the choir. It takes from eighteen months to two years for a boy to learn his work, and it is not until a boy is at least twelve that one can turn him into an alto. The result is that four of my senior boys have to be turned into altos, and I am left with a preponderance of young, inexperienced boys as trebles. At the present time I have twelve trebles, eight of whom are quite young.

"In addition, see what extra work is involved in teaching the boys to sing alto. Some boys do not take to alto very easily, and the extra work given to the altos means that quant.i.ty taken from the trebles. I am unable, in consequence, to give the necessary time to the elementary work that one ought to give. We can only get one hour's practice in the day, owing to the boys going to school.

"Then, again, as to tone. The tone of a choir with men altos, if they are at all fairly good, is so much superior to one with boy altos. In cathedral music so many anthems and services have trios for A.T.B. There is not one boy in a thousand who can sing the trio in 'O where shall wisdom' (Boyce) with a tenor and ba.s.s effectively. And how many there are similar to that!

"I do not see how boys could work at all in ordinary parish choirs, for here there are not the opportunities of teaching boys to read well at sight. It is only by daily practice that one can make anything of boys.

"Yours faithfully, "H. KEETON."

Dr. Frank Bates, organist of Norwich Cathedral, has favoured me with a copy of a paper on the boy's voice, in which he says:--

"The compa.s.s of a boy's voice when properly developed is from

[Ill.u.s.tration: C to A B[b] or C]

The chest or lower register extends from

[Ill.u.s.tration: C to C or D]

The head or upper register extends from

[Ill.u.s.tration: C or D to B[b] or C]

No fixed compa.s.s can possibly be given to the different registers, as the older a boy becomes the lower the change occurs; the head register often being used as low down as A."

[Ill.u.s.tration: musical notation]

In a letter to me Dr. Bates says:--

"I quite think that, for ordinary parish church services, the effect of boy altos, if properly taught, is all that one can desire."

In reply to my remark that the break comes in so awkwardly for boy altos, Dr. Bates says:--

"I fail to understand the reason you quote for the non-usage of boy altos. There is no change whatever in a boy's voice, _in its normal state_, until [Ill.u.s.tration: musical notation] is reached. If the change is made lower down all the brilliancy is taken out of a boy's voice. As a boy gets older he uses the upper register much lower down. I have known boys at the age of eighteen with lovely top notes but very poor chest register. In such cases, when a boy's top register commences at [Ill.u.s.tration: G] I can quite understand the difficulty."

There is evidently some conflict of nomenclature here, as the limits of the registers as given by Dr. Bates differ considerably from those which are usual. I am glad to learn that Dr. Bates is writing a book on "The Voices of Boys," which will no doubt clear up the subject. In the paper before me he recommends practice of the scales to such syllables as La, Fa, Ta, Pa, in order to bring the tone well to the front of the mouth, and reinforce it by means of the soft upper palate. He recommends the teacher to train the boys to use the upper register by making them sing over and over again, _very softly_, the following notes:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chest Head Ah....]

Here again the transition seems to me to be taken much too high.

Mr. Frank Sharp, of Dundee, trainer of the celebrated children's choir, which has sung the treble and alto parts, both solos and choruses, of _Messiah, St. Paul_, and many cantatas, writes to me:--

"In part-singing where there are boy trebles, the adult male alto voice has its charms. The contrast in quality between the open tone of the boys' voices and the condensed, sometimes squeaky sweetness of the man alto does not affect the blending, and helps the distinctness of parts.

Considering the growing scarcity of this latter voice, why not use boy altos? They can be made as effective as ordinary women altos, but they are as short-lived and need more attention than the boy trebles. Their chief drawback is a tendency to produce tone without the least attention to quality or effect save that of noise. Nevertheless, there is nothing to hinder boy altos doing all that is necessary, or, indeed, all that can be done by the adult male alto. I have trained boys to sing alto in _Messiah_, _St. Paul_, and equally trying music, during the past twenty years, and anyone else who keeps the girl's alto voice before him as a model can do the same. The boy alto voice may be said to have a husk and a kernel: the one strident, harsh, and overpowering; the other sweet, and, with use, rich and round. The average healthy boy, with his exuberant love of noise, will naturally give the husk, but the skilful voice-trainer will only accept the kernel, evolved from right register, good _timbre_, and proper production. Seeing and hearing a process in voice-training is, however, more satisfactory than much writing and the reading thereof."

Mr. W. W. Pearson, master of a village school in Norfolk, who is well-known by his excellent part-songs, writes to me:--

"I succeed very well in getting boys to sing alto because I always use a large number of exercises in two parts, making each division of the cla.s.s in turn take the lower part. I do not choose boys for altos on account of age. That, in my opinion, has nothing to do with it. I choose them by quality of voice. There is no break in the voice of the natural alto between]--[Ill.u.s.tration: G and C] I find altos out generally when they are novices, by hearing them trying to sing with the others, and dropping down an octave in high pa.s.sages."

The following interesting notes are by Mr. W. Critchley, organist, choirmaster, and schoolmaster in the village of Hurst, near Reading:--

"I do not choose the elder boys as altos, as I find that treble boys, as a rule, are at their very best just before the change of voice. And moreover, when that change begins, the voice is so uncertain in its intonation that if the boy were put to sing alto he would be certain to drag the others down. At present I have one or two boys with round, mellow voices, who are very effective. Unfortunately, most of the alto parts in hymn-tunes and chants hover about the place where the break in the voice occurs, and it requires a lot of practice to conquer the difficulty. As a rule, I get the alto boys to sing in the lower register. It is very seldom they get a note which they cannot take in this register, so I train it up a little, thus--

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEYS B to F[#].

d_1 t_2 l_2 t_2 d_1 r_1 m_1]

I do not see any other way of getting over the uncertainty in the boy alto voice. It is merely a matter of time and trouble."

Mr. J. C. E. Taylor, choirmaster of St. Mary's, Penzance, and head-master of the National School, says:--

"I have had one or two pure alto voices, and these are the best, but very rare. Good voices of trebles unable to take [Ill.u.s.tration: musical notation] (D) have often become fair alto voices, and my present solo alto boy is one of these. The trios in the anthems are taken by boy alto, tenor, and ba.s.s. These alto boys are practised from lower G to C--[Ill.u.s.tration: musical notation] up and down, minding their _p's_ and _f's_. My trebles, as a rule, last until fifteen years of age, and altos until sixteen, and even seventeen."

Mr. A. Isaac, choirmaster of a church in Liverpool, says:--

"For the last twenty years I have been continuously engaged with male voice choirs in connection with churches too poor to pay for adult help, and, as you may readily guess, I have never yet had the good fortune to secure, for any length, the services of gentlemen who could sing falsetto effectively. I have had, therefore, to rely solely upon my boys for the alto part. At the present time my choir, which is allowed to be up to the mark amongst local Liverpool churches, is made up of 22 boys (18 treble and 4 alto) paid, and 14 adults (5 tenors and 9 ba.s.ses) voluntary. There is, I find, no royal road to the alto part. My course is as follows. I obtain my boys as soon as they are eleven, by which age they have been made fairly familiar at my school with the old notation on the movable _do_ plan. Theoretical instruction is continued side by side with special voice-training exercises. Occasionally I meet with a boy who has a true mezzo-soprano voice, and he is a treasure, but in the main my selections are boys with treble voices. As soon as a treble shows signs of voice breaking, I let him down into the alto part. The transition is not very difficult, for by this time the boy has become a fairly good Sol-faist and reader. I have but to adapt the voice-training exercises to him in company with his fellows, and I have no reason to regret the issue. I take my boys always together, with two-part exercises."

Mr. Stocks Hammond, organist and choirmaster of St. Barnabas, Bradford, in a published paper on "Boys' Voices," says:--

"During many years of choir training, I have experienced very great difficulty in supplying the alto parts with _good_ men's falsetto voices (especially in voluntary choirs), and I have therefore been compelled to have that part sung by boys, and experience leads me to prefer the boys'

voices to men's, unless, indeed, they are real alto voices, which are seldom to be met with. I have never yet had any great difficulty in finding boys' voices capable of sustaining that part, and can always fill up any gaps that occur by the following means. Whenever I find a treble begins to experience a difficulty in singing the upper notes, and that in order to sing them he must strain his voice, immediately he is put to sing alto, which he is in most cases able to do for one or two years, and during that time he is thus retained as a useful member of the choir; for otherwise he would very soon have been lost to it entirely, for nothing hastens so much the breaking of the voice as the habit of unduly straining it."

Mr. T. H. Collinson, Mus.B., organist of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, writes to me:--

"Boy altos are a fraud and a deception, as a rule, though occasionally one meets with a natural contralto at an early age. Even then he can generally be worked up to treble by gentle treatment, developing the middle and falsetto registers."

In order to get to the bottom of this subject, I invited correspondence in the _Musical Standard_ (until recently the organ of the College of Organists), and several interesting letters were the result. Mr. R. T.

Gibbons, F.C.O., organist of the Grocers' Company's Schools, where excellent performances of operettas are given, wrote:--

"As soon as a boy's voice reaches only E[b] he is drafted into the altos, and that preserves his voice much longer."

To this statement Mr. Fred. Cambridge, organist of Croydon Parish Church, took exception. He said:--

"I do not wish to appear to dogmatise, but I should say 'as soon as a boy's voice reaches only E[b],' it is quite time he left off singing altogether, _i.e._, if his voice has previously been a treble. I know it is the custom in some choirs to make a boy sing alto as soon as his voice begins to break. In my opinion, such a course is utterly wrong. It is not only injurious to the boy's voice, but very unpleasant for those who have to listen to it.

"In a school of 500 boys, there ought to be no difficulty in finding sufficient natural altos, without having to rely on broken-voiced trebles.

"In my own choir I frequently admit altos at 10 or 11 years of age, with the result that I get five or six years' work out of them, and the latter part of their time they are available for alto solos.