open, the shoulders being thrown back. After exercise in slowly inhaling and exhaling the breath, comes the uniting of the registers. This is accomplished by singing up and down the scales of C, D, and E to the syllable "ah." Each tone is taken with decision, and is followed by a slight pause. The same scales are afterwards sung to "oh" and "oo." This exercise should not last longer that ten or fifteen minutes. Staccato scales to "ah!" "oh!" and chromatic passages are introduced later.

Mr. G. Bernard Gilbert, F.C.O., of West Ham Parish Church, is an exceptionally skilled trainer of boys' voices. He meets his boys half-an-hour before each of the Sunday Services and "tunes them up," an admirable plan, which cannot be too widely imitated. The first thing he does in training boys is to teach them to attack and leave sounds with precision, neatness, and proper register or quality of voice. He gives chief attention to the sounds between [Listen] and first practises them. If beauty of tone is to be obtained, it is of the utmost importance that these sounds should be given in the thin register. Mr. Gilbert has cultivated this register in his own voice, and is able to give the boys a pattern in the right octave, which he thinks of great use. The change from upper thick to lower thin takes place between E and F. The boys should intone in the thin register. Flattening while intoning is almost entirely due to boys using the thick register. Mr. Gilbert uses the vowels as arranged by Mr. Behnke, oo-o-ah-ai-ee, practised first with a slight breath between each, afterwards all in one breath, piano and staccato. Consonants preceding these vowels are of little value, as they only disguise a wrong action of the glottis, without removing the fault. He uses also sustained sounds, and short major or minor arpeggi, and last of all scale passages. If due attention be given to the intonation of the arpeggio, the scale should not be, as it too often is, all out of tune. The arpeggio is its skeleton or framework. Mr. Gilbert alternates this work with the singing of intervals and the practice of time rhythms. He attaches great value to the vowel "e" in practising sustained notes, scales or arpeggi, though other vowels must receive due attention. "E" has the advantage of bringing the vocal cords very close to together, thereby effecting a greater economy of the breath than is possible with the other vowels. He has constantly succeeded in making boys produce a pure and beautiful tone to this vowel, especially in that part of the voice called the upper thin, when he could not do so with the others. Of course "e" can be sung badly, and boys will sometimes make a nasal squeak of it, but the correct placing of the tone is quickly learnt if the teeth are kept nicely apart. Mr. Gilbert teaches the boys when very young the mechanism which governs their voices above . [Listen] This is the "small" register. He is careful also about pronunciation, recommends that boys should be paid, and that bad behaviour, laziness, or irregularity, if they occur, should be punished by fines. One of the most marked excellences of Mr. Gilbert's choir is its chanting, and the elocutional phrasing of the words of the hymns. The rigidity of the time is often broken with impressive effect in order, by an elocutional pause, to throw into relief a prominent word or idea.

Mr. T. H. Collinson, Mus.B., organist of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, has given me some interesting particulars of the training which his excellent boys undergo. The process of selection is as follows:—(1) Advertisement. (2) Trial of voice, and entry of particulars of school, school standard, father's occupation, &c. (3) Choice of most promising voices. (4) Inspection of homes, as to overcrowding, &c. (5) Appointment of probationers. (6) Full appointment, with religious service of admission by the Dean. The parents engage in writing to retain the child in the choir school until his voice changes, or to the average age of fourteen. The boys are taken at all ages from 9 to 12-½.

"Cultivation of tone, blending of registers, and accuracy of pitch are specially studied, the principal means being as follows:—(1) Mouth-opening (silently). (2) Breathing exercise. (3) Sustained notes piano, each to full length of breath. (4) Piano scales. (5) Simple flexibility exercises, e.g., Sir J. Stainer's card of exercises, published by Mowbray. (6) Crescendo and Diminuendo. (7) Behnke's resonance vowels, oo-o-ah. (8) Behnke's glottis-stroke exercises, oo-o-ah-ai-ee. (9) No accompaniment, except a single note on the pianoforte every three or four bars to test pitch. Where badly flat, a scolding, and going back to try over again. (10) At early morning practice no forte singing is allowed, as a rule.

"By the above means, especially sustained notes and piano scales, flatness is easily avoided, and the registers blend perfectly. A curious local peculiarity has to be specially treated in the junior boys. The Scottish 'u' as in 'gude' (good), 'puir' (poor), 'nü' (new), is identical with the French 'u' in 'tu' or 'Hugo,' and the little fellows sing an amusing exercise like the following:—

You should do two,

on every note of the scale, with special care to protrude the lips to a round whistling shape for the 'oo.' Very oddly they sing a good 'oo' in the falsetto register, and a certain solo boy used to sing Handel's 'How beautiful are the feet' in its first two phrases in alternate Scotch and English, the vinegary 'ü' in the first (low) phrase, and a fine round 'oo' in the higher phrase, where 'beautiful' begins on E flat.

"Raw candidates and ill-taught children generally come minus any register at all above [Listen] and grin with surprise on being taught to produce sweet upper notes by open-mouth piano 'ah.'

"Colds and petty hoarseness, interfering with the upper notes, are terribly common in this climate in the class of boys obtained for the choir. A successful soloist at Friday rehearsal may be found incompetent by Sunday, so that all solo work is carefully understudied. A few minutes each day suffice for the purely technical voice exercises. The services are many in number; three on Sunday, two on week-days, and occasional extra services at special seasons. The number of boys is kept up to say 30, and they are worked in divisions to minimise their duties. The boys are educated free, and seniors receive payment. 'I think that boys' voices are much like unto boys' legs—they need daily exercise if they are to be worth anything.'"

Mr. R. H. Saxton, of Buxton, writes:—"My choir boys are almost exclusively drawn from the working class, and the majority of them use the thick