Singing and Adolescent Males: An Updated Look at “What Do We Know Now?”

The November/December 2022 issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “Singing and Adolescent Males: An Updated Look at “What Do We Know Now?” by Patrick K. Freer. Following is a portion from the article.
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Singers’ voices have always changed during adolescence. A growing research focus on male vocal development has, in turn, changed how music teachers work with males as they sing during adolescence. For example, in 2011, Patrick K. Freer and Antonis Ververis reported on more than seventy years of research and practice that could inform music teachers and choral conductors who work with adolescent males.1 A number of related articles were published in the first ten years of the twenty-first century in Choral Journal and Music Educators Journal.2 This article begins with a summary of that information, followed by a review of related literature published in the decade since 2011.

Much of present-day pedagogy for the adolescent male changing voice begins with the premise that teachers need to be knowledgeable about the male voice change, must be aware of related physical and psychological changes during pubertal development, and must be highly skilled musicians.3 This foundation was central to the 2011 article by Freer and Ververis.

The authors concluded that, “Students, also, need to know about their changing voices so that they can understand the developing physiology and its impacts on their singing.”4 Teachers could work toward this goal by reinforcing the basics of healthy vocal technique for adolescent male singers. Still, a team of researchers from Texas State University reported in a 2021 International Journal of Research in Choral Singing article that current choral music conductors “desired more information about the changing voice. They seemed to recognize that information was available, but, like their counterparts 20 years earlier, were challenged with the task of translating information into effective teaching strategies.”5

1 Patrick K. Freer and Antonis Ververis, “[Methaphonisi and Choral Music Education in the United States: Research and Philosophical Perspectives],” [Musical Pedagogics] 9 (2011): 5-23.
2 For several examples, see Patrick K. Freer, “Between Research and Practice: How Choral Music Loses Boys in the ‘Middle,’” Music Educators Journal 94, no. 2 (November 2007): 28-34; David Friddle, “Changing Bodies, Changing Voices: A Brief Survey of the Literature and Methods of Working with Adolescent Changing Voices,” Choral Journal 46, no. 6 (December 2005): 32-43; Henry Leck, “The Boy’s Changing Expanding Voice: Take the High Road,” Choral Journal 49, no. 11 (May 2009): 49-60.
3 Patrick K. Freer, “An Ethical Response to the ‘Gender Trouble’ in Choral Music,” Choral Journal 60, no. 1 (August 2019): 22-31.
4 Freer and Ververis, “Methaphonisi,” 6.
5 Janice N. Killian, John B. Wayman, and Patrick M. Antinone, “Choral Director’s Self Report of Accommodations Made for Boys’ Changing Voices: A Twenty-Year Replication,” International Journal of Research in Choral Singing 9 (2021): 22.

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Read the full article in the November/December 2022 issue of Choral Journal. acda.org/choraljournal