CAMBRIDGE, England — At 8 a.m. on a recent Thursday, the boys from the choir at St. John’s College, Cambridge, stifled their yawns as they began their first rehearsal of the day with some vocal practice. Soon the room was filled with a myriad of “Ooo” and “Zah” sounds.
Once the choir had warmed up, Andrew Nethsingha, the music director, called on boy after boy to sing a few lines of a psalm solo.
Then the conductor did something that none of his predecessors had done in the choir’s entire 350-year history: he summoned a girl to sing. Amelia Crichton-Stuart, 10, quickly pushed her glasses to her nose and sang, high and pure, two lines about how God’s “right hand is full of justice.”
“Very good,” Nethsingha said with a smile. After one of the other choristers pointed out that Crichton-Stuart had sung a word incorrectly and hadn’t extended it as in the notation, Nethsingha said he preferred what she had sung. “We’re going to change the chorus to do your version!” he said to Crichton-Stuart, who was beaming with joy.
For centuries, British choral music has been a largely male space, with the country’s cathedrals and chapels filled with the angelic voices of boys’ choir singers, performing daily services with male singers providing the bass parts.
In the 1990s, many cathedrals in Britain set up separate girls’ choirs to perform services as well, but the recent move by the Choir of St John’s – widely regarded as one of the best in England – to mix genders, has been greeted by choir insiders. as groundbreaking. Some have celebrated it as a long-awaited step toward equality, and others have agonized that it could spell the demise of boys-only choirs.
Shortly after Nethsingha announced the change last October, three other choirs said they would also mix girls and boys, including St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle (a place with such a tradition that has hosted numerous royal weddings, including those of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018).
Nethsingha said in an interview that he knew the move was risky, but he also felt “pretty late to the party” as a few less prominent choirs, including the choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, had their choir members in the 1970s. mixed. Nethsingha received some complaints about the decision, he added, mainly on the college’s Facebook page.
Other choirs who have decided to mix boys and girls said they’ve had some negative reactions as well. Chichester Cathedral choir director Charles Harrison said he had received “half a dozen” letters of complaint, including one from a regular donor announcing their withdrawal of support.
But Nethsingha said he didn’t regret the move. In April, he admitted to Crichton-Stuart, along with Martha Gritten, 9, and Ingrid B., also 9 (Ingrid’s parents did not want her last name included in this article for privacy reasons). The girls, like the boys, went to boarding school at the associated school of the choir. In the same month, Nina Vinther, 24, joined the adult ranks of the choir.
Britain isn’t the only country where the choral world is concerned about whether or not girls are included. In 2019, a German court blocked a 9-year-old girl’s attempt to join one of Berlin’s oldest choirs on the grounds that artistic freedom was more important than equal treatment – despite studies showing differences between voices of young girls and boys small, and even professional singers can not always tell the difference.
Opponents of mixed choirs insist that there are many good reasons for excluding girls. Alan Thurlow, a retired choir director and vice president of the Traditional Cathedral Choir Association, which provides scholarships to men’s and boys’ choirs, said in a telephone interview that if choirs allowed girls in, it would mean fewer boys could or want to participate.
“You don’t make the choir bigger, you decrease the chance for boys,” he said, adding that boys can only sing high vocal parts for a few years before their voices change. A decline in the number of boys trained would also lead to fewer bass and tenor singers for adult choirs, he added.
Nethsingha said his choir increased the number of choristers from 20 to 25 to avoid diminishing opportunities for boys. He hoped separate girls’ and boys’ choirs would continue to exist, he added. “I don’t want to be remembered in 100 years as the chief destroyer of boys’ choirs,” he said with a nervous laugh.
At least one part of the choral world doesn’t think about the implications of mixing: the kids who sing. When Nethsingha told his boys last year that girls would be added, he said he was bracing himself for a “barrage of complaints.” Instead, the boys asked just four practical questions — including one about whether they had enough toilets for new cabinetmakers — and then “bounced them on to their classes,” Nethsingha said.
“They didn’t have the baggage that adults have,” he added.
In an interview after the recent rehearsal, the girls seemed equally undaunted by joining a famous choir, with daily performances, international tours and recordings. When asked if they felt like pioneers, Gritten replied, “A little, but not!” She then looked at her fellow choristers and giggled.
Crichton-Stuart said the boys had been “very welcoming” and played together in their dorm rooms. The best part of choir life so far, Gritten said, was Ascension Day — commemorating Jesus’ ascension — where the entire choir climbed a spiral staircase to the top of the college chapel and sang from the roof.
Many large choirs here have made it clear that they will not mix choirs on a daily basis. In May, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London announced that it would introduce a separate girls’ choir from 2025. Andrew Carwood, the music director, said in a telephone interview that the cathedral needed to raise £7.5 million, nearly $9 million, to pay for school fees for choristers and make changes to buildings to accommodate 30 new singers. Boys and girls would probably sing together for big services, he added.
At St. John’s, the girls were already fully involved in all services. About eight hours after their morning rehearsal, 18 of the children’s choir members and 13 adult choral scholars walked into the large chapel of the college to sing the day’s traditional evening hymn service. They stood in the stalls, their voices echoing and echoing through the vast space.
At one point, the choir moved to the front of the chapel and performed an experimental piece to an electronic background of whale sounds, with the girls’ red outfits standing out among the boys’ white robes. But many of the 60 believers in the chapel had their eyes closed, so absorbed in the music bouncing around them, they didn’t look at who was making it.