Breaking the stained-glass ceiling

There was a story in Saturday's newspapers about a seachange in the British cathedral choral tradition. According to The Scotsman, Judy Brown has become the first woman since Medieval times to sing in an Anglican Cathedral daily choir.

St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburch has already made headlines by being the first in Britain to use girls in the treble section (1978), but the girls normally leave the choir in their early teens. Ms Brown is the first female adult to join, and sings in the Alto section.

Reverend Philip Blackledge, the cathedral chaplain, said: "We have had girls singing in the treble line for 25 years, and the sound is rich and strong, and having women singing the alto part with the men only adds to that."

I quite agree.

Boys need to go through their five stages of voice change (as identified by adolescent voice researcher John Cooksey). In order to function healthily, it is my opinion that adolescent boys need to sing in their newly developing baritone for a couple of years before they make the change back to countertenor. By allowing boys to move straight from the treble line to the alto line, you are effectively encouraging them to use their falsetto voices before the mechanism is fully developed. So having the choice of women bolstering the alto line in a choir can mean that developing voices are allowed to mutate (and yes, that is the correct phrase!) in their own time.

Gillyanne and I are passionate about healthy voice use and appropriate training. Vocal Process, our company, is running a new course called The Developing Voice, which covers exactly this territory. Our guest tutor, Jenevora Williams, is herself an adolescent voice researcher and trainer, and has been working on a long-term project with the boys of St Paul's Cathedral choir. The course is on Saturday May 20th in central London.

Women singing in church choirs is a contentious issue, particularly amongst church choir trainers. I'll let you know how it goes!

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