Mr. Frank Sharp, of Dundee, trainer of the celebrated children's choir, which has sung the treble and alto parts, both solos and choruses, of Messiah, St. Paul, and many cantatas, writes to me:—
"In part-singing where there are boy trebles, the adult male alto voice has its charms. The contrast in quality between the open tone of the boys' voices and the condensed, sometimes squeaky sweetness of the man alto does not affect the blending, and helps the distinctness of parts. Considering the growing scarcity of this latter voice, why not use boy altos? 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. The boy alto voice may be said to have a husk and a kernel: the one strident, harsh, and overpowering; the other sweet, and, with use, rich and round. The average healthy boy, with his exuberant love of noise, will naturally give the husk, but the skilful voice-trainer will only accept the kernel, evolved from right register, good timbre, and proper production. Seeing and hearing a process in voice-training is, however, more satisfactory than much writing and the reading thereof."
Mr. W. W. Pearson, master of a village school in Norfolk, who is well-known by his excellent part-songs, writes to me:—
"I succeed very well in getting boys to sing alto because I always use a large number of exercises in two parts, making each division of the class in turn take the lower part. I do not choose boys for altos on account of age. That, in my opinion, has nothing to do with it. I choose them by quality of voice. There is no break in the voice of the natural alto between—
The following interesting notes are by Mr. W. Critchley, organist, choirmaster, and schoolmaster in the village of Hurst, near Reading:—
"I do not choose the elder boys as altos, as I find that treble boys, as a rule, are at their very best just before the change of voice. And moreover, when that change begins, the voice is so uncertain in its intonation that if the boy were put to sing alto he would be certain to drag the others down. At present I have one or two boys with round, mellow voices, who are very effective. Unfortunately, most of the alto parts in hymn-tunes and chants hover about the place where the break in the voice occurs, and it requires a lot of practice to conquer the difficulty. As a rule, I get the alto boys to sing in the lower register. It is very seldom they get a note which they cannot take in this register, so I train it up a little, thus—
I do not see any other way of getting over the uncertainty in the boy alto voice. It is merely a matter of time and trouble."