Steve Schwartz writes:

>I mostly agree with your [Ms. Wang's] analysis, except for the part about
>children's voices being uniquely child-like.  You can train adult trebles
>(male and female) to sing with that sound.  In fact, it's done all the
>time.

I disagree.  Not that such training isn't done or that it isn't done "all
the time".  But it isn't done successfully -- not by a long shot.  I can't
speak with much experience or authority regarding young female voices but
the young (pre-pubescent) male voice (both solo and en-mass) is truly
unique in sound.  I can't imagine that anyone would contend otherwise.
Perhaps I've missed something and perhaps Mr. Schwartz could, therefore,
point to a recording that might alter my opinion.  I have yet to hear one
but I'm willing to learn.

I would doubt seriously, however, that in a blind experiment, I and many,
many others could not pick-out or distinguish an all-male boys choir from
an adult imitation.

It also occurs to me to ask:"Why would adults want to attempt to imitate
that "sound" in the first place?"

Along this same line, I have noticed over the years that the "sound" of
an all-male college-aged "glee club" (for lack of a better term) also has
a unique sound.  These are post-pubescent male voices, to be sure, (ages
18-22 or so) but the uniqueness is still there.  Is it the repertoire such
choirs traditionally perform or perhaps the harmony they employ? I think
not.  I maintain that the mixed voices of, say, the Harvard Men's Glee
Club or the West Point Men's Choir have a distinctive sound compared to
an equivalent all-male choir with members more or less equally spread
between the ages of about 20 to 50+ years in age.  College-age males have
a distinctive sound as well -- basses, baritones and tenors -- over their
somewhat older counter-parts.

In other words, you would be hard-pressed to convince me that "Off We
Go into the Wild Blue Yonder" (for example) wouldn't sound distinctively
different as sung by the Air Force Academy men's glee club than the same
tune (in exactly the same harmony) sung by an equal number of male members
from, say, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or the Robert Shaw Chorale.  And
there would be, in my experience, no question as to which was the "younger"
ensemble.

I have tapes made during my younger days as a classical music radio
announced.  Compared to tapes of my "radio announcer's voice" of today,
I had a distinctively different sound twenty years ago.  Same voice,
different sound.  Not surprisingly, I sounded "younger" twenty years ago
and, God willing, I'll again sound different twenty years hence.

David Pitzer