Does anyone have any information about how young singers in choirs are taught?
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Kardamom (
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December 20th, 2016
I love choir music and have been listening to a lot of it lately because of it being almost Christmas. One of my favorite songs and choirs is In Dulci Jubilo by King’s College Cambridge.
In this choir is a mix of young kids and adults. I was wondering if any of you have had any knowledge of how the young kids are taught to sing so well at such a young age. Obviously they have a choir director, but I’m just hearkening back to when I was in grade school and remembering that back then (the olden days) we actually sang every day and had a music period at least a couple of times a week. We didn’t learn how to sing, we just sang, and we sounded like typical grade schoolers. It was fun, but no one’s voice was fantastic like the kids you hear in these big choirs.
Some of the kids from the Cambridge choir look like they could be 10 or 11 years old. Some of the kids in Libera look even younger. Their voices are amazingly beautiful, but I just can’t imagine how you could get a little kid to be able to sing like that, when I couldn’t even get my nephew, aged 11, to say more than two words, let alone sing, at our family Christmas party, and every school choir show I’ve ever been to, while very enjoyable, did not sound like these kids in the links.
How do they do it? Is it possible to take any kid and train them to sing like that? Or do the choir leaders have to go on a huge search to find kids who already have an amazing natural ability to sing, and then simply fine tune that ability?
This is how most school choirs sound, but I love this too : )
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10 Answers
I don’t know but I think they must find kis with good natural voices and then train them as well. I can’t imagine the really great young choir singers don’t have voice lessons and extra training.
First, you audition with the musical director to see if you have what it takes to be in the choir, then he/she determines in what part of the choir you will sing in, like soprano, alto, tenor, bass, or possibly melody, harmony. After that, the choir practices and practices.
Calling Strauss (fromerly Yetanotheruser)...
(My father taught band and choir, among other subjects, in public schools.)
I was in a children’s choir that was really good. Only a few were really exceptional (not me) but I believe the reason we did so well was that the director went over each part and made us do it over and over again until it was right. She wouldn’t accept “good enough.” We got instant feedback and it was really rewarding when she finally said “good!” And if she said “great!” We were ecstatic.
Kids will rise to the expectations. It’s just hard for people to imagine big enough to set the expectations high enough
Practice, practice, practice.
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They must go on search (online I’m gueesing )and then train them. And there may be something about singing with others that helps to bring out more quality in each member.
Most good musicians and singers are born with a good ear for music and become better with practice.
My daughter is 12 and is in choir at her Jr high. She recently auditioned for a district wide chorus performance and was accepted. The Jr high choir was beautiful! My daughter said that it was nice to sing with others who sing well. She doesn’t get that opportunity at her school because many of the students in her choir just take the class to get out of world history.
All second graders in my elementary school were required to take music. They were about seven years old. This involved voice training, learning to read music and an introduction to the Catholic catalogue of religious music. The first day of class we were taught to sing the scales. The second day, a nun who specialised in teaching voice had each of us individually run through the scales at different octaves, then assigned us our places in the Second Grade Choir.
Those that couldn’t hold a note, or had no ear, were relegated to the rear and weren’t asked to take music the following year. This was a good thing to most of us. Boys were given special attention and the good ones were pressured to work very hard. This is because in just a few more years their voices would be changing and the time to train them and get them singing in the local equivalent of the Gregorian Choir was very limited. The pressure was on, but thankfully the Church had stopped castrating young boys to prevent their voices from changing only 90 years earlier.
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