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Segregation in general is key

Posted by LaudateAgno on 2023-January-4 12:19:12, Wednesday
In reply to Boy choirs ARE a foundation of civilization. posted by Sick Rose on 2023-January-4 04:17:48, Wednesday

There were plenty of other paths for the socialization of boys in the past, especially apprenticeships or simply participating one's father's work (especially agriculture). Dedicated boy singers made up a pretty small proportion of boys. For example, in 1377, Wells, Somerset had a population of about 1,352, and in that same year had in its cathedral twelve boys: nine singers, and three altarist ex-singers pace Alan Mould. More than half of children who survived infancy and had about a 60% chance of making it to age 50, by which time women have pretty much stopped having children; I'd guestimate about 200 boys of singing age in Wells at any given moment. As Wells had an important cathedral, boys were surely recruited from around the bishopric, not just the town. So a large majority of the town boys were not singing in the church choir, and I'm not aware of any all-male pedagogical institution involving singing boys.

Villages and city-adjacent chapels may have had boys singing in small numbers, but (guessing again here) not as their major occupation. Cities with numerous smaller chapels (Oxbridge, eg) may admittedly have been another story. But certainly one can't say boy choirs were "how the West did pedagogy." Foundational to Western civilization they may have been, but only in concert with all the other foundational institutions: monasteries, guilds, farms, the military, merchants, and so on – male institutions all. For boys to be in any of these institutions meant they were being raised in the predominant company of males. It's the segregation that's doing a lot of the work here, as it has in other civilizations hat have developed without formal institutions of boy singers.

On the other hand, the refinement of the medieval educational system revolving around the monasteries, and the value of Christian theology and metaphysics to the West, can hardly be overestimated. Given the ever-growing role music had in these institutions, boy singers can be said to have been especially pivotal.

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