the mouth,
and reinforce it by means of the soft upper palate. He recommends the
teacher to train the boys to use the upper register by making them sing
over and over again, _very softly_, the following notes:--

[Illustration: Chest Head Ah....]

Here again the transition seems to me to be taken much too high.

Mr. Frank Sharp, of Dundee, trainer of the celebrated children's choir,
which has sung the treble and alto parts, both solos and choruses, of
_Messiah, St. Paul_, and many cantatas, writes to me:--

"In part-singing where there are boy trebles, the adult male alto voice
has its charms. The contrast in quality between the open tone of the
boys' voices and the condensed, sometimes squeaky sweetness of the man
alto does not affect the blending, and helps the distinctness of parts.
Considering the growing scarcity of this latter voice, why not use boy
altos? They can be made as effective as ordinary women altos, but they
are as short-lived and need more attention than the boy trebles. Their
chief drawback is a tendency to produce tone without the least attention
to quality or effect save that of noise. Nevertheless, there is nothing
to hinder boy altos doing all that is necessary, or, indeed, all that
can be done by the adult male alto. I have trained boys to sing alto in
_Messiah_, _St. Paul_, and equally trying music, during the past twenty
years, and anyone else who keeps the girl's alto voice before him as a
model can do the same. The boy alto voice may be said to have a husk and
a kernel: the one strident, harsh, and overpowering; the other sweet,
and, with use, rich and round. The average healthy boy, with his
exuberant love of noise, will naturally give the husk, but the skilful
voice-trainer will only accept the kernel, evolved from right register,
good _timbre_, and proper production. Seeing and hearing a process in
voice-training is, however, more satisfactory than much writing and the
reading thereof."

* * * * *

Mr. W. W. Pearson, master of a village school in Norfolk, who is
well-known by his excellent part-songs, writes to me:--

"I succeed very well in getting boys to sing alto because I always use a
large number of exercises in two parts, making each division of the
class in turn take the lower part. I do not choose boys for altos on
account of age. That, in my opinion, has nothing to do with it. I choose
them by quality of voice. There is no break in the voice of the natural
alto between]--[Illustration: G and C] I find altos out generally when
they are novices, by hearing them trying to sing with the others, and
dropping down an octave in high passages."

* * * * *

The following interesting notes are by Mr. W. Critchley, organist,
choirmaster, and schoolmaster in the village of Hurst, near Reading:--

"I do not choose the elder boys as altos, as I find that treble boys, as
a rule, are at their very best just before the change of voice. And
moreover, when that change begins, the voice is so uncertain in its
intonation that if the boy were put to sing alto he would be certain to
drag the others down. At present I have one or two boys with round,
mellow voices, who are very effective. Unfortunately, most of the alto
parts in hymn-tunes and chants hover about the place where the break in
the voice occurs, and it requires a lot of practice to conquer the
difficulty. As a rule, I get the alto boys to sing in the lower
register. It is very seldom they get a note which they cannot take in
this register, so I train it up a little, thus--

[Illustration: KEYS B to F[#].

d_1 t_2 l_2 t_2 d_1 r_1 m_1]

I do not see any other way of getting over the uncertainty in the boy
alto voice. It is merely a matter of time and trouble."

* * * * *

Mr. J. C. E. Taylor, choirmaster of St. Mary's, Penzance, and
head-master of the National School, says:--

"I have