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Is that the case now? During Richard Seal's tenure, they were indistinguishable - so much so that their 1994 CD Canticum Novum (Guild GMCD 7101) actually challenged the listener to decide which tracks were being sung by the boys/girls.Originally Posted by terratogen
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Canticum Novum is one of my favorite disks from Salisbury. I think—though I can't be sure, since digital downloads still don't generally come with CD booklets—that I have a pretty good idea of who's singing what as far as Salisbury's recordings go. The sounds are only sometimes 'markedly different'; at times, detecting what little difference there is is a matter of following patterns in certain vowels or word endings, if that makes any sense.
That said, I had the pleasure of hearing the boys/men and the girls/men on two separate days a bit more than a year ago, and from my place in the cathedral, I think it very possible that I would have failed the blind test.
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Are they well documented? Where? I would be genuinely interested to explore this. I am not blowing my own trumpet but I have never been fooled and that is why I am so certain of my opinion that girls and boys will sound different, always!
I haven't heard the Seal Salisbury recording but will search it out. Maybe we could use that as a blind test and see if boarders can agree on what sex is singing which tracks?!
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Where is Simon going Lizzie?
VCC
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There have been a few studies conducted over the last decade or so, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. (One, for instance, could be criticised for having too small a respondent population, another for pitting Winchester Cathedral's boy trebles against the girls' choir from a New Jersey middle school, and yet another another for realising too late that all of the boys' samples were Rennaissance polyphony and all the girls' samples Christmas carols.) Taken as a whole, they are (perhaps unsurprisingly) inconclusive: some conclude that listeners can identify the sex of a chorister or a group of choristers fairly reliably (60-70% of the time), while others find that listeners do no better than chance when asked to guess who's singing the top line. Every few years, a new study contradicts the previous one, and those with a dog in the race can (and do) latch onto the studies that support their beliefs and disregard the ones that don't.
I have maybe half a dozen peer-reviewed studies and a few less formal ones stashed on an external drive somewhere, but I don't have easy access to them right now, and I'm not sure what this house feels about re-sharing material from journals. If you're interested, though, DD, you might want to look into research by a Dr Graham Welch. He seems to be quite interested in children's voices generally and perceptions of cathedral choristers more specifically, and his work, if I'm remembering his papers correctly, strikes a really lovely balance between the technical, the physical, and the social considerations at hand. He's published quite a bit (sometimes alongside a Dr Howard or Dr Sergeant) and seems to have done the most and the most comprehensive work on the boy/girl chorister subject thus far. He and/or his partners have run tests with trained and untrained children, with choristers from the same foundation and from different ones, with 'professional' listeners and 'laymen', with choristers alone and with full choirs accompanied. If you're looking for information on the perceptions of 'trained ears', I believe it's one of his papers you're looking for.
Unless, of course, you meant the trained ears of this forum, in which case I apologise for going on and on!
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I think I can answer that...he is off to be Do(Choral)M at Dean Close School which dovetails with running the choirs of Tewkesbury Abbey
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Sorry folks couldn't respond for two days as the site had locked me out! Tenebrae is right of course! Will be terribly missed by us all but will be a star in Tewkesbury too! Liz
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Good move for Simon I would say.
Super organist and this job will give him the chance to really develop his choir training skills with boys which I know he has always been very keen to do. The particular set up at Tewkesbury will allow him plenty of time to concentrate on this without many of the additional pressures of a full cathedral DoM position.
VCC
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The job at Dean Close School involves working with teenagers (male and female) as well.
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He will be superb at it and a whole lot of young people will reap great benefit from working with him. I look forward to singing under his direction for the last time in July for Nave Choir CE.
We sang our final services under Richard McVeigh this morning and it's also been a pleasure working with and learning from him. All the very best to him as he does a term at Salisbury as ADoM. We'll miss them both. Liz
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