This month sees two important publications in the continuing debate about boys' changing voices. In Music Education Research (vol. 13 no. 3) I have a new article entitled The angel enigma: experienced boy singers' perceptual judgements of changing voices. Read abstract. On this website, you can read the interim report of Phonatory patterns in chorister and non-chorister boys undergoing adolescent voice change and the ability of choir directors to assess healthy and non-healthy treble singing. A bit of a mouthful of a title! My imminent lecture at the Three Choirs Festival on Saturday 13th August will elaborate and hopefully elucidate what this is all about. I don't want to give too much away (you will be able to download a version of the lecture from this site at a later date). There may be a certain amount of humble pie to be eaten, however. I'm on record as an "early puberty sceptic". I base my scepticism on what any good researcher does at the outset of a project - an exhaustive literature review. Well, the medical literature on boys' puberty justifies my scepticism. The case for early puberty in boys is as yet unproven. The results of assessments I have made this year of the boys in five English cathedral choirs, together with the boys in the National Boys Choir of Scotland and a control group of non-chorister boys do not appear to support this scepticism! Almost 50% of voices are "breaking" between the ages of twelve and thirteen and a half. This is not what we expect from tradition and not what is to be expected from the medical literature. This is, frankly, a stunning result.
Of course, there is a huge debate as to what is meant by "breaking". I normally use the word "change", but the word "break" was used in an important study of the Copenhagen Royal Choir by some highly respected paediatricians of international repute. That study gave a clear definition of what was meant by "break". It was "unintentional falsetto notes and a change of singing tone". When those criteria are applied to the data base I have of 163 choristers, we get a mean age of voice break of 13.2 years. This is significantly earlier than the Copenhagen study of 13.7 years, which in turn reported an advance in the Copenhagen Royal Choir from 14.2 years over a fifteen year period. It may be an odd claim to make, but there are quite a few English boy choristers who are now singing treble with broken voices! This brings me back to the Angel Enigma. What does this sound like? The Music Education Research article reports the fact that boys themselves can tell the difference. Boys of thirteen or so years of age who were themselves accomplished singers were surprisingly able to identify whether a boy their age was singing with a true treble voice or fighting to keep his treble voice when it was, technically, "broken". What about their choir directors? That I cannot answer because that part of the research still has to be done. Watch this space, as they say.
