BOY SINGERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 24, 8 December 1939, Page 34

BOY SINGERS

} { OST of you have probably heard a famous boys’ choir at some time or other. Perhaps you heard the Vienna Boys’ Choir when it visited this country; or you will have heard it over the radio. Perhaps your school has a choir, although it is funny how some girls and boys are inclined to look on boys’ singing as "sissy." It is the old story-if you cannot do a thing yourself you envy the person who can, and perhaps say unkind things about him. Anyway, boys’ choirs are among the oldest institutions in the world, and at the present day all over the Continent and in England nearly all the big cathedrals have their own choirs of boy sopranos. Perhaps you have heard of the big English one at Brompton Oratory, or the famous Westminster Glee Singers, who visited New Zealand several years ago. Actually, boys’ voices are very sweet and clear. They are particularly effective in much of the great music which has been written for the church. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries boys were used in the church choirs, although they were later replaced by men with high voices because, as you know, a boy’s voice breaks after he has had it only a few years, and poor, worried choir-masters found that no sooner had they trained their singers than their voices broke and they were of no further use until they got their "grown-up" voices. The boys in the picture above are choristers of the St. Mary of the Angels Song School, at Addlestone, Surrey, in England. They recently paid a visit to Paris and sang over the French broadcasting system. The choristers of this school, which was first started in a room under a pavement in a London slum, travel all over England (wouldn’t you love to do that?) singing at different churches. This picture was taken when they were rehearsing for their Paris visit.

TERRY