The convention of female treble performance in liturgical and non-liturgical
choral ensembles is a relatively recent development in the history of Western
art music. Composers, even the eccentric greats such as Beethoven, are creatures
of their own societies upon whom the forces of "tradition, present
purpose and opportunity" act to determine how each one "disposes
his musical materials" (Young 106).
Most scholarship makes only parenthetical reference to changes--some transitory,
some permanent, some even bizarre--in the gender composition of choral ensembles.
This paper attempts to codify these changes--among boys, falsettists and
castrati, and women--into a concise chronology of the usage of the
treble voice within the context of choral music history.
Because England's crown-mandated conversion to Protestantism allowed its
traditional liturgical practices to continue, this study will follow the
sacred and secular practices which were to bear an influence on the choral
music of England. As will be shown, this journey does not reach an end until
the twentieth century.
The exclusion of women from liturgical choral ensembles may have created
an appreciation for the aesthetic of the immature male voice. The opinion
that there was, in the female voice, "something at variance with the
austerity of ideal which should prevail in the music of worship" existed
nearly universally in the Western world and beyond and precluded female
participation (Dickinson 30). Thus, in temple worship in Israel, in the
Catholic, Eastern, and German Protestant churches and in the Anglican Church
cathedral service, women were silenced (Dickinson 30).
Father Finn disputes that boys took the place of female trebles, asserting
that, not only do they pre-date the women in this function, "their
selection is approved by sound reason of aesthetic propriety" (1: 118).
Finn continues that the latter constitutes the reason that generations of
choir masters have suffered the "small, wriggling, noisy and generally
undisciplined male sopranos . . ." (1: 147).
It is Finn's opinion that the female sound belongs in non-liturgical choruses
(1: 148) whose art more properly suits, by virtue of the emotionalism brought
to it by the "dramatic soprano," the music of the Romantic period
and not that of the a cappella masters of previous times (1: 119). Finn
greatly admires the female mezzo-soprano quality but not the liturgical
choir directors who have disguised women as boys to obtain that quality
in service music (1: 147).
Canon law and aesthetic considerations were not the only factors at work
in the on-going decision to use the boy-treble voice. Remembering that,
through the polyphonic period, all famous composers composed almost exclusively
for the voice, it is not difficult to understand the great tradition of
former choir boys who became church musicians and composers, perpetuating
the male-only domain (Vale 3). These composers include des Préz,
di Lasso, Palestrina, Purcell, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann,
and Brahms (Vale 3). Even with the advent of instrumental composition, many
composers still were accustomed to the sound of the boy treble in choral
singing.
The tradition of female exclusion from liturgical worship dates from
Christianity's antecedent, Judaism (Dickinson 30). The female voice, free
to participate in singing at home and in the processions and celebrations
outside the temple, was not heard within its walls (Dickinson 29). This
contravention had the force of the Halakah (Schleifer 23-24), the legal
rulings of the Gemara, the section of the Talmud which provides the commentary
to the Mishna--the "text of the Oral Law"--of the Talmud (Bridgwater
1939). Its rulings addressed the question quite explicitly: "'Men singing
and women answering is promiscuity; women singing and men answering like
fire set to chaff' (Sotah 48a)" (Schleifer 24) and "'A woman's
voice is indecency' (Ber. 24a)" (Schleifer 23). Consequently, the gender-segregated
seating in the temples and, later in the synagogues, provided no opportunity
for antiphonal singing (Schleifer 24).
During the existence of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, boys were added
to the ranks of the adult Levites who had exclusively populated the Temple
choir (Schleifer 20). The Levites, one of the twelve tribes of Judaism,
was the only one which possessed no land; the other tribes were required
to provide for its existence through alms and, later, work: "With the
unification of worship at Jerusalem the Levites became temple servants with
hereditary assignments" (Bridgwater 1125). Therefore, the exigency
of providing for these sons of Levi became a liturgical matter for the Temple
which decreed that only a male Levite could become an ecclesiastical singer
(Finn 1: 119). As Schleifer notes, according to Ezra 2:41, "one hundred
and twenty-eight singers . . . are said to have returned from Babylonian
exile" with the call to rebuild the Temple in Judah (19).
After the destruction of the Second Temple in C.E. 70, synagogue worship
differed from that in the Temple (Schleifer 22). Under the control of each
local rabbi, both instrumental music and singing in the synagogues were
circumscribed by the "rules of Sabbath observance; the mourning over
the destruction of the Temple; and the struggle against what the rabbis
took to be promiscuity" (Schleifer 22). This "struggle" seems
not to have curtailed singing--male and female--in such paraliturgical customs
as the Sabbath meal (Schleifer 36). Indeed, the history of the hymn with
its accentual rhythm probably dates from the extra-liturgical tradition
of this period (Phillips 31). Speculation exists that, because of the impossibility
of duplication of the Temple rituals in the much-smaller synagogues, psalmody
became a part of the latter's services after the Temple's destruction (Fassler
and Jeffery 84). During the following Diaspora, folk songs based on gentile
melodies and Arab-influenced Jewish poetry in the Judeo-Spanish dialect,
and perhaps the older hymns, were in the oral custody of Jewish women at
the time of the Jewish expulsion from Spain (Schleifer 36).
The period between A.D. 1000 and 1100 was a time of vast sociological
changes for Europe: (1) the "final schism" between the Western
and Eastern churches took place, (2) the First Crusade was launched, (3)
universities were first established, and (4) the continent began a general
recovery from the Plague (Grout 75). The era also marks the beginning of
formalized music education for non-ecclesiastics.
Prior to the eleventh century, vocal instruction was reserved for those
participating in liturgical services (Henderson 65). At that time, noblemen
first had the opportunity to be educated in the abbeys (Grout 49). Thus
were created the troubadours of southern France in the eleventh through
the thirteenth centuries and the trouvères of northern France
in the twelfth and thirteenth. Although Henderson speculates that they were
the first secular singers with vocal training (71), Grout tells of the Goliards
who appeared at approximately the same time and the jongleurs, first
noted in the tenth century (64-65). While neither group was thought respectable,
the former were "students or footloose clerics" traveling between
schools while the latter were professional musicians who eventually organized
themselves into guilds offering professional instruction (Grout 64-65).
Henderson asserts that the troubadours were the first noblemen "composing
under the influence of church music, but to secular text . . ." (52)
and that their compositions and performances, as well as that of the more
secularly-inspired trouvères, may have provided the first
appreciation of laymen for art singing (66). Grout provides the example
of their direct successors, the German Meistersingers, classifying
them as being "cultured middle-class citizens" (70).
The development of the secular motet after 1250 may have had heretofore
unexplored implications for choral ensembles. Grout states that these compositions,
following the custom of the times, freely combined sacred and secular texts
and were designed for secular performance in the vernacular language (101-102).
He also asserts that an "upper voice" might have been added to
a composition or that "sometimes a motet would lose its tenor, leaving
only the two upper voices" (99). Examination of the HAM shows
varying uses of treble and treble/octave-basso clefs in the triplum
(highest) and duplum (next-to-highest) voices; the treble clef is
even used in the cantus firmus, the "voice" sometimes thought
to have been performed by a member of the viol family (Davison and Apel
32-38). If the keys and clef notations of these transcribed pieces are accurate,
at least the triplum might have been performed by true treble voices;
others of the tripla would have been within the range of counter-tenors.
It seems unlikely that children from liturgical choirs would have had the
opportunity, or clerical permission, to perform in these secular contexts;
women or adult male trebles may have sung these parts. Grout states that
the end of the thirteenth century saw the "exaltation of the triplum
to the status of a solo voice against the accompanying lower parts"
(115).
During the fourteenth century, the importance of secular music increased
as the influence of the Church waned (Grout 127). Three hundred years after
the first universities were organized, education, at some level, seems to
have spread to even the female nobility, as recounted in Boccaccio's contemporaneous
tale in Decameron::
A discussion of the increased dependence upon the unnatural male voice
beginning in the Middle Ages and continuing through the Classical period
becomes necessary to an understanding of the historical treble voice. There
were two basic types of male sopranos: those contrived by physical control,
the falsettists; and those altered males, the castrati. Social custom
fluctuated in its acceptance of the latter so that, before 1600, many an
acclaimed falsettist may have been, in fact, a castrato (Heriot 10).
Falsettists, males capable of controlling the size of the aperture of the
vocal cords so as to approximate the female soprano range, had first been
noted in liturgical choirs before A.D. 1100 (Henderson 43). By the sixteenth
century Spanish falsettists were said to have accomplished great feats of
artistry (Henderson 135). Eighteenth-century music historian Dr. Charles
Burney noted the presence of a "falset" in the trio of a "premodern"
Amsterdam Ashkenazi synagogue around 1775 (qtd. in Henderson 60). In the
twentieth century Father Finn, the great choral pedagogue and master of
the Paulist Choristers of New York, continued a tradition of utilizing boys
as sopranos but falsettists as altos (1: 148).
Constantinople had always used the castrato (syn. musico, evirato)
in its liturgical music, and Rome would have been aware of this (Heriot
10). Children first may have been castrated in Rome specifically for singing
in the late second century (Heriot 9), but the Vatican papal choir is not
noted as employing its first castrato until 1562, in the guise of
the Spanish "falsettist" Padre Soto (Heriot 11). Although there
is no specific reference to when falsettists were first heard in Roman choirs,
Heriot postulates that, for those ears used to the timbre of the boy soprano,
the falsettists' quality may have been aesthetically unpleasing and the
arrival of the musici in Rome welcomed (10). The presence of castrati in
the papal choir in Avignon was noted (Finn 1: 119), although French authorities
much later banned all castrati as well as all Italian singers, equating
both with excessive ornamentation and a decadent life style (Heriot 13).
The elaborate a cappella style which commenced in the 1450s called for a
greater virtuosity and wider range than that possessed by the boy treble
(Heriot 10). The castrato's juvenile sound, remaining pure and elastic
for decades, commanded these qualities and suited the impersonality of church
music (Henderson 138-39). Orlando di Lasso employed six castrati in
his choir in Munich during the 1560s and 1570s (Heriot 11). In 1599, the
first two admitted castrati joined the Pope's choir; in 1687, papal
authorities ordered a castrato to sing alto (Heriot 11). Boys were
still being castrated as late as the 1880s in the Vatican and other Roman
churches, and the last castrato retired from papal choral service
in 1913 (Heriot 21-22).
Castrati also made their mark in secular music. Castrato Loreto
Vittori (b. 1588) was first a famous opera star before joining the papal
choir in 1622 and later singing for Monteverdi (Henderson 140). Vittori
and many of the castrati of the following century were highly trained
musicians who devoted their careers to the study and performance of music;
in this respect they generally eclipsed the women opera singers of the same
era (Heriot 30). Their virtuosity shown in the marketplace of the Italian
opera, and, after 1600, castrati openly acknowledged their condition
(Heriot 11-12).
The fame of the castrati led them to performance excesses. In mid-eighteenth-century
England, Handel found that the use of native female singers was sufficient
in the non-liturgical oratorio form and wrote for and used castrati
only on limited occasions (Dean 107). Caffarelli and Farinelli, the two
greatest male castrati sopranos of Handel's era (Henderson 144), were not
reported as having had any artistic disagreements with the even greater
composer.
Rossini, half of a century later in 1814, reportedly furious at the castrato
Velluti for further ornamenting an already florid Rossini song, vowed
never again to write for or employ a castrato (Heriot 20-21). Although
undoubtedly other composers had made that promise, and the last castrato
was heard in London in 1844 (Heriot 20-21), it was more likely the "tumultuous
elemental passion" introduced into Italian opera after the Handelian
era which caused the demise of the adult male trebles (Henderson 151). Drama
requires a range of volume which neither the delicate size of a child's
vocal mechanism in a child's or an adult's body nor the controlled mechanism
of a falsettist can produce; the increased size of the Romantic orchestra
also demanded a greater treble vocal volume which only women could provide.
The later Middle Ages was a time of "international" musicians
populating numerous European court and liturgical chapels and additionally
providing secular works for the former (Grout 159-60). The Burgundian courts
were among the sites of the continuation of the tradition of composers receiving
education in liturgical choirs; Guillaume Dufay (b. ca. 1400-d. 1474) was
a choir boy at Cambrai before becoming a priest and directing the papal
choirs at Rome, Florence, and Bologna (Grout 161). But, perhaps the growth
of this secular sponsorship, the patronage of the arts, was most responsible
for the changes which took place in the arts and signalled the beginning
of the Renaissance period. Certainly, because of this patronage, the concept
of the "'great composer' made its first tentative appearance"
and musicians gained a somewhat greater respectability (Grout 175).
Individual musical artistry became recognized as the Renaissance progressed
into the seventeenth century (Grout 130). Peri and Caccini, notable composers
of the period, were first known as singers (Grout 130). Females performing
in the compositions of these masters, including Caccini's daughter, gained
fame as soloists. (Early in the century, a short-lived experiment allowed
women--nuns--to sing in Roman Catholic services; one, Verovia, even gained
some celebrity [Henderson 133-34]). Church officials, aping the secular
patronage system, often owned singers, usually sopranos, adult males or
females (Henderson 132). Then, as now, these soloists--the first "stars"--were
admired and emulated.
According to Guido Gasperini in Encyclopédie de la Musique,
the Italian frottole and strambotti of the fifteenth century
were meant "for dilettante singers who did not possess the brilliant
qualities of professional artists" (qtd. in Henderson 79). While "art"
composers mostly neglected the solo song, the nobility and the public continued
their appreciation for the form in popular music, emphasizing the growing
importance of the soprano voice (Henderson 80). By the end of the sixteenth
century, solo song, the "ancient popular style of Italy" (Henderson
81) and the direct link between the venerable lute songs and the coming
madrigal dramas (Henderson 73) which then led directly to early Italian
opera, had dominated the music of the Florentine composers.
The year A.D. 1600 begins the period about which Grout reluctantly allows
the use of the term "Baroque" (294). While much has been written
about the period, and about the beginnings of Italian opera, substantial
confusion remains about the latter topic. Sources consulted state the following:
The ladies of Elizabeth's court during the 1500s possessed skill in both
sight-reading and instrumental accompaniment; "an educated gentleman"--presumably
including those in social classes lower than the royal court--was expected
to have similar skills (Henderson 75). With the excesses of Italian opera
still far in the future, admiration for Italian solo and part songs was
strong among the upper classes in England (Young 51). The English madrigal
became music for their domestic pleasure, and they participated in its private
performances eagerly (Young 51-52).
As the rest of Europe alternately basked in and was repelled by the developments
in continental opera, England remained relatively untouched. England's version
of early opera, the masque, did not endure after the Civil War of the 1640s
without the participation of servants and other amateurs; gone was the "social
cohesion which made such productions possible" (Mackerness 71). Additionally,
the "rise of professionalism in the theatre completely altered the
spirit in which they were presented" (Mackerness 71).
England's first professional theater, Blackfriars, was opened sixty years
prior to Venice's first lyric theater (Mackerness 72-73). Originally leased
by the choir master of the Children of the Chapel Royal (the King's chapel)
as a rehearsal site, there began "a considerable tradition of dramatic
production by the choristers attached to several religious establishments"
(Mackerness 73). Supervised by the ecclesiastical authorities, the children;
performing in masques, operas and, later, oratorios; were viewed as being
more respectable than the women who performed in private theaters (Mackerness
73).
The English were exposed to Italian opera, briefly by one of its own: Purcell's
Italianate Dido and Aeneas (1689), written as opera seria
for a girls' school, is a singularity (Young 85). Subsequent performances
of imported fare, however, were not so well received, it being "below
the dignity of Britons to sit and listen to seductive airs sung by eunuchs
. . ." (Mackerness 93).
The Anglican church was not a revolutionary Protestant sect: it was a
state-mandated institution with the King as its titular head. While it abolished
Catholic idolatry and the worship of saints, Anglicanism maintained such
features as the use of chant and all-male participation in the performance
of its cathedral liturgy. Thus, its contribution to the lay choral tradition
was negligible.
One view holds that the English choral tradition has its roots in the Industrial
Revolution (ca. 1750-1850) (Mackerness 127). While this ignores the already-flourishing,
upper-class choral activity, the Industrial Revolution may have contributed
to its spread among the middle classes.
The employment of illiterate children in the early factories caused social
and practical problems for their employers (Mackerness 129). In response
to these problems, and a movement to discontinue the employment of children
under ten, some children were educated in academic subjects including music
(Mackerness 130-31). Smaller employers even gave their adult employees time
to perform and listen to music (Mackerness 131). The largest employers,
however, were not so beneficent; employees were left to their own entertainment,
that usually being listening to music (Mackerness 132).
As the Industrial Revolution became established and flourished, the true
reformed churches of England did likewise. The psalmody of these sects was
rapidly assimilated into the parish services of the Anglican church (Dickinson
378-79) which performance was usually limited to the choir.
Methodism was the most important sect in establishing a doctrine of universal
democratic participation in congregational singing: at the time when Charles
and John Wesley introduced congregational singing, the practice was almost
unknown (Dickinson 39). Dickinson states that, historically, "[s]ocial
hymn singing . . . flourishes only in periods of popular religious awakening
. . . no matter what may be going on in professional musical circles"
(376-77). Mackerness even attributes "evangelical elements" in
Handelian oratorios to the Methodist Revival, as well as the formation of
working-class, amateur choral and instrumental societies (124).
Fassler and Jeffery state that the "last major composer" supported
by the patronage of ecclesiastics or nobility was Haydn (1732-1809) (3:
110). This decline of the patronage system "paralleled" the evolution
of the commercialization of music through the sale of concert tickets and
sheet music to the general public (Fassler and Jeffery 3: 110). However,
it may be argued that the demand for such items would not have been established
had Protestant congregational singing not already become popular. Into this
English atmosphere of hunger for participation in concerted singing came
its greatest, although unwitting, contributor.
The advent of Handelian oratorio, "dependent alike on an act of
artistic piracy and the moral scruples of a prelate, was casual and unpremediated,
its parentage discreetly veiled, and its legitimacy not above suspicion"
(Dean 206). Handel's earlier oratorios were nearly identical to his operas
with the exception of the absence of acting as was required by the Bishop
(Mackerness 102). Pragmatically, the Catholic composer was sensitive to
the strictures of Anglican ecclesiastical authorities in his adopted land
and to declining revenues in the face of more-elaborate rival operatic productions
(Young 104). Dean cites the "piracy" of Thomas Arne, father of
Dr. Thomas A. Arne, as the final precipitant of Handel's decision to quit
opera through the former's unauthorized production of Handel's Acis and
Galatea in 1732 (205).
Scholes maintains that the oratorio should be viewed "in the extended
sense in which Handel used it, i.e., not limiting it to works of a religious
character" (65). The vast majority of Handel's oratorio performances
took place in theaters and private venues (Young 104). During Handel's lifetime,
the function of the choir in these London performances was fulfilled by
boy choristers from the Chapel Royal, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul's
Cathedral (Smither 3: 211); the size of these choirs ranged from seventeen
to twenty-four voices plus four to nine soloists who joined the ensemble
singing (Dean 108). While the Children of the Chapel had appeared costumed
and had acted on London's stages for two hundred years prior to Handel's
appearance, the then-current Bishop insisted that future appearances omit
acting (Dean 205). The use of these boys, and the resulting importance of
the numerous choral segments in Handel's oratorios, "was a certain
safeguard of propriety" (Young 105). Young continues that "[t]he
English took to Handel's choralism because it decreed respectability"
(105). Ironically, "[s]ome years later the Handel oratorio with its
noisy concert technique swept the board of fashion till [sic] it became
'the vogue' to go to the theatre for one's religious thrills rather than
to the church with its reticent little 'chamber' choir" (Phillips 176).
Artistically, Handel was able to exercise control over the performance of
his own works by using the less recognition-demanding, and less well-trained,
English soloists and boy choristers (Dean 107). Although women were used
extensively as soloists in the oratorios, Handel did not include other women
as choristers in any of his own oratorio performances. However great a role
Handel may have played in the innovation of English music and music in general,
he did not innovate in the performance practices of choral music.
The introduction of amateur women and lay men into oratorio choruses may
be attributed to provincial performance practices. As the whole of England
began forming choral societies, the rural singers aped their urban counterparts
in choral, and later, oratorio performances. Early choral festivals used
male cathedral singers (Smither 3: 220). Later, as oratorios became the
staple form of choral entertainment, larger choruses of traveling professional
and ecclesiastical singers were employed (Smither 3: 221-22). By necessity,
the most northerly, less populous provinces used mixed choirs, long cultivated,
to satisfy their localities' eagerness to hear and participate in oratorios
(Smither 3: 222). Their prowess was so advanced that they became very popular
in choral festivals outside these provinces (Smither 3: 222). In the last
quarter of the eighteenth century, the women choristers of Lancashire--"six
to eight female sopranos"--were sought after for their skill in choral
section leadership at many major festivals (Smither 3: 222).
Contemporaneous performances of Handel's oratorios were held almost exclusively
in non-church venues (Smither 3: 218). In 1758, at a performance attended
by a much-impressed John Wesley, Bristol cathedral hosted an evening performance
of Messiah; in the following year, the same work was performed for
the first time in a morning cathedral performance, adjunct to a service,
in Hereford (Smither 3: 216-18). By 1775, the pretense of a morning service
was eliminated when Winchester cathedral was the site of a Messiah
performance (Smither 3: 218). According to Smither, "a morning performance
of Messiah in a cathedral now seemed virtually equal in status to
a religious service" (3: 216).
The suburban festivals eventually bore an influence on what would become
the normal performance practice in London in the nineteenth century. There
is a certain irony attached to the introduction of women into oratorio performances
in London: the greatest, and arguably only, composer of English oratorio,
Handel, was not connected with it.
Theatrical composer Dr. Thomas A. Arne; son of the impresario who had pirated
Handel's opera, brother of the famed contralto who had appeared in that
pirated performance and also premièred the alto part in Handel's
Messiah, and husband of the leading English soprano of the time who
sang in many Handel-directed performances; first introduced women to the
ranks of the oratorio choir. While there were other London venues for oratorio
performance, none was as popular with the public as those at the Theatre
Royal in Covent Garden, the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, and the King's
Theatre in the Haymarket (Mackerness 103-104). Instrumental concerts and
other choral performances also took place in these locations; there was
some commercial competition among them (Smither 3: 202). In 1761, during
his short tenure as music director there, Arne's oratorio Judith,
one of only two he composed, was premièred at the Drury Lane Theatre
(Parkinson 113). At a 1767 performance at Covent Garden, conductor Dibdin
"accompanied an air from Arne's Judith 'on a new Instrument
call'd a Piano Forte'" (Parkinson 113). Six years later, in 1773, Dr.
Arne briefly became the musical director of Covent Garden and the Public
Advertiser congratulated this February 26 revival:
English Anglican cathedral and continental Roman Catholic liturgical
choirs remained largely untouched by the gender evolution in non-liturgical
choral ensembles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. English liturgical
music had not only provided little inspiration, in some cases its performance
had also deteriorated drastically (Matthews 273). Ordinarily, however, the
cathedral and parish choirs of nineteenth-century England were credited
with "high technical excellence" (Young 191).
World War I saw the disappearance of men from St. Paul's Cathedral choir
as many of them fought in the war (Matthews 288); World War II caused the
boys to be absent from the choir as they were evacuated to the countryside
to escape the German bombing of London (Matthews 315). Nonetheless, the
status quo had been restored by 1952 when the cathedral choir, comprised
of eighteen men and thirty boys, crossed the United States during a tour
of forty-one recitals and services (Matthews 324).
The Roman Catholic laity, which had been denied full musical participation
in its services from the earliest centuries, in the twentieth century forced
the papacy to legitimize for all of its constituency a practice long honored
in American Catholic churches: the participation of women in liturgical
choirs (Winter 151). According to Catholic educator Miriam Therese Winter,
the 1963 Vatican II reforms ended an epoch in which "[f]or fifteen
centuries the Catholic church told its people what to sing or not to sing
as it legislated them into silence" (171).
That America should have been at the forefront of such a movement is not
surprising; since it was never primarily an Anglican nor Catholic country,
no pandemic exclusionary practices ever existed. The new country in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries eagerly embraced the English choral
experience--especially as expressed through performances of Handel (Young
195)--without suffering its same rites of passage.
Modern choral conductors should be familiar with the range of performance
practices encompassed by their repertoire; such information, incorporated
into performances, will ensure, as far as is practicable, an accurate reflection
of the composers' intentions. This is not to suggest that women should be
excluded from the performance of any choral music originally written for
boy or adult male trebles: the female treble voice is capable of a wide
range of stylistic subtleties which may complement the performance of choral
music of the various genre composed throughout the centuries.
Many theories could be advanced regarding the potential effects on Western
music history had women consistently provided the treble voice in concerted
singing. It might be conjectured this would have produced a music history
quite different from that which did occur. However, one may be consoled--or
dismayed--that "[t]here is a certain rough justice in the supposition
that each country gets the music it deserves" (Young 106).
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