Libera Dreams

Yorkie wrote: Maybe it's an international difference but in the UK if you quote somebody and then use the rolling eyes emoticon, you are basically saying the other person is an idiot.

liberavieve wrote:

maartendas wrote:Just coming back to this quote:

Yorkie wrote:
The composition of Trinity is a bit more like the American choirs in that as well as the younger boys singing the Soprano parts they have the older boys (up to 18 ) singing Alto, Tenor and Bass

At the risk of sounding like an idiot but - don't all boys choirs work that way..? Maybe I'm missing something really obvious..?

It really depends on where the group is based. In British places of [Anglican] worship, there is a strong tendency toward using adult men for the ATB lines. This includes using male altos (or countertenors) who are usually employing a range outside of their modal voice in order to sustain the higher notes. In times of war, though, or otherwise in times of countertenor famine, I know that at least some Oxbridge choirs temporarily used boy altos instead of countertenors.

In collegiate chapel choirs (at Oxford and Cambridge, for instance), the altos, tenors, and basses are frequently 'choral scholars' or 'academical clerks', matriculated university students who have won a place to sing in the chapel choir. In cathedrals, the 'gentlemen of the choir' (a name given to all of the singers save the trebles) are 'vicars choral' or 'lay clerks' and are laypeople who may be professional singers and are frequently ex-choral scholars.

I'm much less familiar with continental or American choirs, but looking even just for a minute at Youtube footage of the famous German or Viennese choirs shows that they are much, much more likely to train boy altos than are their English counterparts. Part of this, I think, has to do with the labeling of these choirs as 'boy choirs' (Tölzer Knabenchor = Tölz Boys' Choir; Wiener Sängerknaben = Vienna Boys' Choir, The American Boychoir, etc.) and the selection of their repertoire to include more folk and trad works that don't necessarily demand men's voices.

There's also evolved, amongst English choirmasters, the belief that training a boy's voice beyond the very earliest stages of its mutation will permanently damage the voice and/or the vocal mechanisms. (In an interview that I can't currently find, a young Aled Jones parrots off that he'll stop singing altogether when his voice begins to change, as he doesn't want to ruin his adult voice. This certainly didn't stop the famous English boy sopranos of earlier decades— boy sopranos who were probably really altos, though their training allowed them longer access to a higher register.) I don't know when this belief really took hold or why it hasn't seemed to do so in continental choirs, but I would not be at all surprised if it's both arisen from and perpetuated the lack of boy altos in English-model choirs.

This is similar to what you'd find amongst the choristers in English cathedral or collegiate choirs: no matter the modal voice of the children, they're going to be singing the treble/soprano line almost exclusively. Perhaps split into a first and second part when pieces with the full choir call for 6- 8- 12- or more part harmonies, but always the highest parts:

[youtube][/youtube]

Meanwhile, this is fairly typical of continental choirs (in this case, the Vienna Boys' Choir) in which the boys regularly perform without men's voices. The lower parts are well into the alto range. To be fair, I'm not sure what the situation would be in something like a mass, but as they often put boys into alto solos, I would assume that they also have boys singing the regular alto line.

[youtube][/youtube]

Now, something a bit different: due to the age of its students, who enter at thirteen and leave at about eighteen, Eton's chapel choir is made up of trebles who are older than their counterparts in most English cathedrals and altos, tenors, and basses who are younger. In this recording, if you can momentarily ignore the really fantastic treble solo, you might hear the kind of youthfulness (or, if we're being dismissive, the 'schoolboy baritone') in the lower voices that you would hear in a choir of American boys.

[youtube][/youtube]

The American Boychoir is made up of boys from age nine to fourteen, but listening to this recording, by no means are all of the choristers singing the soprano line.

[youtube][/youtube]

And here, also featuring the American Boychoir, we have a boy (starting at 0:48) who has very obviously moved into what would be deemed 'men's voices' in most English choirs. A boy with a voice like his would, I think it's safe to say, never be seen still wearing a ruff in a British cathedral.

[youtube][/youtube]

Not sure if that illustrates any answer to the question or even what I was trying to say, but— eh, whatever. More music!

ETA: One more, this time of the Tolzers. Because of the fantastic contrast between the soprano and alto.

[youtube][/youtube]

Yorkie wrote:

maartendas wrote:Hi Yorkie, yes that was me. I couldn't spot Stefan in the Susan Boyle video either but he is here, Christmas 2009:

No, I don't think he was there - strange.

maartendas wrote:

Yorkie wrote:

maartendas wrote:Hi Yorkie, yes that was me. I couldn't spot Stefan in the Susan Boyle video either but he is here, Christmas 2009:

No, I don't think he was there - strange.

Apparently he has not been seen with Trinity around the time of the London concert last autumn. He had to choose between Libera and a concert in Poland with Trinity that day and performed with Libera. Shortly after that he hasn't been seen with Trinity. That's what I heard from LennesSL after the Epsom concert and she told me other fans had confirmed this to her.