Girls in Libera...!

[liberavieve]

I keep coming back to reply to this thread, but every time I start, if feels like ramming my head against a wall!

[Yorkie]

I keep coming back to reply to this thread, but every time I start, if feels like ramming my head against a wall!

Well you could just admit you are wrong

How about posting some clips of girls singing and comparing them to boys singing so we can decide if they do in fact sound the same. Moving the debate away from Libera and just focusing on the sound of girls voices as against those of boys.

I assume you you have some examples tucked away in support of your argument

[liberavieve]

Well you could just admit you are wrong

But why would I do that? The issue's more that I'm so certain of my position that breaking it down becomes staggeringly difficult.

How about posting some clips of girls singing and comparing them to boys singing so we can decide if they do in fact sound the same. Moving the debate away from Libera and just focusing on the sound of girls voices as against those of boys.

I'll work on getting a few pieces by York Minster up for this. I've just got my hands on a recording with alternating girl and boy trebles, and it's an excellent illustrations of the differences that I do hear between the boys/gentlemen and the girls/gentlemen, namely:

• The girls are allowed to get away with lazy, 'smile' vowels that no director would abide from the boys or the gentlemen.

• Less 'R' emphasis among the girls.

• The boys are generally louder and more forceful in their approach (and assigned 'louder' pieces to perform), where the girls have what might be described as an airy, more saccharinely sweet, (dare I say it?) 'girly' sound.

I think that Maartendas may have asked earlier whether it's my belief that girls' and boys' voices can attain the same quality or that they sound fundamentally different but ought to be allowed to sing the same repertoire anyway. My answer to that is that there is no 'fundamental' boy chorister voice or girl chorister voice and that it really is all down to training, whether it be explicit (as in instruction in vowel-sound or consonant transitions in a cathedral) or more passively encultured (boys learning in their goings-about that boys 'are loud' and girls learning that girls 'are reserved' or 'are sweet.') The hope is that a director who values equally the sound of the boys and the girls will give the same explicit instruction in their direct training; as for the enculturation and socialisation? Well, that's down to everyone else.

The York Minster recording illustrates my point— a point that, granted, is difficult to prove without plucking centuries of social expectation from the vacuum.

(As for the repertoire-related argument, which I've heard bandied about, that girls ought to stick to Hildegard and leave to boys the works composed by men for men—? Borderline asinine.)

I assume you you have some examples tucked away in support of your argument

That's the thing. I'm working on that now—a huge pain with a laptop with a faulty disk drive —but it seems that high-quality recordings of girls singing are quite difficult to come by— unless you're wanting such choral gems as 'Would You Like to Swing on a Star?' or 'Accentuate the Positive.' (Why, Salisbury? Why?) Further, finding (for instance) Salisbury's boys on Piece X and then finding Salisbury's girls on Piece X? And then finding the combined treble line on Piece X? Forget it. I may have to sneak around and record evensongs for the next three years to have the means for that sort of comparison. (And even then, I'd expect to find the boys on most of the more beloved anthems and the girls on quite a number of the Marian pieces and works by female composers.)

Now, my hunt would be easier if I had a resource like the BCSD... but alas! No girls aloud! Er— allowed.

[Yorkie]

Sorry Liberavieve but I think you are so certain in your politically correct stance that you are picking up on the minutia and missing the real point

You concentrate so much on the style and technique that you have failed to notice the elephant in the room - the sound of a boys voice is not the same as the sound of a girls voice.

I accept that on the really big, high notes that the difference is small in tone and texture but over the full range of the voice boys and girls do not sound alike. Throw in markedly different ages of puberty and the fact most girls can be choristers up to 17 whilst boys too rarely make it to 14 and you are arguing apples and oranges.

I just can't help but wonder why it is so important to you to prove that girls sound the same as boys.

[liberavieve]

I just can't help but wonder why it is so important to you to prove that girls sound the same as boys.

Implications? Theories? I suspect that it's just because I'm a filthy lefty who eagerly awaits the enlightenment of our so rigidly-gendered society and the liberation of children (and adults) from artificially pink and blue boxes. That, or I'm actually working toward a law degree with a very infamous client already in mind. You might have heard of him. Horns, tail. Hot-weather type of person.

I, on the other side of your coin, just can't help but wonder why it's so important to so many others to prove that girls sound different from boys and to therefore justify their segregation. But I have my theories!

[Yorkie]

I just can't help but wonder why it is so important to you to prove that girls sound the same as boys.

Implications? Theories? I suspect that it's just because I'm a filthy lefty who eagerly awaits the enlightenment of our so rigidly-gendered society and the liberation of children (and adults) from artificially pink and blue boxes. That, or I'm actually working toward a law degree with a very infamous client already in mind. You might have heard of him. Horns, tail. Hot-weather type of person.

Pink and blue - interesting example of fixed gender stereotyping you chose to belittle me with. Prior to the middle of the 20th century pink was the colour of boys and blue for girls. Many of Britain's ancient public schools fielded sports teams in pink colours (sometimes competing against each other for the honour of wearing pink). How times change. Now it is not only a matter of proving the equality of the sexes but also that there can be no differences. I find that a little sad.

I, on the other side of your coin, just can't help but wonder why it's so important to so many others to prove that girls sound different from boys and to therefore justify their segregation. But I have my theories!

Well I can hear the difference so therefore I am amazed when other people can't. I have to wonder why, when somebody as musically untalented as I am can tell the difference, others seem unable to.

I'm not aiming to prove anything - which of us is writing the thesis? And please share your veiled 'theories' (which almost carries a sinister threat to my ears).

[Yorkie]

Listen to the samples of the 12 year old Isabel Suckling:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Choirgirl-Isabel/dp/B003ZUWCSA

What 12 year old choirboy sounds like that?

[Yorkie]

Now when you listen to this I can understand why people hearing the high notes could mistake the singer for a girl, but on the low notes I think it is unmistakably a boy who is singing.

And that is my point. If you listen to all the range of the voice a boy and a girl do not sound the same. To focus on only one aspect is foolish(#edit# make that borderline asinine).


[youtube][/youtube]

[liberavieve]

Pink and blue - interesting example of fixed gender stereotyping you chose to belittle me with.

I think that you're reading scorn in my levity, Yorkie. I'm not at all out to belittle anyone, and I'm absolutely not here for a fight.

I'm aware of the twentieth-century flip in pink/blue connotations; but I'm also aware that upon the birth of a healthy baby (with unambiguous primary sex characteristics), staff at so many western hospitals say, 'It's a [whatever], Mrs Walker!', snip the cord, and get the child into a pink or blue beanie or into a plastic bassinette with a pink or blue ID card. It's social short-hand. And it sticks around in ways both obvious and invisible.

Now it is not only a matter of proving the equality of the sexes but also that there can be no differences. I find that a little sad.

The issue isn't so much that there musn't be differences; the issue is that insisting on and reinforcing these differences as things to be maintained at all cost can be hugely problematic and potentially damaging— as when working women consistently earn less than working men in comparable positions; or when young people whose self-presentations are considered somehow 'queered'—not 'masculine' enough, not 'feminine' enough— are repeatedly made targets of violence whislt uncomfortable teachers look the other way and commenters dismiss it all as 'kids just being kids'. Which, of course, turns into adults just being adults.

Well I can hear the difference so therefore I am amazed when other people can't. I have to wonder if when somebody as musically untalented as I am can tell the difference why others seem unable to.

I think it's fair to say that not everyone listens to as much choral music as you do, and not everyone is as emotionally invested in one specific choir type as you are. My mother's listened to a houseful of boys chirping about for twenty years, and she can't make an accurate age or sex guess on a 'Pie Jesu' recording two times in ten. My father's worse still. (Then again, my mum once called Eminem a 'musical visionary' and likes to tell people that she sings like Amy Winehouse. )

I'm not aiming to prove anything - which of us is writing the thesis? And please share your veiled 'theories' (which almost carries a sinister threat to my ears).

Of course, if you're asking. This is where it should become all too clear, if it wasn't already obvious, that I'm approaching this whole question as a student of Anthropology, not as a student of Music.

Part of my thinking was sparked by a line from an article in the Times a few years back:

A gentle revolution it may be, but it is inspiring a passionate debate across the country, in congregations where the sound (or, perhaps, sight) of mop-headed boys in cassocks is considered quintessentially English.

The implication that the cultural fondness for 'mop-headed boys in cassocks' might have something to do with a reluctance to welcome girls struck me as interesting. Not groundbreaking, but certainly interesting. And it was especially interesting when mapped onto the persistent imagery of the choirboy as something of an angel and his voice as a sexless, ethereal, angelic sound. Sexless, but necessarily male? Ethereal, but, in the words of Aled Jones, girl-chasing and football-playing? It's a bit dissonant. It's interesting, to me, to see so much stress laid on a physical, biological foundation for the boy's treble voice (and only the boy's treble voice), when, on the other hand, there is so much resting on casting the boy chorister as something angelic, somehow removed from the physical and biological world.

The image of the choirboy is just as important, it often seems, as the treble voice. Maybe not to music, on the direct level of sound, but socially. It's a social trope, almost. It's entered into our language. It is a sign, a symbol of something, whether that something is Englishness, high churchishness, eternity, angelicness, boyhood, one's own childhood, tradition, the good-old-days... There's a lot invested in the image, in which girls, thanks to their very, very recent subsumation into the tradition, have no or very little part yet. But we quickly figure out that we're meant to place emphasis on the voice and to ignore the image in the discussion of choristers, because we're afraid of conjuring up any less-than-savoury Room Elephants.

And you're absolutely right, Yorkie; for some, there is a sinister element to it— a sinister element that, unfortunately, I found substantiated just yesterday in a fairly stomach-turning way. A sinister element that medieval artists and architects acknowledged when they frescoed images of the Sirens around abbey choirs. Does something sinister motivate all interest in boys' choirs? No; of course not. That's like suggesting something about all Roman Catholic priests, all P.E. teachers, all football wives, or all— well, all anyones or anythings. But the very existence of that sinister intent, even if only in a small population, has, it seems to me, shaped the way in which everybody else thinks about and discusses singing boys— and shaped the ways in which advocates must frame their arguments for excluding girls from cathedral choirs.

...

Phew.

If anyone needs me, I'll be in my trench.

[TullyBascombe]

I keep coming back to reply to this thread, but every time I start, if feels like ramming my head against a wall!

Well you could just admit you are wrong

How about posting some clips of girls singing and comparing them to boys singing so we can decide if they do in fact sound the same. Moving the debate away from Libera and just focusing on the sound of girls voices as against those of boys.

I assume you you have some examples tucked away in support of your argument

Did you ever see "Les Choiristes"? Jean Paul Maurinier was a member of a mixed choir, and it's that mixed choir that does the singing, not the boy actors who acted the parts in the film.

[Yorkie]

Did you ever see "Les Choiristes"? Jean Paul Maurinier was a member of a mixed choir, and it's that mixed choir that does the singing, not the boy actors who acted the parts in the film.

Yes, and?

[Yorkie]

Pink and blue - interesting example of fixed gender stereotyping you chose to belittle me with.

I think that you're reading scorn in my levity, Yorkie. I'm not at all out to belittle anyone, and I'm absolutely not here for a fight.

I'm aware of the twentieth-century flip in pink/blue connotations; but I'm also aware that upon the birth of a healthy baby (with unambiguous primary sex characteristics), staff at so many western hospitals say, 'It's a [whatever], Mrs Walker!', snip the cord, and get the child into a pink or blue beanie or into a plastic bassinette with a pink or blue ID card. It's social short-hand. And it sticks around in ways both obvious and invisible.

Now it is not only a matter of proving the equality of the sexes but also that there can be no differences. I find that a little sad.

The issue isn't so much that there musn't be differences; the issue is that insisting on and reinforcing these differences as things to be maintained at all cost can be hugely problematic and potentially damaging— as when working women consistently earn less than working men in comparable positions; or when young people whose self-presentations are considered somehow 'queered'—not 'masculine' enough, not 'feminine' enough— are repeatedly made targets of violence whislt uncomfortable teachers look the other way and commenters dismiss it all as 'kids just being kids'. Which, of course, turns into adults just being adults.

Well I can hear the difference so therefore I am amazed when other people can't. I have to wonder if when somebody as musically untalented as I am can tell the difference why others seem unable to.

I think it's fair to say that not everyone listens to as much choral music as you do, and not everyone is as emotionally invested in one specific choir type as you are. My mother's listened to a houseful of boys chirping about for twenty years, and she can't make an accurate age or sex guess on a 'Pie Jesu' recording two times in ten. My father's worse still. (Then again, my mum once called Eminem a 'musical visionary' and likes to tell people that she sings like Amy Winehouse. )

I'm not aiming to prove anything - which of us is writing the thesis? And please share your veiled 'theories' (which almost carries a sinister threat to my ears).

Of course, if you're asking. This is where it should become all too clear, if it wasn't already obvious, that I'm approaching this whole question as a student of Anthropology, not as a student of Music.

Part of my thinking was sparked by a line from an article in the Times a few years back:

A gentle revolution it may be, but it is inspiring a passionate debate across the country, in congregations where the sound (or, perhaps, sight) of mop-headed boys in cassocks is considered quintessentially English.

The implication that the cultural fondness for 'mop-headed boys in cassocks' might have something to do with a reluctance to welcome girls struck me as interesting. Not groundbreaking, but certainly interesting. And it was especially interesting when mapped onto the persistent imagery of the choirboy as something of an angel and his voice as a sexless, ethereal, angelic sound. Sexless, but necessarily male? Ethereal, but, in the words of Aled Jones, girl-chasing and football-playing? It's a bit dissonant. It's interesting, to me, to see so much stress laid on a physical, biological foundation for the boy's treble voice (and only the boy's treble voice), when, on the other hand, there is so much resting on casting the boy chorister as something angelic, somehow removed from the physical and biological world.

The image of the choirboy is just as important, it often seems, as the treble voice. Maybe not to music, on the direct level of sound, but socially. It's a social trope, almost. It's entered into our language. It is a sign, a symbol of something, whether that something is Englishness, high churchishness, eternity, angelicness, boyhood, one's own childhood, tradition, the good-old-days... There's a lot invested in the image, in which girls, thanks to their very, very recent subsumation into the tradition, have no or very little part yet. But we quickly figure out that we're meant to place emphasis on the voice and to ignore the image in the discussion of choristers, because we're afraid of conjuring up any less-than-savoury Room Elephants.

And you're absolutely right, Yorkie; for some, there is a sinister element to it— a sinister element that, unfortunately, I found substantiated just yesterday in a fairly stomach-turning way. A sinister element that medieval artists and architects acknowledged when they frescoed images of the Sirens around abbey choirs. Does something sinister motivate all interest in boys' choirs? No; of course not. That's like suggesting something about all Roman Catholic priests, all P.E. teachers, all football wives, or all— well, all anyones or anythings. But the very existence of that sinister intent, even if only in a small population, has, it seems to me, shaped the way in which everybody else thinks about and discusses singing boys— and shaped the ways in which advocates must frame their arguments for excluding girls from cathedral choirs.

...

Phew.

If anyone needs me, I'll be in my trench.

OK, I think we are somewhat closer to the heart of the matter now. You are not so much interested in whether boys and girls sound the same - that appears to be a convenient peg to hang your thesis on - but why there are different perceptions when it comes to boys and girls in choirs.

Because you and your mum & dad can't hear the difference (and I assume saying your mum fails to identify the sex of the singer 2 out of 10 times was an off the cuff remark as such a failure rate would be a statistically significant indicator of a difference) those of us who say we can are at best misogynistic liars intent on denying women what is rightfully theirs or at worst paedophiles.

But what I don't get is why you need to mix the two together - 1) they sound the same and 2) it's not fair the way girls are treated differently.

Is it that you think that if you disregard the first it weakens the second so you have to keep up with that one to remove the only legitimate reason people have to maintain male only choirs?

I guess a thesis that says 'yes boys and girls sound different but that is no reason to treat them differently' may lack a certain impact.

The thing is, I can't give any valid reason as to why girls should get less preferential treatment when it comes to access to choirs, education and recognition of their talents. Ask me to defend that and I couldn't. But I can't deny that it suits me for that to be the case.

[symphonica7]

Very interesting debate and issue....but it's way too late for me to poke my head in the game....so I'll sit this one out and watch you two duke it out.....I'll drink one for the both of ya.....Cheers!