The term "treble" is usually applied to boys who sing the top (soprano) part in choral music. It can imply a pure, ethereal sound, not infrequently referred to as "angelic". The UK is famed throughout the Western world for its continuing tradition of professional choirs of men and boy trebles who maintain choral services in our cathedrals, collegiate chapels and greater churches. The tradition is copied in the USA (for example, St Thomas, Fifth avenue, New York) and in Australia (where, for example, I was recently welcomed to sing withn and rehearse the boys of the cathedral of St John the Divine, Brisbane). A boy will usually join such a choir at around the age of eight and the most common age for boys to leave is thirteen. One reason for this is that thirteen is traditionally the top year in an English "prep school" (Y8 in the UK National Curriculum or Grade 7 in the US system). The majority (though not all) of English choir schools are also prep schools. Hence boys leave both school and choir at the end of Y8.
Now this presents certain problems because, according to important research such as that of John Cooksey, the majority of boys no longer have treble voices by the age of thirteen. Most thirteen year olds will have commenced puberty and their voices will have mutated downwards into the cambiata range. Yet in many choirs, particularly cathedral and church choirs, we find thirteen year old "trebles" singing in the soprano range. How come?
This question is the one that has fascinated me most. It was behind my 2009 book How High Should Boys Sing? That was primarily a sociological work. It dealt with the relationship between masculinity and the voice and much of the research behind it tackled the question of the perceived social appropriateness of young adolescent boys singing in high voices. The short answer it gave was that there is a significant generational divide. If you are an average thirteen year old boy in a state maintained school, you think it highly inappropriate for boys your age to sing in high treble voices. If you are an adult enthusiast of sared choral music (and I count myself one of them) you think it wonderful, the work of angels. If you are one of those thirteen year old boys who does sing in such a voice, you have learned to manage a dual identity. You kick a football around and keep from your friends your "weird" enthusiasm for the treble voice whilst you secretly enjoy, indeed "love", your choir singing. This positions you, Janus like, between the generations. You face the "elderly" adult audiences for cathedral evensong, and you face your sport playing peers for most of the rest of your life.
But the sociological question does not answer the physiologcal question. If you are a normally developing boy, how can you be singing high treble notes when your speaking voice, like that of your non-singing peers, has got lower? That is the question that I have turned my attention to since writing How High Should Boys Sing? For an opening shot, I published in the Journal of Singing an article entitled 'Technique or Testosterone? an empirical report on the longevity of boy singers'. This discussed the amazing longevity of the boys who sang in the Temple Church choir under the famed George Thalben Ball. I was privileged during August 2011 to be invited to deliver the Wulstan Atkins Memorial Lecture at the 2011 Three Choirs Festival in Worcester. You can now access an on-line version of it here. During this lecture I reported on my current work to analyse the voices of 1000 boys aged between 10 and 14. This is presently at a half way stage but has already given a surprising answer. Something like half of normally developing boys aged between twelve and a half and thirteen and a half in cathedral choirs don't sing high treble notes - they mime!
