The lost boys

One by one, cathedrals have succumbed to the inevitable. In blazes of publicity, with front-page photographs of girls in cassocks in the cloisters, most deans and chapters have signalled their drive for equality of opportunity by inaugurating a girls’ choir to run alongside the boys’ one. So now, at the vast majority of our cathedrals, instead of boys singing up to eight services per week, the two top lines take turns, in varying ratios, with girls aged from eight to 18.

The scheme has been working for 27 years, since Salisbury started the trend in 1991, and let me say from the outset: some of the girls’ top lines are extremely good and the boys’ top lines have adapted pretty well to the enforced job share. Anyone who used to protest that ‘it won’t work, because girls sound different from boys’ has been proved wrong. While that debate was raging, a group of the country’s top directors of music were blind-tested by the director of music of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh.