Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >This is the goal of the so-called "British Cathedral" sound of choral >singing. Not surprsingly, Australia and New Zealand share it. If someone >didn't tell me, I wouldn't have been able to distinguish between women (or >adult male trebles) singing in this style and children. So it's not >"unique" to me. Mostly, one has to go to obscure British labels like >Priory. I haven't seen a Priory CD in the US, except at Berkshire Record >Outlet. Are there any particular choirs you have in mind who sing like this? All the Priory recordings I've heard have been of all-male choirs. I listen to the weekly evensong broadcast on BBC Radio 3, which is usually an all-male cathedral or collegiate choir, but sometimes a mixed choir. I find it easy to distinguish the mixed voice ensembles. For example, when Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, broadcast I could tell that they had women on the top line even though I did not already know that they were a mixed choir and had good reason to assume otherwise. Similarly when I once turned to a broadcast of Manchester Cathedral after the opening announcement it was obvious that the usual boys (and girls) who sing there had been replaced by adult sopranos for that particular broadcast. Maybe it is because I am within the British choral tradition myself that I can pick up on the difference in tone. This is not to say that I necessarily like the mixed-voice choirs, even though I can for obvious reasons identify more with the sound. (For example, I find the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge very boring to listen to because of the same bland, unchanging tone which they have made as long as I can remember). Virginia Knight [log in to unmask] http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/~ggvhk/virginia.html