first be disappointing, for the tone
produced by the boy's head voice is so small and seems so
insignificant as compared with the chest voice which he has probably
been using, that he is apt to resent the instruction, and perhaps to
feel that, you are trying to make a baby, or worse yet, a girl, out of
him! But he must be encouraged to persist, and after a few weeks or
months of practice, the improvement in his singing will be so patent
that there will probably be no further trouble.

[Sidenote: THE LIFE OF THE BOY VOICE]

Boys are admitted to male choirs at from seven or eight to ten or
twelve years of age, but are often required to undergo a course of
training lasting a year or more before being permitted to sing with
the choir in public. For this reason, if for no other, the director of
a boy choir must be a thoroughly qualified voice trainer. He, of
course, takes no voice that is not reasonably good to start with, but
after admitting a boy with a naturally good vocal organ it is his task
so to train that voice as to enable it to withstand several hours of
singing each day without injury and to produce tones of maximal beauty
as a matter of habit. But if the choir leader is not a thoroughly
qualified vocal instructor, or if he has erroneous ideals of what
boy-voice tone should be, the result is frequently that the voice is
overstrained and perhaps ruined; or else the singing is of an insipid,
lifeless, "hooty" character, making one feel that an adult mixed choir
is infinitely preferable to a boy choir.[33]

[Footnote 33: Even when an ideal type of tone is secured, there is
considerable difference of opinion as to whether the boy soprano is,
all in all, as effective as the adult female voice. Many consider that
the child is incapable of expressing a sufficient variety of emotions
because of his lack of experience with life, and that the boy-soprano
voice is therefore unsuited to the task assigned it, especially when
the modern conception of religion is taken into consideration. But to
settle this controversy is no part of our task, hence we shall not
even express an opinion upon the matter.]

Adolescence begins at the age of thirteen or fourteen in boys, and
with the growth of the rest of the body at this time, the vocal organs
also resume their increase in size, the result being not only longer
vocal cords and a correspondingly lower range of voice, but an
absolute breaking down of the habits of singing that have