Vocal Training

Training the Boy’s 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 city-state, 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 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 self-expression, 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 student’s will.

Song is one of the ways in which the soul finds expression.

The student’s 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 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 Sängerkaben. 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. Otto Iro taught innumerable artists
voices, and was also teacher to Prof. Gerhard Schmidt-
Gaden, founder of the Tölzer 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 Vienna’s hierarchy of
musical positions. One of Prof. Grossmann’s 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
Schubert’s 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 Niños
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 individual’s 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, Hodgkin’s Disease. Some years later when I was
chatting 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:

1. Feet comfortably apart and approximately parallel.

2. Body weight forward and equally distributed on both
feet.

3. Keep knees flexible – do not lock the knees.

4. Pelvis is tucked under – not tilted backward and out.

5. Lower abdomen flattened.

6. Elevation in the small of the back.

7. Chest elevated and expanded.

8. Shoulders back, down, and relaxed.

9. 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.

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.

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 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 Picutti’s 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.