Some good things in this article.

It is certainly true that lads will sing their hearts out in front of anything that purports to be a 'band', but they only use the bottom half ( manly!!) of their register, and rarely reveal that they can sing up the octave.

On the other hand, in the right supportive environment, boys can be persuaded to sing in the top half. It is not easy, and they need to feel that what they are doing is valid, applauded, and gains them some credit among their fellows. These three conditions do not always meet (!), and kids can fall through the cracks. What IS the kiss of death is if a school changes from single-sex to co-ed - boys, particularly unbroken voices, suddenly and miraculously find they can't sing at all. The stick they get from even standing near girls singing full out is appalling. Few hang in there.

The other desperate thing is the voice-break. [a] if lads know it is coming, most boys prefer to shut up, and once a chorister's voice breaks, he feels as if he has been amputated, rendered speechless. For many, the voice is how they have literally earned their education. Without it, many are drifting, desolate and can easily gravitate towards naughtiness in order to get the same 'high'. Far too little patoral work has been done on this, and I wonder if DoM's actually prepare their charges for this inevitable loss of status, self-esteem, and identity - because frankly, that's what it is. The impact can be devastating.

I think not all boy's voices "break" the same way?

Mine really "broke", in the sense of being unusable for a year, and then settling-out as a kind of baritone with tenor leanings.  But others of my contemporaries had a slow falling process during which they could continue to sing - initially as altos, then tenors, then finally hitting the bassline irrevocably.  Maybe there's scope here to make them feel even more "wanted" on the inner parts - where decent sight-readers capable of holding down a part are scarce - than they were on the top line? 

Barkofile makes some good points.

An acquaintance of mine's son was a chorister at a major London Cathedral, soloist on record as well a in daily services. As barkofile said, a bit of a star performer. Voice did not just break but shattered. OK, he was a fine clarinettist too, but she and I watched this lad drift further and further into cynicism, boredom, and adrenalin-free routines. For eighteen months he could hardly utter a note, and then refused to sing even the few notes he began to manage as tenor or baritone, then dropped music altogether, having at 13 said bravely that he wanted to be a professional singer. In two years, it was as if he'd never been in a choir, and a highly prestigious one at that, at all.  Then he got in with a gang of ne'er do wells at boarding school and retreated into only just enough work to get by - despite being / because of? being a very bright kid - acid little sneerings and bullyings. Eventually, so Mum said, after one particularly nasty event when he was about 15, she got his old choirmaster at said cathedral to talk to him, and it came out: when his voice broke, at exactly the same time as he had changed schools, lost touch with London mates, he'd felt so utterly rudderless that he had felt near suicidal. He said that every time he played the clarinet, it only made him feel worse, because of what he knew he could NO longer do. Yes, S-S, his choirmaster had indeed prepared them all for this moment, but you know what kids are - they always believe that whatever words are said, it isn't going to happen to them. Others' experience does not change their minds! And yes, his London choirmaster had a policy of keeping 'breakers' in or very close to the front line since they were valuable props to newbies making their way - all that. And yes, this kid was well-wedded to his voice, but the difference was that he had come to think that his voice was him, so without it, he wasn't.


Yes, this is an extreme case, I accept, but talking to musicians in all manner of situations, the syndrome is by no means uncommon. Not to the point of suicide of course, but a sense that something precious is over. If your parents are poor and you are in choirs on scholarships, and whacking scjholarships at that, you can become acutely aware that once the voice goes, you are somehow useless, without identity, not worth 'hiring'. If you also see other boys carrying on as if nothing had happened - or even that getting rid of the little boy's voice is a relief and rite of passage into manhood -  the sense of being ostracised from a community you once were the star of can also be disconcerting.

I think what I am fumbling to say is that yes, of course, boys get over this, and pick themselves up, but I'm not quite as optimistic as others that housemasters etc etc are quite as aware of this as you might hope. If a kid comes to them without 'voice', he's just another new kid to deal with, and given the life most housemasters have to live these days, as far as I can see, few have the leisure ( or kit) to give to slightly precious problems of this nature. If the kid is a tad naughty, well, boys will be boys. On the other hand, if you cosset and over-sympathise, that too is fatal. Some boys of course are releived that that slightly hothouse past is over and they can get on with being just lads.

But some indubitably don't.

Thank you, DracoM, for relating the whole sad story.  The lad seems to have experienced a fulfilled childhood, but later had to pay a high price for early fulfilment.  I'm sure - as you are - that this is not an isolated case.  We must surely hope that such instances are very much in a minority, and Soundwave's intervening post suggests that they probably are.  However, choristership does seem to leave an enduring impression on some.  On the BBC R3 MBs there appeared a 16-yo lad (I forget his nickname) who had been a chorister at Salisbury, and had clearly found it a defining experience, harking back to it often in his posts.  Although glad that he had so enjoyed years of churning out Tallis and Stanford daily, I always worried slightly that a 16-yo should be already in a rut, dreaming only of his eventual return to the cathedral close.  Yes, those involved must remain ever aware of the dangers.

Unless I have misinterpreted your words, there is another interesting aspect of your story.  The true facts, or rather the lad's true feelings, only emerged when he was confronted with his DoM, a former role-model:  neither his parents nor his housemaster got to the heart of the problem.  There is a tendency these days to heap ever more responsibility on parents for the conduct of their teenage children, but sometimes they are the last in whom a youngster will confide;  and professionals (such as housemasters) do not always fare better.  Your acquaintance did well to find a mentor that could really help, but there is a lesson for society in her story.

Finally, it is perhaps worth remembering that it is not only young musicians that suffer from early stardom.  Successful child actors, for example, seem to be especially vulnerable.

Mark

Was that under John Scott or further back?