The Child-Voice in Singing / Treated from a physiological and a practical standpoint and especially adapted to schools and boy choirs

by Francis E. Howard

But the daily time given to singing in schools is very short; the work bears no comparison with choir-singing. It might almost be thought as necessary to forbid reading and talking during the break of voice as to forbid its use in a daily drill of fifteen or twenty minutes in singing.

Certainly it is absurd to advocate entire non-use of the voice at this period in either speech or song. It is rather correct to guard against its misuse. If boys have up to this time used only the thick register, they will in singing through the break intensify their bad habits; throatiness, harshness, nasality will become chronic. This would be bad enough, but each bad vocal habit results from the abnormal use of the vocal organs, and occasions hoarseness, chronic sore throat, catarrh, etc.

It is quite customary in school music to assign the boys to the lower part, in part music. This practice continued from the time part-singing begins in the music course, compels the boys to use the thick register. As the larynx gains in firmness from year to year, they experience more and more difficulty with their upper tones—those lying from F to C. Having used only the thick voice in all their school singing, they know of no other, and very likely consider the thin voice which they are now obliged to use in singing the higher tones as altogether too girlish for the prospective heirs of manly bass tones.

The reluctance of boys to sing the soprano would be amusing were it not, in the light of utterly false training, so pitiful.

School music is educational; its scope is controlled by those in charge. The public expects good educational, rather than show work, and employs those to supervise and teach who are supposed to know what good educational work is in vocal music.

The supposition that children’s voices can, owing to individual differences analogous to those existing among adults, be divided into alto and soprano voices, is erroneous; children can most assuredly sing in parts, but the quality of tone which in the woman’s voice is called alto or contralto cannot be secured for certain physical reasons previously explained; and the use of the chest-tone, which resembles the adult woman’s chest-voice as a clarinet resembles a viola, is wholly objectionable.

If, however, the voices have been trained in the use of the thin register only, the management of the boy’s voice during the change is simplified; the influence of good vocal habits will be felt; the vocal bands which have never been strained will respond when their condition admits of tone-production. The boy who has been accustomed to sing with an easy action of the vocal ligaments and with open throat will at once become conscious of any unusual strain or wrong adjustment in the vocal organs. If he has learned to sing well, he has also learned not to sing badly.

The test to apply to the subject of boys’ singing in school during the break may be: Can they sing without strain or push? Can they sing easily, or does it hurt? There is a certain amount of humbug in boys that must be allowed for, but it does not affect calculations as to their singing-powers more than upon their other abilities, if singing is well taught.

The speaking-voice also indicates the state of the vocal organs, and shows the effect of the break sooner than does the singing-voice. If the tones in speech are steady in pitch, singing is possible in all probability. If, on the contrary, the speaking-voice is croaky and wavering, singing is difficult, if not impossible. As the object of the study of vocal music in the public schools, in so far as it relates to the treatment of the voice, is to develop good vocal habits, not bad ones, it follows that if boys sing during the break it must be only upon those tones which lie within their compass at any time, and that the vocal organs must be used lightly, and without strain.

In nearly every upper grade room there will be a percentage of boys whose voices are in a transition stage, some of whom can sing and others of whom cannot. It requires judgment and tact to handle these voices, but if boys have sung as they should up to this period, and have taken pleasure in it, the mutual good understanding between them and their teacher need not be disturbed. They are likely to do their best.