tion in handling the voices at this time, just as the employer of adolescent boys must use great care in setting them at any sort of a task involving heavy lifting or other kinds of strain. In the public schools, where no child is asked to sing more than ten or twelve minutes a day, no harm is likely to result; but in a choir which rehearses from one to two hours each day and frequently sings at a public service besides, it seems to be the consensus of opinion that the boy is taking a grave risk in continuing to sing while his voice is changing.[1] He is usually able to sing the high tones for a considerable period after the low ones begin to develop; but to continue singing the high tones is always attended with considerable danger, and many a voice has undoubtedly been ruined for after use by singing at this time. The reason for encouraging the boy to keep on singing is, of course, that the choirmaster, having trained a voice for a number of years, dislikes losing it when it is at the very acme of brilliancy. For this feeling he can hardly be blamed, for the most important condition of successful work by a male choir is probably permanency of membership; and the leader must exercise every wile to keep the boys in, once they have become useful members of the organization. But in justice to the boy's future, he ought probably in most cases to be dismissed from the choir when his voice begins to change.
Let us now summarize the advice given up to this point before going on to the consideration of our second problem:
- Have the boys sing in high range most of the time. The actual compass of the average choir boy's voice is probably g–c′′′ but his best tones will be between e′ and g′′. An occasional a′′ or b′′ or a d′ or c′ will do no harm, but the voice must not remain outside of the range e′–g′′ for long at a time.
- ↑ Browne and Behnke, in The Child's Voice, p. 75, state in reply to a questionnaire sent out to a large number of choir trainers, singers, et cetera, that seventy-nine persons out of one hundred fifty-two stated positively that singing through the period of puberty "causes certain injury, deterioration, or ruin to the after voice." In the same book are found also (pp. 85 to 90) a series of extremely interesting comments on the choirmaster's temptation to use a voice after it begins to change.
