{"id":1402,"date":"2016-10-27T12:49:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T10:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/?page_id=1402"},"modified":"2017-09-30T21:30:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-30T19:30:32","slug":"early-music-and-late-puberty","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.elizabethanpartsongs.nl\/wordpress\/shakespeare-1616-2016\/the-first-night-of-romeo-juliet\/early-music-and-late-puberty\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Music and Late Puberty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eighteen seems for Shakespeare to have been the outer age limit for a woman\u2019s part, and many a famous heroin is definitely written on a much younger boy. In fact, boys like Condell should be ruled out at the first attempt to determine the age of Juliet\u2019s original performer. The same for Twelfth-Night\u2019s<\/em> Viola, and Portia from The Merchant of Venice<\/em>. And if parts like those are written for boys of sixteen and younger, which heroin needs a more mature performer?<\/p>\n

Yet, Shakespeare Studies has, after careful assessment of the required skills, dismissed such young performers as unrealistic. This limits the choice for Shakespeare\u2019s heroins to almost mature adolescents. Speaking falsetto (counter-tenor), a young man can get away with a woman\u2019s apparel. However, attempts to perform Shakespeare with falsetto\u2019s in the woman\u2019s parts turn invariably out to be disastrous ; they are just not credible enough. Not anymore at least, now women have taken over from boys.<\/p>\n

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In 1978 a fourteen year old Rebecca Saire\u00a0 proved the part within reach of a treble boy. But that was in a BBC production, which allowed the director to reshoot fragments until he had enough takes to paste a perfect scene together. The play\u2019s shooting sessions took a full week : for young mrs. Saire an average of two scenes a day. On stage she would have had no second chances, but \u2018one take\u2019-action for almost three hours.<\/span> <\/em><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Taste may have changed, yet, in the performance of ancient music authenticity is an asset instead. Even if imposing on professional soprano\u2019s the necessity to imitate a boy\u2019s restricted singing technique. So why does the original sound not work for a\u00a0 Shakespeare play ?<\/p>\n

The failure lured Shakespeare Studies into adopting the theory that in Shakespeare\u2019s days a boy of eighteen with a treble voice was no exception. This \u2018late puberty\u2019 is a widely accepted fact in research on the original performance practice of early music, and based on contemporary reports of almost adult treble singers :<\/p>\n

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\u2018The point (measured in age) when a boy’s voice changes, from its piping treble to something else, has not always been the same.\u00a0 In fact, over the centuries it has changed dramatically.\u00a0 De Bacilly (‘Remarques curieuses sur l’art de bien chanter’, 1668) describes, among other voice types, the boy soprano.\u00a0 He concludes by regretting its passing between the ages of 15 to 20!\u00a0 Bach routinely used boy sopranos (and altos) into their late teens.\u00a0 The song ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’ (current in the 18th century, if not before) describes a girl’s enlisting in the army, and passing herself off as a young man.\u00a0 How could that be?\u00a0 Not so far-fetched as you might think, since all those raw male teenage recruits would still have had their piping trebles,\u00a0 not a hair on their chins.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Should we be anxious about the shelf-life of the modern treble?
\nBlog on website Choir of New College, Oxford 14\/12\/2012
\nEdward Higginbottom, Director of Music<\/p>\n

This expert witness has the backing of both the ever earlier voice mutations within his own choir, and of Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), the forerunner of modern science, in the portrait by Nicholas Hilliard. Judged by the miniature\u2019s date (1578) and Bacon\u2019s age (18) as given by the artist, the portrait seems to have been painted for the occasion of Bacon\u2019s eighteenth birthday, which is a highly precise indication of the sitter’s age.\u00a0 Hilliard is also highly precise in depicting details : small as the portrait is (60 x 47 mm), it clearly shows the down on the boy\u2019s upper lip. The smoothness of cheeks and chin is therefore painted to nature, and indicates Bacon to have been portrayed more than a few weeks previous to his first ever shave.<\/p>\n

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The current free fall in the average age for voice mutation started in the late twentieth century, when children got exposed to some novelties in food and\/or feeding patterns. Science hasn\u2019t identified the trigger yet, but has its suspicions about the hormone-like molecules in plastics. The increased consumption of meat (rich in natural hormones) is another option, but one that can only strike in strong economies. The same for the First Law of Genetic Survival : procreation accelerates (by all possible means), whenever there is food in excess. The same law dictates a slowing down in time of want. <\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
Whatever cause has so far been suggested, it is of recent origins. And it is indeed only in the past few decades that the average first menstruation began to come earlier than it used to be : as a rule between 12 and 14 since the dawn of civilization. And because statistics always show extremes, even the eighteenth century has a mother of eight on record.\u00a0 No late puberty for girls then, which makes its widespread occurrence in boys something of an anomaly. And whatever caused its demise somewhere between the Elizabethan era and the 1950s, it must have been something that had an hormonal effect on boys only. <\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
Or boys came first, as they always do : while their statistical down curve leveled in the 1930s, balance was restored with a peak in young mothers : 5 years and seven months (1934), girls aged 6 on positions two (1934) and three (1932), a mother of 8 and two months in fourth place (1936), and two more rankings in the all times top ten for just this single decade.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even when taking for granted that boys of eighteen are without exception mature enough to have daily shave, the miniature can only be used as evidence of late puberty on the assumption that Hilliard painted an average youth. Bacon, however, grew up in delicate health, which is not exactly a requirement for keeping up with the average. And only by painting Bacon\u2019s voice, Hilliard would have made a reliable source anyway on his precise stage of voice mutation in 1578. The ancient sources on the existence of eighteen year old trebles, do not include voice samples either, so, how reliable are they?<\/p>\n

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Citing the research of David Wulstan and others, Richard Rastall has argued independently that males in sixteenth-century Europe often did not reach puberty until age seventeen or eighteen. While some boys\u2019 voices undoubtedly started to break earlier than that, some boys probably retained the ability to sing or speak in a treble voice until the age of twenty.\u2019 <\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
David Kathman ; How Old Were Shakespeare\u2019s Boy Players ? <\/span><\/em>
\nShakespeare Survey 58 pp. 221 – 222 <\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n
Professor David Wulstan is specialized in early English church music <\/span><\/em>
\nRichard Rastall is a professor in historical musicology<\/span> <\/em><\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Having no access to original documents, like the (preserved) notes by one of Bach\u2019s senior choirboys, the only way to judge whether the trust that is put in them is justified, is by circumnavigating the necessity to look at them. A dangerous approach as it turns out, because the evidence is supposed to be irrefutable. The detour, however…<\/p>\n

Like Shakespeare\u2019s female leads, the treble part of a renaissance anthem leaves a boy of fourteen or fifteen out of his depths. What better evidence of \u2018late puberty\u2019 is to be found? But even in science a cobbler must stick to his last, in which respect musical historians rarely qualify for research in the field of \u2018Natural History\u2019. And, by taking their sources on \u2018late puberty\u2019 at face value, science may have created its own urban legend. As even a side-step from musicology into Shakespeare Studies would have revealed : Viola (Twelfth-Night<\/em>), Julia (Two Gentlemen<\/em>) and Rosalind (As You Like It<\/em>) spring immediately to mind as Shakespeare-variations on Sweet Pollyver. And, to prove his point, the musicologist will point out how immature they look :<\/p>\n