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Training the Boy's Voice

Vocal Training
Training the Boys Voice
by

George Bragg
(from "The Big Book")

There has been considerable speculation as to how old is the art of

teaching boys to sing. Chartres, in northern France, had a
boychoir school around 435 AD, but there is evidence that on the
Carthaginian peninsula on the North African coast, there was a
song school established as early as the first century, AD. There
comes a time in research when one can no longer go backward in
time looking for boy choirs; one must begin to look for boy
singers.
The earliest historical evidence which has been found of the use of
a boy singer occurred in Egypt in the necropolis of Thebes, about
1500 BC., in the New Empire. Their singing was done by soloists
or in choral groups, either antiphonally by alternating choir groups
or responsively, one soloist beginning, the choir responding with a
ritornello.
What was popular and practiced in Egypt became a matter of
imitation with some variance in the adjacent nations according to
the conditions, patterns, needs, and appetites. In Babylon,
Assyria, Judea and eventually Greece, the boy singer, either
individually or corporately, was brought into the life of the courts
of the royalty of each nation, and woven into the patterns of
religious worship.
The Greek ideal of education was to bring the beautiful and good
in every young man to the point of spiritual unity. Greek education
was directed less to imparting knowledge to youth than to the
formation of his character. In the development of the Greek citystate, the practice of music was not considered a "private" matter,
but was the concern of the state.
The earliest efforts in training a boy to sing is the primitive
method of repetition and imitation. It is still the most used
technique that music teachers have at their disposal. The boy who
is able to hear the beauty of tone, conceive the structure and
mood of a composition, and manifest the elegance, grace, charm,
sympathy, brilliance, radiance or sublimity of sound is the kind of
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talent which the teacher is seeking. The ultimate basis for vocal
artistry is the sheer loveliness of tone. Therefore, the vocal
teacher must be a master of vocalism and singing.
By its very nature, music is order, regularity, harmony, unity,
balance, and proportion. It is, accordingly, one of the three perfect
intellectual disciplines, the other two being religion and
mathematics. Music, and particularly singing, awakens creative
impulses in the mind which cause it to seek new channels of selfexpression, and mental activity is invigorated.
Music has in intimate connection with the physical and mental
systems, and therefore, acts directly on the emotions. Feeling,
being dependent on the physical and the mental, is neutral from
the point of view of moral value, but music, like all the arts, has
the happy property of making the good lovable through beauty.
Music can open hearts and excite interest in subjects to which the
student would otherwise be indifferent. Students can be attracted
to ideas through music while they are still not yet capable of
grasping an abstract truth. Students are attracted by what they
love, and love means action. Action, thereby becomes part of the
students will.
Song is one of the ways in which the soul finds expression. The
students education must direct and develop the healthy
inclinations which emanate from the human soul towards this
means of expression.
Vocal independence should be the end result of a trained singer.
Most pupils have the ability to develop this power. It needs to be
stated that the student can go no further than his teacher is able
to lead him.
We often find that music teachers readily agree that 97% of all
children can and should learn to sing; the problem seems to be
that teachers become paralyzed in deciding how the children
should learn. Since there is conflict as to how (and if) to train a
young voice, there is currently a vacuum of choral sounds to be
found in this country.
There is little reason to fear failure. The one ingredient needed is
courage and involvement. There are many sources of information
for solving organizational and vocal problems, some ideas that
were tested generations ago, and some as recent as two years
ago. The art of teaching a child is ever new: the principles go back
to the ancient past. The pleasure is found in knowing what to do
to correct problems, how to teach in order to avoid problems, and
to discover the source of difficulties, not unlike a vocal "Sherlock
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Holmes." The sense of pride comes from the use of intelligence to

overcome problems.
We could talk about the numerous kinds of Boy Choirs. I was
trained in my early years in the Apollo Boys Choir under Coleman
Cooper who had trained with Dr. Clarence Dickson at the Brick
Presbyterian; Dr. T. Tertius Noble, St. Thomas Church, New York;
Walter Hall, St. James Church, New York; Ellsworth Johnson,
Church of the Holy Cross, New York; and with Father William J.
Finn, founder-director of the Paulist Choristers, New York. Most
used the choral techniques which created the tonal beauty so
indigenous to the architecture of Gothic style churches. Most of his
teachers were of this disposition: English derivation both in
musical style and speech. This English direction continued for
approximately five years, when our director visited the Vienna
Boys Choir and came home with an assistant director from the
Viennese school under Victor Gomboz. So, for a while we sang in
the approximate style of the Wiener Sngerkaben. A few years
later I encountered a technique from the Italian school, Bel Canto.
Finally, I came across a choral sound based on American speech
patterns.
America has had many outstanding choral directors. It has had a
few great choral conductors in the field of Boy Choir. Seven come
to mind immediately: Henry B. Roney, in Chicago; Father William
J. Finn, of Boston and Chicago; Coleman Cooper of Birmingham,
Alabama; Herbert Huffman of Columbus, Ohio; and Dr. T. Tertius
Noble of St. Thomas Church, New York; and in the West, Robert
Mitchell of Hollywood and Eduardo Caso of Tucson, Arizona. Each
gave his unique insight to Boy Choir. These men gave luster to the
image of singing boys in numerous settings throughout the
continental United States.
Europe has had a plethora of practitioners in the art of Boy Choir,
and none has brought to America more of a sense of magic and
nostalgia than the Vienna Boys Choir of Austria. Although begun
by royal decree of Maximilian I in 1498, it was not until after
World War I with the fall of the House of the Hapsburgs that the
elegance of Austria and the commercial know-how of America
came together. Father Josef Schnitt, chaplain to the royal family,
fought for a way to make the Imperial Chapel live on. He joined
forces with Sol Hurok, the impresario in New York, and a new idea
was born!
About forty years ago, Professor Ferdinand Grossmann of Vienna,
already famous throughout Europe for his way with voices, was
contracted by the Vienna Boys Choir to train both choirmasters
and choirboys. Prof. Grossmann had studied voice with Otto Iro.
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Otto Iro taught innumerable artists voices, and was also teacher
to Prof. Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, founder of the Tlzer
Knabenchor.
Professor Grossmann was the chorus master of the Vienna State
Opera and while working with the Vienna Boys Choir was also
filling the post of Kappelmeister of the Imperial Chapel, that most
auspicious post of Viennas hierarchy of musical positions. One of
Prof. Grossmanns students was a man by the name of Romano
Picutti who had studied piano in Milano with a pupil of Busoni.
He soon became a musical director of the Vienna Boys Choir. He
and Prof. Grossmann recorded an album of Franz Schuberts
choral music, their one monument to their collective greatness.
Shortly thereafter, Picutti was invited to come to Morelia, Mexico
to condut the choirs of the Colegio de las Rosas, the oldest
conservatory in the western hemisphere. He did so brilliantly, and
his fame spread throughout the Americas.
Two years later, my small staff and six choirboys and I attended
our first six-week summer session in Morelia. There the boys
attended daily three-hour sessions with the Nios Cantores de
Morelia and had afternoon classes twice a week with one of the
instructors from the boys choir. Each boy had an individual
schedule which he kept. He was assigned the first vocal exercise,
humming on a single pitch. He was allowed to practice for five
minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening before a
mirror. When he had made sufficient progress, his practice time
was increased to ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in
the evening.
At the end of the third week on this exercise, the instructor asked
to hear the second exercise, "Hum-Ah". When this took place, the
sound was so remarkably changed that it was hard for us to
imagine what had happened. The sound was centered in the upper
area of the mask, the resonance was pronounced, and the body
had become involved in the vocal process: the chest was
resonating and the body was providing a resonance which we had
not heard before: the body had become an instrument.
During the remainder of the three weeks, numerous exercises
were added, but in a given order, and according to the individuals
ability to apply the mental and physical requirements. The singing
was vibrant! Then each boy sang excitingly, even though he was
an individual singer, who still had to gain the nuances and
elegance that would make him an outstanding soloist.
Romano Picutti passed away four years later at age 40 with
cancer, Hodgkins Disease. Some years later when I was chatting
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with Ferdinand Grossmann in Vienna, I said to him that I thought

Romano was the greatest of the current masters of Boychoir. He
replied that he thought Maestro Picutti was the finest that he had
ever known.
So, today we are going to spend a bit of time running through the
exercises that were given to me forty years ago which had come
to my teachers from their teachers, indeed into the distant past,
and who knows how far back into history these basic principles
may go.
There are three basic ingredients in the art of singing: posture,
breathing and phonation or sounding. Posture is the foundation.
There are eleven points for consideration:
Feet comfortably apart and approximately parallel.
Body weight forward and equally distributed on both feet.
Keep knees flexible do not lock the knees.
Pelvis is tucked under not tilted backward and out.
Lower abdomen flattened.
Elevation in the small of the back.
Chest elevated and expanded.
Shoulders back, down, and relaxed.
Arms and hands hang loosely and comfortably at the sides of
the body.
10. Neck relaxed.
11. Head is in an easy swiveling position and tilted.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Breathing
A. General Considerations
1. Breath is the fuel and energy of the voice.
2. Breath should be the natural result of necessity.
3. The singer should never think of how much breath,
but rather what kind of breath to take.
B. Intake of Breath
1. Breathe into the vowel you are going to sing.
2. Inhale through both the mouth and the nose
simultaneously, breathing in an upward direction,
and feeling as you do so, a small cool spot in the
roof of the mouth, just behind the upper front gum
ridge.
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C. Release of Breath
1. The release of the breath causes the vocal cords to
vibrate and sound.
2. Begin the release of the breath with a gentle tug
(inward movement of the upper abdomen at a
poing just above the navel).
3. The breath must be released very gradually and
uniformly, just enough to allow the vocal cords to
sound. Get the most sound from the least amount
of breath.
4. The upper abdomen is brought slowly, gently, and
steadily inward and upward in a supportive manner
while the lower abdomen is held firmly in place and
flat.
5. The upper abdominal muscles lift the breath to the
vocal cords; they are not used to force the breath
past the vocal cords.
6. As the breath is released, the height of the chest is
maintained.
Singing
1. Singing is elevated, sustained, and energized speech.
2. The voice is created in the pharynx and the mouth, in
the area just above the vocal cords and the tongue. This
is our most important resonating area since it is the area
of greatest flexibility.
3. A good singing voice always achieves a maximum sound
with a minimum effort.
4. The throat remains open and tall inside.
5. There must always be a yawn-like sensation in the
pharynx (back of mouth and upper throat) as you sing.
6. The jaw must always have a feeling of hanging loose.
Let it hang (or drop) from the hinge just in front of the
ears.
7. The tongue rides forward and up over the hyoid bone, a
supportive cartilage located under the tongue and within
the lower jaw. The tongue should never be pushed down
at the back.
8. Generally speaking, for all vowel sounds, the tip of the
tongue rests down behind the lower front teeth.
9. The singer must always think everything from the
middle, and he must have an open feeling all the way up
from the middle of the body to the mask.
10. Always sing to the cool spot, the pin-point in the roof of
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the mouth just behind the upper front gum ridge.

11. All vowels ring in the hard palate. As the pitch becomes
higher, mask resonance becomes stronger and moves
toward the eyebrows.
12. Head and chest resonances change as the pitch
changes. The higher pitches have more head resonance;
the lower pitches have more chest resonance; and the
pitches in the middle range have a mixture of both.
13. The singer has three basic responsibilities:
a. To stand correctly (posture)
b. To breathe correctly
c. To speak the words energetically while singing
them.
Maestro Picutti put these principles into focus of purpose. He
sought to teach the multitudes of singers a mastery of vocal
technique. His pupils were poor peasant boys who could not afford
the price of a piece of paper, or a slice of bread. He counted on
the methods used by Maximilian I to solve his problems.
Each boy was to be given two meals a day. Each boy was to
receive four pairs of shoes a year. Each boy was to receive four
shirts, three pairs of trousers, and his regalia for concerts each
year.
Heading the list were dictums about food, the most important
concern of all, especially for a growing boy whose calendar, then
and now, included a strict daily program of prayers, classes,
rehearsals, study, play, and bed.
Romano Picuttis ideal of education was to bring the beautiful and
good in every young man to a point of spiritual unity as is the
ideal of every choirmaster who ever raised a hand to conduct a
chorus. These men gave luster to the image of singing boys in
settings throughout the continental United States and in the
beauty of Western Europe.
Copyright 1981, 2001 by George Bragg. Used by permission.

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