CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.
The boys here are divided into ten choristers and fourteen probationers. The choristers are on the foundation, and receive a stipend; the probationers get their schooling only. The choristers wear trencher caps and gowns; the probationers flannel caps, bearing the arms of the cathedral. The boys are nearly all from the city; there is no boarding-school. The lower floor of the choir-school is used for the ordinary instruction, which is conducted by Mr. Plant, an alto in the cathedral choir, and the upper floor is used as a music-room. Here the boys receive four or five lessons a week from Dr. Longhurst, and the probationers have also a lesson by themselves. All the choristers learn the violin; this has been the practice for many years. When, at festivals, there is a band in the cathedral, the strings are made up largely from old choristers, most of whom go into business in the city. A system of rotation is adopted; thus, although there are twenty-four boys, not more than fourteen sing at any one service, the rest are at work at their ordinary lessons. A considerable drainage of boys takes place to the King's School, the leading grammar school in Canterbury. The choristers often leave to enter this school when their voices are in their prime.
Dr. Longhurst takes the boys very young; as soon after seven as possible. In choosing a boy, he requires both voice and ear to be good. Sometimes a boy excels in the one direction and not in the other; he can sing sweetly, but cannot imitate notes struck at random on the pianoforte, or else he has a poor voice and a good ear. But both endowments are necessary for a chorister. Dr. Longhurst, who was himself a boy at Canterbury, had a compass at that time of two-and-a-half octaves. As his voice changed he passed from first to second treble, then sang alto for seven years, and at last settled to tenor. He does not regard boy altos as desirable in cathedrals, but in parish churches, where no adult male altos are to be had, they are, no doubt, in place. Dr. Longhurst tells me that as a result of forty-eight years' experience, he can tell by the look of a boy whether he will make a chorister. There is something about the brows and eyes, and general contour of the face which guides him. He is never mistaken. Some time since a clergyman with whom Dr. Longhurst happened to be staying, ridiculed the idea that the musical capability of boys can be judged by their looks. He took Dr. Longhurst into the village school, and invited him to pick out the boys of the choir as they sat among others at their lessons. This Dr. Longhurst did quite correctly. He has no knowledge of phrenology, and the faculty has come to him simply as the result of long experience.
On the day of my visit I heard the boys practise in their lofty music-room. Dr. Longhurst sat at the grand pianoforte, and the boys were grouped in fours or fives round four music-stands, on which the large folio voice parts, in type or MS., were placed. These desks stood on either side of the piano, so that the boys looked towards Dr. Longhurst. Not many voice exercises are used, nor is there any talk about the registers. Pure tone is required, and the boys have not "to reason why." Six or seven of the youngest boys took no part in the practice of the service music. When the elder boys had done, the younger came forward and sang some solfeggio exercises. As a help in keeping time the boys clapped their hands sometimes at the first of the bar, and beat the pulses of the music. In the single voice parts, with long rests, this is a help. The boys do not sing any secular music. At one time they did, but now, with the schooling, the ordinary practices, and the violin lessons, there is no time. Flattening does not often occur. As a rule, when they intone on G, the G remains to the end. The practice of singing the service unaccompanied on Fridays all the year round, and on Wednesdays in addition during Lent, must have a bracing effect on the choir. I was myself present on a Wednesday in Lent, and could detect no falling in pitch. The boys at Canterbury do not appear to receive much formal voice-training, and I attribute the excellent quality of their singing to two facts. First, Dr. Longhurst has evidently a knack of discerning a promising voice; and second, having established a tradition of good singing, the boys, entering at an early age, insensibly fall into it.
DR. BUCK'S BOYS AT NORWICH.
I have gathered from Mr. A. R. Gaul, Mus.B., of Birmingham, some particulars of the work of Dr. Buck, organist of Norwich Cathedral, who was known forty or fifty years ago all over the country as a trainer of boys' voices. Mr. Gaul was a boy at Norwich under Dr. Buck, and underwent the Spartan training which produced such notable results. "No chest voice above F or G" was his rule, and the flute-like voice, which goes by so many names, and is yet so unmistakable when heard, was developed in all the choristers. Dr. Buck had an endless number of contrivances for teaching his boys right ways. Each of them carried about him a pocket looking-glass, and at practice was taught to hold it in his hand, and watch his mouth as he sang. One finger on top of the other was the gauge for opening the mouth transversely, while nuts were held in the cheeks to secure its proper longitudinal opening. To look at the boys during this exercise, one might think they had the face-ache! However, no joking over these matters was allowed; there was a penny fine for forgetting the looking-glass once, and a twopenny fine for forgetting it a second time. To prevent the use of too much breath in singing, Dr. Buck would take a piece of tissue paper, the size of a postage stamp, hang it by a fine thread in front of the mouth, and make the boys sing to it without blowing it away. Tongue-drill consisted in regular motions of the unruly member, until the boys were able to make it lie flat down at the bottom of the mouth, and raise it to the upper teeth as required. It was a daily plan to practise certain passages with the lips entirely closed, this was done to prevent the objectionable quality of voice resulting from any stoppage of the nasal organs. There was no sol-faing; various words were used at scale-practice, chosen to develop the vowels, while a code of troublesome words and endings of words was drawn up, and repeated daily by the boys in the speaking-voice, so as to secure clear enunciation. I have more than once seen and heard it stated that Dr. Buck used to make his boys sing through the nose, with closed mouth, in order to get the higher register, but Mr. Gaul does not remember this. Dr. Haydn Keeton informs me that they had boy-altos at Norwich in Dr. Buck's time, so that he must have had more boys than usual to train.
SALISBURY.
A conversation with Mr. C. L. South, the organist and choirmaster, shows him to be a careful and able worker. The boys, who are boarded in the choir school, come from various parts. They are received at from 8 to 11 years; not over 11 unless the boy is very good and forward in music. The boys are chosen for their voices, but given two boys of equal voices, the one who knows most music would be selected. The music practice is an hour a day for five days of the week, under Mr. South himself. "I recognise," he says, "two registers in boys' voices, chest and head, and with careful practice you can get the voices so even that you can hardly tell where one ends and the other begins. The great thing, I believe, is to make the boys sing softly, and to get their register even throughout." Mr. South adds that the imitative power of boys is so strong that the younger ones fall into the habits of the elder ones, and thus make formal teaching about the registers less necessary. For vocal practice he uses Stainer's and Concone's Exercises, also solos like "Jesus, Saviour, I am Thine," and "Let the Saviour's outstretched arm" (both from Bach's Passion), as well as Handel's "Rejoice greatly," besides florid choruses from the Messiah. These are more interesting than formal studies, and they bring out the same points of breathing, phrasing, pronunciation, and expression. He sometimes introduces a song of this kind into the service as an anthem. On one occasion, when thirteen boys had sung one of the Bach songs in unison, a member of the congregation asked the name of the soloist. The voices were so perfectly blended that they sounded like one. The full number of boys is eighteen, of whom two at least sing solos. Mr. South does not use nor like boy altos. The service music is selected on eclectic principles, and covers the ground from Gibbons to Villiers Stanford. The boys sometimes give concerts, performing such cantatas as Smart's King Rene's Daughter, and Mendelssohn's "Two-part Songs."
