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Rh tones being throaty, unpleasant, and frequently off pitch. In the third place, the child voice is immature, and his vocal organs are much more likely to be injured by overstraining. When directed by a competent voice trainer, however, the effect of a large group of children singing together is most striking, and their pure, fresh, flutelike tones, combined with the appearance of purity and innocence which they present to the eye, bring many a thrill to the heart and not infrequently a tear to the eye of the worshiper.

In many European churches, and in a considerable number in the United States, it is customary to have boys with unchanged voices sing the soprano part, men with trained falsetto voices (called male altos) taking the alto, while the tenor and bass parts are, of course, sung by men as always. Since the child voice is only useful when the tones are produced with relaxed muscles, and since the resonance cavities have not developed sufficiently to give the voice a great deal of power, it is possible for a few men on each of the lower parts to sing with from twenty to thirty boys on the soprano part. Six basses, four tenors, and four altos will easily balance twenty-five boy sopranos, if all voices are of average power.

There is one difference between the mixed choir of adult voices and the boy choir that should be noted at the outset by the amateur. It is that, in the former, the