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Venerating Angels

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Masculinity, Class and Music Education

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education ((GED))

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Abstract

This chapter draws on two rich examples of male vocal practices, the English cathedral choir tradition and the European castrati, to present a historical view of the cultural fascination with the boy voice. Broad in scope, this chapter encompasses music and choral history, popular culture and media as a means of unpacking the dynamic intersections between gender, class and culture within the particular musical milieu of boys’ choirs. The historical discourses associated with these musical practices permeate current conceptualisations of the symbolic meaning of the ‘choirboy’, and the chapter illustrates that these discourses involve three interrelated cultural narratives of music and masculinity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In popular media, however, cathedral choirboys have appeared regularly as topics of interest. For example, Evan’s (1992) King’s College Choir: Festival of Lessons and Carols is a documentary on the choirboys’ daily lives. The BBC’s 1995 production The Choir (Fairfax, Director) is based on Trollope’s (1988) novel by the same name and provides well-researched, although fictional, tales about boy choristers and the everyday workings of a cathedral choir and school. A choirboy from Carlisle Cathedral, Andrew Johnston, was a finalist in Britain’s Got Talent 2008 series and went on to record a solo album, One Voice.

  2. 2.

    Retrieved 26/05/17 from Rochester Cathedral Choir: http://www.rochestercathedral.org/services-music/music

  3. 3.

    The body of scholarship concerning Ancient Hellenic and Byzantine musical practices is vast; however, exploratory reading of this literature has not yielded substantial knowledge about the participation and education of boys’ voices. Considering the significance of male vocal practices in these societies, this may be a worthwhile area for further cultural-historical research, the magnitude of which is beyond the scope and purpose of this book.

  4. 4.

    Although extremely rare, endocrinological castrati, also known as ‘natural castrati’, do exist today as a result of hormonal anomalies whereby the voice does not go through the regular development and remains unchanged. This allows the male performer to sing in the register classified as ‘female’ without the use of falsetto. Two professional present-day castrati are Radu Marian and Javier Medina, who specialise in early operatic repertoire (see Debrebant, 2008).

  5. 5.

    English translation: ‘long live the knife’.

  6. 6.

    Retrieved 26/05/2017 from ‘Candles and choirboys’ (2002), Boy Choir website, http://boychoirs.org/library/future/candles.html

  7. 7.

    http://www.ctcc.org.uk [retrieved 5/01/2018].

  8. 8.

    Accessed 3/03/2017 at http://www.libera.org.uk/about

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University, Frankston, VIC, Australia

    Clare Hall

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  1. Clare Hall
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Hall, C. (2018). Venerating Angels. In: Masculinity, Class and Music Education. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50255-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50255-1_3

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-50254-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-50255-1

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