Jenevora: Well, in terms of development of muscles and brain and abilities to learn habits and that sort of thing, you can’t really do anything at all until the age of 6. All you can do under that age is enjoy singing and use lots of fun songs and action songs.
It’s really important to get kids singing a lot at that age because it helps them learn – it’s the best way they can learn their letters and their numbers and all of those sort of things. So it’s incredibly valuable as an educational tool, but in terms of the quality of sound they are producing, you can’t really do much with them.
Between the ages of 6 and 8 then their ability to control the muscles and whatever starts to kick in. After the age of 8 then you can start working, but obviously you can’t do a great deal at that age. What you are doing is very basic. Work on just making sure they are establishing the right habits from the start, so the right habits on how to stand and the right habits of how to breathe but only in very general terms. You can still have a lot of fun singing songs and learning songs. But heavy duty technique is not really going to get you very far at that age.

I would say that if you say to a child or an adolescent, “whatever you do you mustn’t sing that or you mustn’t do that or you mustn’t listen to that particular music”, the first thing they’re going to do when you turn your back is to go off and try it.

So what I say is “If you really love it, bring it to your lesson, do it with me, we’ll make sure that you aren’t doing anything terrible, but I really would like you not to do it in concerts or public performances”. So just be completely open.
I’ve had a 14 year old boy wanting to sing Ich Grolle Nicht [from Schumann’s song cycle Dichterliebe] and he was so passionate about it and had been listening to lots of Fischer Dieskau recordings. I knew there was absolutely nothing to be gained by saying you mustn’t sing it because he was going to be singing it anyway. Much better to go through it in his lesson and give him an idea of where the problems were.

And exactly the same applies to children doing pop and children doing musical theatre where they might be wanting to make sounds similar to belting. The jury is out on whether children are capable of belting in what we call belting. But they are certainly capable of shouting, and they’re certainly capable of shouting with bad habits just as easily as adults.

So if they want to sing repertoire that demands that it’s far better for them to do it in the lesson and make sure that they’re doing it within safe confines. And then a teacher can point out that a particular sound is really not helping, and if you do that you’re just going to make your voice extremely tired very quickly. And you point it out to them. But then don’t do it competitions and festivals and school concerts and things like that. If you’re going to perform in public you don’t want to fall flat on your face.

Well all children’s voices have limitations. Again we can learn how they are caused by looking at the physical model and looking at the physiology of the voice and from looking at that we can see that they are not good at singing long phrases. You can’t give them repertoire with long long phrases and expect them to do it in one breath.

Well, you can do the Handel arias but you’ve just got to take more breaths!

Anything that is too high for too long is more of a strain for them. Anything that is too loud for too long. So loud, high and long I think you can avoid. But there’s plenty of repertoire that is in shorter phrases that doesn’t go into such extremes of range and remains within a more comfortable dynamic range.
In fact everything except for Strauss operas or really daft things.
We can laugh about it but I’ve had 16 year old tenors bringing Comfort Ye to a lesson saying “My teacher gave me this” and it’s hard enough for a 30 year old professional to do well, let alone a 16 year old. So don’t be seduced by the fact that you might have one very good singer in your group – they are still young and they still need repertoire that is appropriate for their young, youthful voice.

Well they certainly have a much reduced capability, and for some boys that might be extremely frustrating. Because if they are used to singing at a high level as a soprano, then to suddenly be grumbling around in a range of under an octave with a voice quality that has very little dynamic range and they can’t do much with it, that might be frustrating for them.
But I think that’s where it’s really crucial for the singing teacher to introduce them to the possibilities rather than the limitations. And to say “Isn’t it exciting that you can make these noises, that you’re going to be able to do this sort of repertoire.”
And actually I have never had a boy who wasn’t excited by his changing voice. Out of several hundred. They all welcome it. They’ve had enough of being little boys and they welcome the move on.

Yes, absolutely. And as they’re moving through, the possibilities of new repertoire and new noises are opening up, and it’s incredibly exciting for a boy to be able to sing tenor or bass, or even alto in a choir, And if you’ve been singing soprano in a choir for five years and suddenly you’ve got the possibility of singing harmonies and singing with bigger boys whose voices are further down the line than yours, I think that’s a very very exciting stage for boys to be at. And there’s no reason at all why they should stop singing.

The only boys I know who do stop singing during voice change are those in the German boy’s choirs. Places like Berlin and the Dresden boys choir and the Leipzig Thomanerchor and half or dozen or so. But they are in a boarding school where the boys stay up until the age of 18 so they take one year out when their voice is changing.

During that year they have a very busy role at concerts – they sell the programmes, promote CDs, bits of management and admin. But because they are in the boarding school already they go straight back in as soon as they are ready to sing tenor or bass.

Whereas in normal schools if you tell a 14 year old boy to go away and do something else and don’t sing for a year or two he’s just going to fill his time up with other things and he’s very unlikely to come back to singing having had time out. It’s going to be much more useful for him to carry on singing.

It is a very tricky one. And the same applies to kids who are ill. All kids get ill and maybe won’t be able to sing for two or three weeks. You need to keep their interest going and keep them part of the system and it’s possible that they may be ill over the time of a big performance or a big concert. And that needs to be dealt with very sensitively.

The subtitle for your Developing Voice course in April is “0-30 in six hours”. I know that you do an indepth overview of anatomy and the anatomical changes that people go through from the age of zero right the way through to adulthood. So we find out about the physicality of singing and the developmental aspect?

Yes. I’ve looked at the development of the vocal mechanism in embryos as well – the foetus.

Yes. How to listen to the speaking voice, how to assess what stage they’re at. And when you know exactly what stage they’re at then it’s really quite simple to know what sort of repertoire might suit them and what sort of singing might suit them.

Yes. I think if you hear it, if you hear the voices at different stages, you can compare them directly. This is this voice six months later, listen to what’s happened. I think that is a very useful thing to be able to do.

For example, I’ve got a recording of one pupil of mine who is now 31 and I’ve got recordings of her every two or three years from the age of 8.

Oh yes! Boys and girls, and different styles of music.

Listen with fresh ears at the beginning of every lesson. Because things may have changed. Things will be different.