J. Spencer Curwen

“ Rigidity is the enemy of all good singing. Let the whole body and vocal apparatus be relaxed, and pure tone will result. "If I hear a boy forcing up his voice," said Herr Eglinger, of Basel, to me, "I ask the rest of the class to point him out, and they do it at once." This at once cures the transgressor and sharpens the consciences of the other boys. As to the vowel on which singers should be trained, there are differences of opinion. ”

“ Probably no cause is so fruitful as a misuse of the registers of the voice, a straining upwards of the lower register beyond its proper limits. This may be placed in the front as a perpetual cause of bad intonation and loss of pitch. This straining is usually accompanied with loud singing, but boys who have formed this bad habit will not at once sustain the pitch if told to sing softly. Their voices, under these circumstances, will at first prove weak and husky, and will flatten as much with soft singing as they did with loud. A slow process of voice training can alone set them right. ”

“ If he would have a reliable choir he must begin, continue, and end with regular voice training based on an undeniably good system. From the very outset the pupil should be taught to fear flat singing as a demon. With my boys I was for ever laying down the self-evident truth, 'People can endure your singing if it be tuneful, even though all other points of excellence are low, but no one can put up with your singing out of tune, except as martyrs.' The cause of flattening is always lack of culture. ”

“ Voices do not at once blend, and until they do the singing should be never loud. I look upon the earlier work as tentative—a feeling for the beauty of perfection of pitch, tunefulness, and intonation. A practice to be condemned is that of learning the parts of a tune separately, and then bringing them together. ”

“ There is no doubt that the long services in many churches are trying to the choir boys. In some churches the morning service lasts two hours and a quarter. It is very hard even for an adult to keep his thoughts from wandering, and his eyes from{9} glancing over the congregation during all this time. How much more hard is it, then, for a boy who is by nature a fidget, and if healthy, brimming over with activity? Nevertheless boys can be trained, if not to control their thoughts, at least to an outward reverence and quietude in harmony with the service. ”

“ It is undesirable to tell the boys anything about the registers. The spirit of voice-training at the present time is too analytical. The theory of the registers is for the teacher, not for the pupil. Some voice-trainers seem to think that it is their business to discover the registers, but as far as tone goes it is their business to conceal them. Trainers work better through possessing physiological knowledge, but the end is a smooth and homogeneous voice, blended and well-built. ”

“ All agree that a half empty church, a cold church, an ill-ventilated church promotes flattening, and it may be added that certain chants and tunes so hover about the region of the break that they invite false intonation.
Mr. H. A. Donald, headmaster of the Upton Cross Board School, tells me that he has not much flattening, but that when it comes it seems to be beyond control. The discipline of his school is excellent, but on a given day there will come, as it were, a mood over the boys which makes it impossible for them, try as they will, to avoid sinking. ”

“ Roughly speaking, the boys to be rejected are those who through carelessness, excitement, or confirmed habit, force up the thick register while singing. And those to be accepted are the boys who have sufficient reserve and care to turn into the fluty tone at the proper place, whether the music be loud or soft, and whatever be the shape of the melodic passage. The right use of the voice is most likely to come from boys who, whatever their social status, are well brought up, and have been taught to avoid screaming, coarse laughing and bawling, and if possible to speak in a clear way. ”

“ Singing is a mental as well as a physical act, and unless the boy has a clear conception in his mind of the sound of the note he wants, the intonation will be uncertain. Here comes in the Tonic Sol-fa system with its "Mental Effects," which give a recognisable character to each note of the scale, and guide the voice and ear.
Bad voice production, throaty and rigid, must always go with flattening and wavering pitch. The act of singing should be without effort; the muscles of head, neck, and throat should be relaxed. A boy inclined to these faults should be told to smile while singing. ”

“ Dear Sir,—I have had about eighteen years' experience with alto boys, and although I have had some exceedingly good ones, one or two as good as it is possible, I think, to have, yet I must say that, in my opinion, it is a bad system to substitute boys for men, especially in cathedral music. ”

“ It is not often practicable to have more than one—or two at the most—meetings of a choir during the week, and the length of the lesson must be, in consequence, at least an hour. For voice training in the earlier stages six lessons a week of fifteen minutes each are preferable to one of an hour and a half, and therefore I would urge the necessity of getting hold of the sympathies of the school teacher, and putting him on right lines to work out the choirmaster's ideas, if the offices be not united. ”

“ My object is to help those whose difficulties are greatest; who, so far from being able to pick out boys of musical talent and fine voice, are obliged to accept the material that offers, often of the poorest musical description. The country boy is a more healthy animal than his brother of the town, and there is no fault to be found with the natural volume of his voice provided he can be taught to place his registers rightly, to avoid straining the thick or chest register, to pronounce and phrase properly. ”

“ The very early habit of hearing and performing music stimulates the musical sense, and gives musical tendency to all the youthfully supple faculties which bear upon the use of this sense. The habit in almost first childhood of associating sight with sound, written characters with uttered notes, the office of the eye with that of the ear or of the voice, which is the ear's agent, does more in favourable cases to develop some of the best essentials in an artist, than can be accomplished by the unremitting study of after life. ”

“ My own experience would suggest that in connection with the training of cathedral choristers the attention of cathedral organists might be very advantageously drawn to the very great importance of efficiency in the art of teaching—of imparting knowledge. The instruction given may be as good as could well be desired, but the manner of imparting it just as bad—such as would be condemned in any well-conducted Public Elementary School. Uncontrolled temper, the cane, boxing of the ears, are matters which go far to prove a teacher very seriously incompetent as a teacher. ”

“ Sometimes, when a village lies compactly together, a large amount of work can be got through similar to that which we find in towns, but generally the rural district is wide and scattered, and only a limited number of practices can be secured. Under these circumstances, I have found the best course to pursue to be somewhat as follows:—First and foremost, let the Tonic Sol-fa system be taught, it lightens the work of the choirmaster in a wonderful degree, and the boys bring an intelligence to their work which is unattainable by any other means. ”

“ If you do not love boys, never become a choir [school] master."
Discipline is preserved by giving the boys seats in the same relative position at rehearsal and in church. There should be a double row of desks in the practice room, provided with a shelf for books, just as in the stalls. If the boys have to hold the books and music in their hands they stoop, and the singing suffers. Each boy should have a copy of the music, and it should bear his number, so that he is personally responsible for its good keeping. Punctuality at rehearsal is important. ”

“ Nature herself also counsels rest because she reduces the musical value of the voice at this time to a low ebb. It becomes husky and of uncertain intonation. No doubt cases can be quoted of boys who have sung on uninterruptedly and developed into good tenors or basses, but there are cases equally strong in which the man's voice has completely failed after such a course. Sir Morell Mackenzie is the only medical writer who has advocated singing during change of voice, but not even his authority can upset the weight of evidence on the other side. ”

“ They can be made as effective as ordinary women altos, but they are as short-lived and need more attention than the boy trebles. Their chief drawback is a tendency to produce tone without the least attention to quality or effect save that of noise. Nevertheless, there is nothing to hinder boy altos doing all that is necessary, or, indeed, all that can be done by the adult male alto. I have trained boys to sing alto in Messiah, St. Paul, and equally trying music, during the past twenty years, and anyone else who keeps the girl's alto voice before him as a model can do the same. ”

“ Choir boarding schools are not numerous, and are not increasing in number. The agricultural depression has reduced the revenues of cathedrals and colleges, and they are likely in the future to seek out cheaper rather than more expensive modes of working. A few town churches which place music in the front, have started boarding schools, but, as a rule, the choristers live in their homes. I have no desire for these boarding schools in the abstract. I question if the boys get more musical education by living together than they do by coming for it day by day. ”

“ The afternoon practice, at the close of evensong, is chiefly devoted to theory. A card hanging up on the wall shows exactly how the time of the afternoon practice is apportioned between the study of intervals, and scales, chanting, responses, manuscript exercises, the singing of Concone's solfeggios, and the practice of secular music. The excellent phrasing and pure tone are partly due to the practice of secular music, which gives elasticity and gentleness to the boys' voices. No formal system of voice-training is in use. ”

“ The rigid watching of the beat of the conductor should not be too closely insisted on. No machine-like singing should satisfy, even though it be correct. The correctness of a great painter's production is not everything, and neither is it with the singer. ”

“ The tone of a choir with men altos, if they are at all fairly good, is so much superior to one with boy altos. In cathedral music so many anthems and services have trios for A.T.B. There is not one boy in a thousand who can sing the trio in 'O where shall wisdom' (Boyce) with a tenor and bass effectively. And how many there are similar to that!
"I do not see how boys could work at all in ordinary parish choirs, for here there are not the opportunities of teaching boys to read well at sight. It is only by daily practice that one can make anything of boys. ”

“ By the examination of individuals, the teacher will get truer knowledge of his learners' powers, and will be enabled to give advice of greater value because of its assured need. Let the examination be in public—before the other pupils—and so help to beget confidence in the pupil, without which success will be limited. The teacher should never do anything to destroy the confidence of his pupils, though I am bound to admit that I have not always been free from irritability and impatience in my dealings with pupils. ”

“ An instrument reveals loss of pitch, but does not cure it. No good choirmaster rehearses with the organ. A pianoforte, lightly touched, is commonly used, but the teacher should frequently leave his seat, and accustom the choir to go on alone.
It is a mistake to suppose that boys flatten because the music is too high. This is very rarely the case. They are more likely to flatten because it is too low. Boys attack high notes with greater ease than women.
Nervousness will cause a singer who has sung in perfect tune at home to sing sharp or flat at a concert. ”