Rather than trouble Priscilla Bench-Capon’s “technician with a gadget” (Striking the right note on all-boy choirs, Letters, 11 December), I prefer to rely on the opinion of my late mother, Muriel Williams.
She loved to hear Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere in any circumstances, but was firmly of the view that the sound of a boy’s unbroken voice hitting that celebrated top C possessed a poignancy no female soprano could achieve. She was right.
Richard Williams
East Twickenham, London
• Edward Collier claims of King’s College that “the sound that’s required … happens to be made by boys” (Letters, 11 December). Required by whom? Innumerable generations of male clerics, of course!
Dr Brigid Purcell
(Choral singer, tenor section), Norwich
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition
