[above: Berlinerdom Knabenchor in 1923, Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13472 / Georg Pahl / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons]
Bronwyn Thies-Thompson,
PhD Student in Religions and Cultures,
Department of Religions and Cultures, Concordia University
16 December 2024
In 2019, a nine year-old German girl attempted to sue an historic boys’ choir in Berlin for gender discrimination [i]. She wished to sing in the Knabenchor [boys’ choir] of the State and Cathedral Choir in Berlin. While she was eventually granted an audition, she was rejected due to her singing not conforming to the sound of the boys. The court had found sufficient evidence of a “boys’ choir sound” and determined that the artistic freedom of the choir to maintain their “distinct acoustic pattern” superseded the girl’s individual right to membership in the choir. This case demonstrates how the sense of hearing—through the aural perception and attribution of gender to children’s voices in professionalized liturgical childrens’ choirs—was employed in a legal setting to justify denying a girl access to a boys choir. This probewill explore how children’s voices become timbrally distinguished and gendered, and how this process has been previously demonstrated in the British context to be inextricably linked with enculturation (rather than physiology). Indeed, as the majority of the research concerning gender and professional liturgical child choristers has focused on the British Cathedral music context, literature from and about the British tradition will be cited throughout, despite thislegal case having occurred in Germany. Finally, I will highlight the tensions involved in invoking a legal framework for artistic/cultural traditions, and particularly traditions with religious roots.
Only Boys Aloud? Gender and Liturgical Children’s Choir Traditions
There is a very long history of training young boys in the Christian liturgical musical tradition across Europe. As attested to in Boynton and Rice’s Young Choristers, 750-1700: “Boy singers have been part of Christian sacred music since the beginning of the choral tradition, as they were integral members of the earliest religious establishments in Western Europe.” (Boynton & Rice 2008, 3) The Regensburger Domspatzen (the boys choir of Regensburg Cathedral in Germany) cite themselves as one of the oldest continuously operating boys choir in the world, dating back to the founding of their choir school in the year 975 CE. Similarly, evidence points to the existence of boy choristers at Rochester Cathedral in the United Kingdom as early as 604 CE. (Hall 2018, 32) The importance of choristers increased in Cathedrals throughout the Medieval period: from the 13th century formalization of their chorister roles through the establishment of choir schools to the 15th and 16th century development of musical choral polyphony giving children independent musical lines. (Boynton & Rice 2008, 5-17) These choristers filled professional roles in musical liturgy, receiving musical training and a general education in exchange for their musical performances.
However, it is important to emphasize that girls, too, were also trained and sang as choristers in the medieval period in nunneries and convents across Europe, along with in the Ospedali (such as La Pièta in Venice) in 17th and 18th C. Italy. Welch notes that come the English Reformation, “With the dissolution of the monasteries, there was a relative absence of opportunities for girls to sing in cathedral and chapel choirs in England for over 400 years until the end of the twentieth century.” (Welch et al. 2012, 28) Ashley describes how “ecclesiastical choirs or choirs with roots in the belief that women must keep silence in the churches” invoke 1 Corinthians 14:34 as justification for silencing female voices. (Ashley 2021, 41)
Indeed, until the latter half of the 20th century, choristership schemes, in their modern forms, were only available to young boys. Williams precises: “It is a particular cultural artefact that the professional cathedral choirs in the UK, which require children to perform at the highest levels of performance, mostly have only male singers…If the specialist children assessed in this study were performing at their optimum in terms of vocal health, this suggests that intensive training with an emphasis on advanced vocal technique places children in an advantageous position.” (Williams 2012, 123 [emphasis mine]) Beyond the “intensive” vocal training provided and prestigious performance opportunities that come with professional music-making, choristerships usually also offer children access to a highly-subsidized education at selective and elite fee-paying schools in exchange for their labour as choristers.
Opening the Tradition to Girls in the UK
Within the wider child choristership tradition, there have been significant strides made in providing these same opportunities for girls since the latter half of the 20th century. The majority of these changes have occurred in the United Kingdom. The early introduction of girl choristers mixed into the treble line at Edinburgh’s St. Mary’s Cathedral Choir in 1976, and the 1991 creation of an additional girls treble line at Salisbury Cathedral are two notable examples. This latter occurrence (Salisbury) is regularly cited as the catalyst for the wider creation of equal opportunities for girls to also become professional child choristers. Interestingly, there are several British newssources pointing to a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case having prompted the creation of the Salisbury Cathedral Girls choir in 1991[ii]. However, at the present date (December 2024), I have not found any trace of these court records from Strasbourg(despite scouring the available online archives) and have, indeed, never observed the ECtHR mentioned in the body of scholarly literature concerned with gender and the English chorister. Indeed, most scholarly sources, point to the generally shifting political landscape in England at the time, which allowed for such a landmark shift:
“The discussions on the possible introduction of female choristers into the all-male Anglican choral tradition in the late 1980s can also been seen within a wider political debate related to equal opportunities in society. The political landscape in England at that time included a signicant concern on matters related to social justice. This was exemplied by the work of the Equal Opportunities Commission (established 1975) and included investigation of the ongoing impact of recent legislation concerning moves towards equal pay and the reduction of sex discrimination (HMSO, 1975) ” (Welch 2010, 233).
Many other Cathedrals across the UK followed suit in the early 2000s, however, as evidenced by this probe, the introduction of female trebles has been met with varying levels of support and detractors in the UK, in Germany and globally. This trend toward gender equity—either through mixity or through creating a parallel girls choir with equal stature—has yet to be observed elsewhere in the world where other prestigious boys choirs flourish. Is this due to localpolitical climates perhaps less concerned with issues of social justice? Would finding an alleged legal case from the early 1990s at the ECtHR have any bearing on future cases of gender discrimination in the child chorister space?
Timbre: Acoustically Perceiving Gender
Boys’ prepubescent, trained treble voices are regularly held up as timbrally unique and special by proponents of the liturgical boys choir tradition. Eidsheim points to this process of timbral distinction in her 2019, Race of Sound stating: “vocal timbre—an elusive and understudied phenomenon—is often used to make truth claims about voice and the person emitting the vocal sound” (Eidsheim 2019, 5). Indeed, in Germany, three Saxon boys choirs have been designated Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in regard to the unique sound (or timbre) of boys choirs. Indeed, many boys’ choir ‘traditionalists’ believe that girls are not capable of producing the same sort of ‘special’ or ‘rare’ sound of boys.
Following the wider introduction of girls into English Cathedral choirs in the 1990s and 2000s, numerous scientific studies devoted to determining whether boys and girls singing voices can be distinguished aurally were undertaken. Initial claims that the vocal physiology of children varied greatly between prepubescent girls and boys have since been disproven. Indeed, there has been found to be little differentiation in the vocal tract morphology of boys and girls apparatus prior to puberty (Sergeant & Welch 2009, 321). Thus, any perceptible, gendered vocal differences in children do not stem from biology, but from learned socio-cultural and behaviours.
What specific timbral elements tend to differentiate girls and boys voices along binary gender lines? This depends largely on the vocal ‘performance’ context. Graham observes just this: “As opposed to the sex of the singer being significant, the similar biology of young children suggests that it is in fact culture and training that is of most importance in vocal timbre. Indeed, it is likely that many of the claimed differences between boys and girls may be as a result of this gender stereotyping, rather than any true perceptual difference.” (Graham 2021, 4) We might then surmise that if girls are allowed the opportunity to sing in Cathedrals, they may be physically capable of, and may be taught to produce, a sound understood to correspond to the Cathedral music sound, which has previously been labelled as “boy.” This can presumably also be applied in the German context.
Gendered Vocal Performances in Children: An Enculturated Process
Perhaps somewhat in response to the boys’ choir traditionalists insistence that they could hear a difference between trained boy and girl choristers, empirical studies to determine whether these choristers may be distinguished by “gender” occurred. A study by Welch and Howard concluded that trained girl choristers “singly and collectively are able to produce vocal timbres that are perceived to be within a ‘boy/masculine’ category.” (Welch & Howard 2002, 114) Indeed, “trained female choristers from the age of eight through their early teens have often systematically been mistaken as male in empirical research studies, particularly if the girls have been inducted into a choral repertoire by a male director with a significant depth of experience of working with boys.” (Owens & Welch, 174) Thus, we might question the essentializing of this sound as a “boy” sound if girls are reliably creating it, and conclude that the enculturation process has played a large part in the creation of this sound.
In the case of the young german girl, what is exceptional is that while the court acknowledged that children’s voices are not “biologically” different along binary gender lines, it still maintains the notion of a unique “boys choir sound.” In the court transcription from the original 2019 case, the defendent (the boys choir) argues that the girl’s “non-acceptance is not due to her gender…In the oral hearing, the choir director also explicitly answered in the affirmative to the court’s question as to whether he would accept a girl who met his ideal sound and fit into the sound space of a boys’ choir into the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir.” (translation of item 27, 3 K 113.19)
While they eventually allowed this particular girl the opportunity to audition, by not offering her and other girls access to the training that would allow her to produce a “boys choir sound,” they maintain a choir that systematically excludes children based on essentialized assumptions of gendered capabilities. The court found that “To the extent that it is true that the admission criterion of the “boys’ choir sound” of the voice results in a significantly lower probability of girls being accepted, this constitutes a de facto or so-called indirect unequal treatment of female applicants on the basis of gender. However, this unequal treatment is justified.” (trans. items 54-55, 3 K 113.19) Further, “In the present case, the artistic freedom of the defendant and its choir director under Article 5, Paragraph 3, Sentence 1 of the Basic Law justifies indirect unequal treatment of female applicants such as the plaintiff on the basis of their gender.” (trans. items 57, 3 K 113.19) They also note in the higher court appeal that “The choir director’s assessment that the plaintiff was not vocally capable of producing the sound of the concert choir either at the time of her application for admission or within a reasonable time was not objectionable.” (trans. item 6, BVerwG 6 B 17.21) This emphasis on the artistic freedom of the choir director leaves a lot to be desired. The court justifying the “de facto” gender discrimination viciously maintains a cycle where girls are prevented from equal access to the elite training that, itself, would (based on the available research) break this cycle of gender discrimination.
Seeing (Not Hearing!) Gender
“Hearing” the gender of trained choristers is a subjective process reliant on essentialized notions of what gender “sounds like.” It has been proven that girls in the UK can be trained to produce a sound read as “boy” in blind studies, however, this has not stopped many detractors from taking issue with girls participating in the tradition, leading some scholars to surmise that the issue is less about sound and more about a visual understanding of the tradition. Einsdottir observes that: “Recent studies by Welch, Howard and other scholars have demonstrated that girls seem to fare quite well within the cathedral choral scene, without having much of an impact on the specific boy treble sound (see Howard et al. 2002; Sergeant et al. 2005). Hence, the aesthetic justification of gender-based discrimination does not hold water in this context. Visually, boy trebles seem to attract visitors and the all-male choir is therefore a certain cultural landmark in terms of the English choral tradition…” (Einarsdottir 2022, 138 [emphasis mine]) The UNESCO designation of the German boy choir would appear to point to a similar phenomenon occurring in Germany, where boys-only choir represent a curiosity and aesthetic appeal that encourages an understanding of the tradition as defacto requiring preserving gender segregation, or, as the court puts it, a defacto gender discrimination. Einarsdottir speaks to this tension: “The politics of preservation seem to cause this inner conflict in the minds of the participants, between equal access versus tradition:” (Einarsdottir 2022, 132) Indeed, this case speaks to the tension between gender equality and the preservation of a musical, cultural, and religious tradition.
Gender Discrimination, Religion and the Law
The German constitution (the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany), namely Article 3 (invoked by the girl’s lawyer in the above case) protects equality before the law regardless of sex [iii]. However, as demonstrated in this case, Article 5’s protections for artistic freedom may trump gender equality in some cases [iv]. It is interesting to note that the court also deferred to scripture, conflating the religious institution of boys-only choirs as an essential element of “great works of Western culture,” in its arguments for justifying allowing the gender discrimination against the girl:
“The development of boys’ choirs in European sacred music has a religious basis. According to the Apostle Paul, as in all congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in congregational meetings (1st Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verses 33-35). The current repertoire of the institution, which has been operated for centuries as a pure boys’ or men’s choir, includes the great works of Western choral culture. The boys’ choir is an integral cultural component of the state of Berlin and enriches Berlin’s musical life, among other things, through appearances in opera house productions and participation in concerts in the Berlin Philharmonic…In view of the cultural importance of the boys’ choir, the defendant is constitutionally obliged to protect and promote it. Against this background, there is no objection to the fact that the website of the State and Cathedral Choir is primarily aimed at boys.” (translation of point 75, BVerwG 6 B 17.21)
Fishbayn & Neil have observed this effect on women’s rights in many cultural contexts: “when civil laws protecting women are not enforced due to prevailing customary and religious views.” (Fishbayn & Neil 2012, ix) It is perhaps surprising to observe that these religiously-rooted arguments are employed in such a case. It is also interesting to note that the court connects boys choirs with institutions like the Berlin Philharmonic, who conduct ‘blind’ auditions (in which applicants play behind screens) precisely to counteract gender-based discrimination.
Conclusions
The most prestigious and famous liturgical children’s choirs today (eg. the Regensburger Domspatzen, Tölzerknabenchor and Thomanerchor in Germany, and the choirs at Kings College Cambridge and Westminster Abbey in the UK) remain single-sex, male-only institutions. Cases such as the one of this German girl “raise challenging questions about the scope of freedom of religion and the role of the state in balancing the rights of individuals, religious authorities, and the broader community.” (Fishbayn & Neil 2012, xiii) They also provoke challenging questions closer to home. In 2023, an article in Montreal’s La Presse asked when girls would be allowed to sing in Les Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal [v]. My examination of the history of single-sex liturgical children’s choir and the sensorial processes involved in perceiving and gendering children’s voices, traced the British cultural shift towards a (more) equitable liturgical children’s choir tradition, contrasting it with a recent German case that provided legal arguments for justifying gender-discrimination. We may observe how in each case the perception of sound is harnessed to justify inclusion or discrimination. The senses (hearing and the “sound” of boys, in this case) can thus be seen to be both “cultural and political.” (Howes 2022, 13)
Endnotes:
[i] 1. Case: Aufnahme eines Mädchens in Knabenchor, Berlin Administrative Court, VG Berlin, judgment of 16.08.2019 – 3 K 113.19
2. Appeal: Zum Anspruch von Mädchen auf Aufnahme in einen Knabenchor (Konzertchor), Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg, judgment of 21.05.2021 – OVG 5 B 32.19
3. Appeal at Federal level: (Kein) Mädchen im Knabenchor, Federal Administrative Court, BVerwG, decision of 08.04.2022 – 6 B 17/21
[ii] Three articles appeared in British Papers in 2003 making explicit reference to the ECtHR:
“The school went co-ed in 1987 and, after Salisbury Cathedral led the way by responding to a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, York admitted female choristers in 1995.”
-The Yorkshire Post, December 22, 2003.
“But that all changed in 1991, when a mother took Salisbury choir to court for not allowing her daughter an audition. The European Court of Human Rights said she had to be given an equal opportunity to join.”
– Daily Mail, September 9, 2003
“For 500 years boys dominated cathedral choirs. In 1991, after a decision by the European court of human rights, girls began moving into the Anglican choir stalls.”
-The Guardian, September 9, 2003
[iii] Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html)
Article 3 [Equality before the law]
(1) All persons shall be equal before the law.
(2) Men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist.
(3) No person shall be favoured or disfavoured because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavoured because of disability.
[iv] Article 5
[Freedom of expression, arts and sciences]
(1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour.
(3) Arts and sciences, research and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.
[v] An article entitled “À quand des Petites Chanteuses du Mont-Royal?” appeared in September 2023 in La Presse. It highlighted how no equivalent opportunity currently exists for girls in Montreal: the government funds this program, in which boys (only) are offered a free private-school education in exchange for singing in the Petit Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, a prestigious boys choir which sings weekly services at St. Joseph’s Oratory, tours internationally and appears alongside the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.
Bibliography
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Boynton, Susan, and Eric Rice, eds. (2008). Young Choristers, 650-1700. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press.
“Christmas Voices of the Angels.” (2003). The Yorkshire Post. Dec 22 2003. URL: Accessed through ProQuest.
Einarsdottir, Sigrun Lilia. (2022).”Equality, History, Tradition: Gender-Political Issues in the Oxford Collegiate Choral Scene,” In eds. Gaupp, Lisa, Alenka Barber-Kersovan, and Volker Kirchberg’s Arts and Power: Policies in and by the Arts. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Eidsheim, Nina Sun. (2019.) The Race of Sound : Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music. Durham: Duke University Press.
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Howes, David. (2022). The Sensory Studies Manifesto : Tracking the Sensorial Revolution in the Arts and Human Sciences. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Leduc, Louise. (2023).”À quand des Petites Chanteuses du Mont-Royal?” La Presse, Sep 5 2023. URL: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/education/2023-09-05/a-quand-des-petites-chanteuses-du-mont-royal.php.
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Legal Cases Referenced:
Aufnahme eines Mädchens in Knabenchor, Berlin Administrative Court, VG Berlin, judgment of 16.08.2019 – 3 K 113.19. URL: https://openjur.de/u/2252186.html
Zum Anspruch von Mädchen auf Aufnahme in einen Knabenchor (Konzertchor), Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg, judgment of 21.05.2021 – OVG 5 B 32.19. URL: https://openjur.de/u/2347424.html
(Kein) Mädchen im Knabenchor, Federal Administrative Court, BVerwG, decision of 08.04.2022 – 6 B 17/21. URL: https://openjur.de/u/2397178.html
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