Longitudinal Studies of Boys' Voices
In a longitudinal study we follow as many individuals as we are able, collecting data from them over a period of time. The number of cases that can be followed is limited by the fact that longitudinal studies are generally very labour intensive. A cross-sectional study looks at a much larger sample, but each case is only visited once. Cross-sectional studies are useful for establishing general patterns and trends, but if we really want to know in detail about how boys’ voices develop, we must follow the progress of individuals. I began doing this in 2007 and am now onto case number 36, which is quite a large sample for a longitudinal study.
Some Longitudinal Highlights
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Below are some highlights from the collection of recordings made by some of the boys studied longitudinally. They have been chosen as good illustrations of how voices mature in the years before destabilisation sets in (the event called "breaking"). They also illustrate particular points discussed in Dead Composers and Living Boys.
Sam
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Sam came late to the study through winning BBC Chorister of the Year competition in 2005. A busy schedule of concert appearances, including a Balshazzar's Feast at the Albert Hall resulted . Danny Boy, given in his home city when aged 13:08 is in a changing voice (187Hz) comfortably past the onset of puberty - which happens more often than not with the Chorister of the Year competition.
Sadly, there are no recordings of the voice at younger ages available. As is often the case with competition wins, opportunities opened up, including a major recording contract involving "six of the best young singers of the UK" - three boys and three girls. Sam was 14 by the time this happened and even further through the "in-puberty" phase. The two short extracts below allow comparison of a boy's voice at this stage of adolescence with that of a similarly aged girl. It would be hard to disagree with Peter Giles's assertion of "plangency" and "sonority" against "sweetness", but this is not a child's voice.
Much activity took place during that year. The last two samples show changes to the treble timbre between the ages of 13 and 14. The first is of the Britten Hodie recorded at the same concert as the Londonderry Air. The second is a studio recording of the same piece made for research at age 14:02, by which time the speaking voice pitch had fallen to 178Hz.
The recording of Wicked Game was made just before Sam's fourteenth birthday. Apart from showcasing his undoubted talent it is a superb example of the modal and falsetto ranges available to a boy at this age and stage of development. He sings in modal voice G#3 to E4 and in falsetto voice from F#4 to F#5 without joining the two and avoiding the "devil's note" break that can occur near to E4 or just above. This is an incredibly skilful piece of singing that I have used as an illustration many times.
Nathan
An unusually good and complete set of recordings exists for this cathedral chorister from the age of 08:06 to 13:11. Nathan is featured in Chapter 6 of Dead Composers and Living Boys, and in the NATS Journal of Singing article Beautiful Swansongs of English Cathedral Music.
First two early recordings. That made at eight being a child with obvious promise whilst that made at ten is of a young chorister beginning to make a significant contribution to his choir.
Look at the World was recorded twice, at ages 09:04 and 12:09. The nine year old recording is that of a prepubertal child, whilst that at 12:09 is late peripubertal at the very cusp of in-puberty. These two recordings may be regarded as definitive. The first sung competently and with assurance, but with clearly childlike timbre. The second may well be recognised as the mature voice of a boy chorister, quite possibly the “more plangent tone” of which Giles writes, yet both would have contributed to the collective sound of the boy’s choir.
The Candlelight Carol was recorded during Nathan's final year and it is hard to believe that by this time he had an alternative baritone voice. It is an interesting example of whether the "peak performance"
The last treble recording was made at age 13:11, well into the completing puberty phase. The recording of Lift Thine Eyes is multi-tracked, demonstrating a full range from alto to first treble. Nathan's rendering of each part is masterful. We might see this is an “expanded” range in which the "clunk" has been eliminated as Henry Leck describes, but it is a particularly skilful example.
Nathan believed that his voice changed ("broke") very quickly, taking only a month. He was singing "treble" at the end of the summer term and bass at the beginning of the autumn term. What had happened in fact was that on leaving the choir he started using his previously unused modal baritone voice instead of the falsetto he had been using to keep going as a treble. This is quite common and gives rise to the erroneous belief that some voices "break" quickly and others slowly.
William
William joined the study at the age of eleven and the earliest recording of a test piece was of the hymn tune St Botolph, made at the age of 11:10. This recording is precious because it is the only one that exists of William's unchanged voice.
Though a regular soloist in his cathedral no recordings had been made by the choir by the time the growth spurt marking the transition from peripubertal to in-puberty had occurred. We had only been recording test exercises so a studio session was arranged to record some of his favourite pieces, of which the Britten Corpus Christi carol was one. Recorded at the age of 13:05, this is a changing voice very much typical of the "in-puberty" phase commonly encountered in competitions such as Chorister of the Year where it is rare to hear an unchanged voice (see Sam opposite!)
William's particular five minutes of fame came three months later when he sang the Walford Davies setting of O Little Town of Bethlehem in a Radio Four programme called About the Boys. presented by Christopher Gabbitas. I had chose him to represent a "modern chorister" in comparison with a 1932 recording by the boy soprano Denis Barthel. The point is of comparison between a treble and a soprano, though at 13:08 and speaking at 189Hz, William's voice was certainly not an unchanged treble.
William's cathedral permitted boys to stay beyond the normal choir school leaving age and he was still singing a falsetto treble at age 14:07 when the speaking voice had fallen to 145Hz, a value associated with the early completing puberty phase. By his own admission, his voice was “straining” at this time, but this he regarded as a price worth paying to remain in the choir as long as he possibly could. All of the boys in this choir were recorded for another investigation when he was 13:09. The Vaughan Williams This is the Truth was the piece chosen.
An alternative could be to move to alto, but this is very rarely done in English cathedral choirs where adult counter tenors are preferred. The recording of Gibbons' Record of John made at age 14:01 is a "might have been" in which William has come down to his modal range to perform in effect as a pre-Reformation meane. Unfortunately, that is artistic license as this piece, composed c1620 is definitely post-Reformation so a historically informed performance might use a high tenor. Arguably though, William's modal voice comes closer than the adult falsettists who usually sing the verse today!
Longitudinal CD Albums - Soprano or Treble?
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Several of the boys in my longitudinal study have recorded or contributed to albums. Not uncommonly, either the album or perhaps a major concert appearance or broadcast comes right at the end of the career and what we hear is not an unchanged voice but a changing voice sometimes quite a long way into puberty. Below are two albums that have set out to be more explicit and capture the voice change process as it happened. They also capture the difference between a boy soprano and a boy treble. Today, it is most common to hear boys with high, unchanged voices called “trebles”, but sometimes we hear them called “soprano”. Is this just a matter of personal preference, or are there technical and tonal differences? It's not a competition! Read this article and enjoy the tracks.
Louis Désiré
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Soprano
Louis Alexandre Desire, from Paris, is the boy with the lute on the front cover of my post-doctoral monograph. Louis had quite a career as an exponent of bel canto boy soprano technique. As a soprano, he recorded quite an extensive discography extending from childhood to mid-adolescence. In 2007 he gave a song recital as part of my inaugural professorial lecture – possibly a unique occasion! Four pieces from that recital were issued on the disc Il Passagio. Recorded at the same time was a demo disc called Swing and Sadness – an attempt to add a bit of “swing” to classical repertoire, but sad because the boy soprano voice flowers only briefly. During his visit from France, I “fixed it” for Louis to be the soloist in Hear My Prayer sung at evensong in Bristol Cathedral. It was his ambition at the time to sing the solo made famous by Ernest Lough with an English cathedral choir! The tracks below chart the developmental course of this boy soprano voice.
Max Matthew
Treble
Max Matthew was recruited for study at the age of ten and we decided to record not just the usual monthly protocol of tests but as often as possible a demo piece.
We decided to issue these demo piece recordings as a professionally produced CD, which is still available. The story took an interesting twist as Max’s career became split between the National Boys Choir of Scotland and the RSCM Northern Cathedral Singers. The approaches to dealing with a young adolescent voice could hardly have been more different, if illustration of the fact that there is no such thing as a “typical treble” were needed. Max continued recording beyond the album and you can hear how the new young baritone voice began to develop. We have remained in touch and Max made a significant contribution to Cormac Thompson's podcast One Boy, Two Voices (see below). The tracks below continue beyond Monday Afternoons
CD Albums at different stages with identity change
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Dominic ("Inigo") Byrne featured in the Boys Keep Singing films and was chosen principally because he had a beautiful cambiata voice that can be heard in his album My World. Dominic was originally a chorister at Chester Cathedral, but his ambitions for a singing career led to a disagreement between the choir director and the London vocal coach. When faced with the choice between a professionally coached commercial recording and the regime of the cathedral choir, he opted for the former. Paradoxically, Dominic never knew he was a cambiata, though the fact that he was coached to be a perfect example by a teacher who did not use the term speaks volumes. Before My World he recorded an unchanged treble album, and after it he recorded a single in his newly emerging baritone voice. The full details and technical analyses are in Chapter Eight of Dead Composers and Living Boys (Fitting Voices to Parts)
Cormac has made a great contribution to the study and has been a tremendous asset. In addition to the CD albums here, I have a full collection of all his songs plus further recordings made to test and analyse specific aspects of voice at different times during the study period. These are not for public consumption but have most usefully informed the research. Cormac has shown considerable interest and a genuine concern to help other boys going through voice change. His One Boy, Two Voices podcast is extremely well worth listening to. I give him a bit of a grilling in some of the episodes!
Treble to Cambiata
And as it happens . . .
Longitudinal study is still ongoing. We can never know all the answers, new questions arise whilst methods and analytical technology improve. Jerome is the latest participant and has been providing really high quality data reliably every month. We are also working hard on a series of exemplar recordings which may, (not a promise!) be one day released as an album. The story is being written.
Still to come
Untold Stories
Jerome is also making a valuable contribution to work on historically informed performance by boys. You can hear more recordings on that page. Read more
