Girls in Libera...!

[liberavieve]

...only joking!

But now that I've got your attention...

I'm a fan of Libera for the music that they make, but for full disclosure, they're also something of an academic interest of mine; as I think I said in my introduction on this forum, I'm in the process of researching and writing a thesis on attitudes toward, perceptions of, and identity development among church-affiliated child choristers. Most of the work that I'm doing involves choirs considered 'in the Anglican tradition,' but Libera, being both very much a part of the Anglican musical tradition and and rather removed from it, are an excellent foil to the more traditional choirs to be found in British cathedrals or in collegiate churches.

Much of my focus is on the learning, enforcement, and performance of gender in the education of choristers, and since I've just come across this thread in which a few people expressed some fairly strong opinions on the admission of girl choristers in traditional church and cathedral choirs, my interest is piqued. I'm wondering what you all might think about the (purely hypothetical) possibility of girls performing in Libera.

If Libera were to admit seven- to sixteen-year-old girls alongside the seven- to sixteen-year-old boys, would it harm the group in terms of musical quality? In terms of popularity? What if the group (or one similar) were to admit only girls of that age? Would Libera admitting girls (in addition to or in place of boys) be different from St Philip's doing the same for worship services?

I don't mean to stir the pot; really, I'm curious, and I figured (and hoped) that, as Libera fans, some of you might be interested in weighing in.

[symphonica7]

Yes.....and Yes....It would defeat the whole purpose....and they are "Treble Voices" for a reason....meaning boys.....there's a unique timbre and tone that only "Treble" voices can achieve......that's what makes it so special, rare, and beautiful....

However I do love all girls choirs!!!!

[youtube][/youtube]
If you don't feel this..........I feel for you....

and Mixed Choirs!!!! aged between 7 to 16


[youtube][/youtube]

[plumpuff6]

If Libera were to admit seven- to sixteen-year-old girls alongside the seven- to sixteen-year-old boys, would it harm the group in terms of musical quality? In terms of popularity? What if the group (or one similar) were to admit only girls of that age?

Well I don't know if admitting girls would necessarily "harm" the group in terms of musical quality. I do, however, think that Libera would lose something and would not sound the same. The very special quality a boy soprano has cannot (IMHO) ever be emulated by a girl soprano, even if both singers are the same age.

But it's quite an interesting topic...though I can't see RP introducing girls to the group.

[Rebecca (:]

This is a very interesting topic.. I've actually been thinking a lot about the recently, as my friend, who is a girl, asked what I'd do if I was offered an audition for Libera.

I am a girl in this age range, and I'd love to be able to sing with Libera, however, I think it is important that Libera remains an all-boys choir. One reason I believe this, is that girl's voices tend to have different tones than boy's, as well as ,in some case, different styles of singing all together. As for their popularity, I think it would go down for some types of fans, and up for others. Many people have been mesmorized by the sound of Libera, the sound of boy trebles. When you mix that with girls it's a whole new sound.
At the same time, I'd like to hear how Libera sounded with a girls choir alongside them, just for one song, or one concert.

I'm defiently against having girls join Libera, even though I secretly wish I chould (oh, but don't we all?). I just wouldn't feel the same about Libera as a group anymore, and I don't know if I would be as big of a fan as I am now.

[symphonica7]

Oh and hey! I think that's what happened to Vienna Boys Choir....They started letting girls in and then they decided to do the whole Vienna Boys Choir goes Pop thing, and now they are trash.....went from the Benchmark of Boys Choir to the laughing-stock of choirs overnight....

[liberainchicago]

Girls in Libera? This topic has come up before and with a varied mix of opinions. For myself, girls in Libera does not sit well. There is something very special about those wonderful treble voices of a well-prepared boys choir. Especially ones the caliber of Libera and the Riga Dom Boys Choir.

The sound of a coed or girls choir is very different from that of a boys choir. Not to say a coed or girls choir would not be any good. Just very different. I have heard them and some were pretty good. But I know from experience, putting girls into a boys choir will start driving boys away and interest in the choir go down and in one case I know of, the choir no longer exist.

At least to some degree, the boys don't want to sing with the girls. Why? I don't know.

And as for the comments made here by symphonica7, I agree with your earlier post but not your later one. I saw the Vienna Boys Choir (Schubert) last Nov. It was all boys and they stayed with their traditional songs plus a few pop songs. It was however, very diffferent from previous times I have seen them. This time, they moved around a lot more and used some lighting and some limited access to some of the boys was allowed after the show. A more Libera-like show. They have adjusted to the times a bit.

[plumpuff6]

The sound of a coed or girls choir is very different from that of a boys choir. Not to say a coed or girls choir would not be any good. Just very different. I have heard them and some were pretty good. But I know from experience, putting girls into a boys choir will start driving boys away and interest in the choir go down and in one case I know of, the choir no longer exist.

At least to some degree, the boys don't want to sing with the girls. Why? I don't know.

Maybe because the of the age? Libera members are 7-16, and, for the most part, that's not the age where boys and girls usually hang out together so much. Well maybe in the 15-16 range, or the younger 7-8, but middle school/junior high age? Not as common? Plus, then maybe the boys will think singing is "girly" because the group wouldn't have the same "male camaraderie" feel to it.

[Yorkie]

I'm a fan of Libera for the music that they make, but for full disclosure, they're also something of an academic interest of mine; as I think I said in my introduction on this forum, I'm in the process of researching and writing a thesis on attitudes toward, perceptions of, and identity development among church-affiliated child choristers. Most of the work that I'm doing involves choirs considered 'in the Anglican tradition,' but Libera, being both very much a part of the Anglican musical tradition and and rather removed from it, are an excellent foil to the more traditional choirs to be found in British cathedrals or in collegiate churches.

Much of my focus is on the learning, enforcement, and performance of gender in the education of choristers, and since I've just come across this thread in which a few people expressed some fairly strong opinions on the admission of girl choristers in traditional church and cathedral choirs, my interest is piqued. I'm wondering what you all might think about the (purely hypothetical) possibility of girls performing in Libera.

Before I answer the questions I would like to know what your personal opinion is (I asked you on your Newbie introduction post but you never got back to me).

I get the feeling that you think girls are unfairly treated in this matter but that is just me speculating.

[viabuona]

...I'm in the process of researching and writing a thesis on attitudes toward, perceptions of...

Well, maybe you tell us first of all in which science you write this thesis (philosophy, sociology, religion, physics, etc.).
Alternatively you describe us your thesis and then, we try to find via an antithesis to the synthesis.

[fan_de_LoK]

Dr Peter Giles, Vice chairman of the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir :

"Boys plus girls in a choir sooner or later means no boys."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religi ... voice.html

[paul]

Dr Peter Giles, Vice chairman of the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir :

"Boys plus girls in a choir sooner or later means no boys."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... voice.html

Funny you should mention this...

I picked up a copy of St Philip's Parish review on Sunday, and this was in there.



So as you can see, St Philip's are praised by the CTCC for there efforts in maintaining tradition.

[liberavieve]

Well, maybe you tell us first of all in which science you write this thesis (philosophy, sociology, religion, physics, etc.)

Of course. I ought to have said it in the first place. The 'science' in which I'm writing is Anthropology, but—and this, I'm sure, would have half of the course and a number of the faculty coming after my blood—I try to avoid framing it as a matter of the 'social sciences.' I don't know where I sit with the term generally. It often feels that the discipline is, as we move away from trying to quantify the abilities of 'the other' (for instance) is more of a 'practical humanities.' 'Field humanities.' Something. But science? Nah; I'm tending to keep away from the 'lies, damned lies and statistics' when possible.

(Besides: I once exploded a lab set-up in school. Enormously messy. Science and I don't tend to get on well.)

Before I answer the questions I would like to know what your personal opinion is (I asked you on your Newbie introduction post but you never got back to me).

Sorry for that, Yorkie; I've just now looked back and found your question, which I likely never saw because I was up to my eyes in end-of-term papers and finishing up with exams. (Read as: I'm atrocious with deadlines and had procrastinated to the point of terror in that week before Christmas.) I hadn't meant to ignore you.

In terms of this thread, I hadn't intended on coming out swinging with my opinion, since I've learned that it makes a lot of people quite unhappy; but since you've asked (and since I'd rather discuss here at the moment than actually put honest work into my paper) :

I get the feeling that you think girls are unfairly treated in this matter but that is just me speculating.

In a way.

I know that bodies like the CTCC enjoy flaying the media/government/parents/schools/etc. for (always in scare quotes) 'political correctness' for its own sake. I hear the word 'unfair' in a drawn-out whine, and that isn't how I mean it. (Though, to be fair, I'm sure that many of those parents/schools/politicians do whine 'unfair' because it's the easy thing to do; it's putting a quick little bandage on the thing.) If there's inequity here, then it's only being disguised as, 'Oh, look at the poor girls who don't get to sing. I demand a change.'

I love the sound of a boys' treble line, be it over the voices of men in the acoustics of a cathedral or, as in Libera's case, split umpteen times into a really lovely SSSSSAAA(etc.) arrangement in a concert hall or baseball park. (Or at a rock concert!) In terms of my biased personal preference as far as cathedral music goes, I would choose Winchester or St John's College over the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or the Harry Simeone Chorale ninety-six-and-a-half times out of 100.

Changing the composition of Libera—admitting girls alongside or in place of the boys—would, to be perfectly honest, likely try my enthusiasm for the group, just as admitting girls to choristerships at King's would likely do. Everyone has a personal bias, and that's mine. I can acknowledge that. Much of it has to do with my having internalised the image of childhood that the choirboy has come to represent; much of it, as I believe I've mentioned somewhere in another thread, has to do with nostalgia for my own childhood; much of it has to do with the kind of stellar education that I know choristers receive.

But precious little of it has to do with the sound of the choir. I can't help but think that the so-called essential, eternal, ephemeral (or what have you) quality of the boy's voice is 'the old lie' in this old argument, and I have a difficult time buying into the idea that 'boys' voices alone are the ones suited to such-and-such a genre, because they sound such-and-such a way.' Just listen to how celebrated treble voices have changed over the past century. We've invented the Essential Treble Voice for ourselves, and we've internalised the idea into our collective imagination.

The Treble Chorister Voice, I think, is just as socially-constructed as the Pop Princess Voice, as the Teen Boy Band Voice. It's down to education, if not in full then at least in enormous part, and if it's only boys who are being educated and conditioned to sing in such a way, of course it's only the boys who will sing that way.

Dr Peter Giles, Vice chairman of the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir...

Aah, right. Regarding the Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir, I'm a bit torn; while I think that the very heart of their heart is in the right place—that is, in encouraging boys to sing and in trying to provide them spaces in which to do so when so much of the world would mock them—I honestly find a lot of what they actually write down to be barely short of despicable in tone and in implication. But that's another kettle altogether.

My nasty little secret is that, when it's all boiled down, my thesis is perhaps only superficially about choristers. Does introducing girls into a previously all-male choir drive boys of their peer-group away? Not universally, but that certainly seems to be the case in many places. But that, I truly, truly believe, is a symptom of a much larger problem—one that reaches far beyond Anglican choral music specifically or even music in general—and not the devil in itself.

If we didn't—consciously or subconsciously, through popular music and television, through religious practice, in schools, in sport, in games, through clothing, through phrases like 'man up' or 'sit like a lady' or 'don't be such a girl' or 'grow a pair'—constantly pit girls against boys, we wouldn't have the problem of male flight from the choirs. If we didn't set children up as potential threats to each other in cases like this (my main issue with the CTCC), children wouldn't be threats to each other.

In Frank Wedekind's 1890 play The Awakening of Spring, Moritz, a nervous young adolescent who becomes a large part of the 'tragedy' of the play's subtitle, tells his friend that he hopes to raise his future children, boys and girls alike, in the same clothes, in the same room, doing the same things; he concludes, 'It seems to me that if they grew up that way, they would be easier in mind than we are under the present regulations.'

I have no way of proving that, of course; society changes so slowly. But I'm inclined to agree.

Ahem. Now that you all must have me pinned as a subversive, tree-hugging, patchouli-burning, pot-smoking, granola-eating, long-haired, fire-extinguisher-throwing, in-need-of-manning-up pinko sissy anarchist madman—!

and Mixed Choirs!!!! aged between 7 to 16

Wow; PCSM are just fantastic in that concert. Their "Pueri Concinite" (also from that series, I think) was one of my highlights this past Christmas.

As for their popularity, I think it would go down for some types of fans, and up for others.

Is there a certain type of fan for which you think their popularity would go up or down? I'm not trying to catch you out, I promise. I was just wondering if you thought it would be a random change or whether, say, they would see increases in popularity among peer boys but decreases among older women, etc.

[Rebecca (:]

As for their popularity, I think it would go down for some types of fans, and up for others.

Is there a certain type of fan for which you think their popularity would go up or down? I'm not trying to catch you out, I promise. I was just wondering if you thought it would be a random change or whether, say, they would see increases in popularity among peer boys but decreases among older women, etc.

Their screaming teenage girl fanbase might go down some, due to the fact that some of those girls are fans because it's a 'boys choir', but also many of the older fans, women in particular, might not like them as much. For other boys their age it's hard to say, they might stop liking Libera all together because it seems like a sissy thing to like, since it would be a more traditional choir, but some might like it more for the reason that some of my fellow teenage girl fans like them. Their looks. (It annoys me that some grls are only fans for that reason.)

[liberavieve]

Their screaming teenage girl fanbase might go down some, due to the fact that some of those girls are fans because it's a 'boys choir', but also many of the older fans, women in particular, might not like them as much. For other boys their age it's hard to say, they might stop liking Libera all together because it seems like a sissy thing to like, since it would be a more traditional choir, but some might like it more for the reason that some of my fellow teenage girl fans like them. Their looks. (It annoys me that some grls are only fans for that reason.)

The plight of the thirteen-year-old!

Also, it's interesting that you point out that teenagers might equate tradition with sissiness; it always sort of seemed to me, growing up, that an old-fashioned, traditional man (another imagined creature) epitomised 'manliness.' Then again, I was fairly easily fooled by formal dress or a moustache, so he or he might have been my idea of the traditional man's man.

[paopao]

If Libera were to admit seven- to sixteen-year-old girls alongside the seven- to sixteen-year-old boys, would it harm the group in terms of musical quality? In terms of popularity? What if the group (or one similar) were to admit only girls of that age? Would Libera admitting girls (in addition to or in place of boys) be different from St Philip's doing the same for worship services?

hmm..smells like the Liberette joke from several years ago?

as for hurting the popularity, it definitely would! considering in several countries Libera have been treated as if they're a boyband. Rebecca's got the point there about the whole fangirl thing.

Dunno about the musical quality though, it really depends on RP. I'm sure he can handle it professionally, it's just he would have to work extra hard to harmonize boys' & girls' voices IMO.