Royal St Georges College - Georgian Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

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l I ' THE UPPER SCHOOL REPORT J I recently wrote, on his report card, that a grade 13 graduate was one of the most thoughtful students I had ever encountered . and that, nthoughtfulness was a rarity these days. I then worried that thoughtful might be mistaken for polite or considerate lthough I don't want to diminish the importance of those qualities - both of which the above student has in abundancel. So I changed the comment slightly from thoughtful student to thoughtful mind lthough I hope one follows the otherl so that the student would understand that I was saying that he was a true thinker. He was a person who thought carefully about words and actions, their meanings and interpretations. their nuances and subtleties. their context and their im- plications. He understood that it wasn't good enough to do or say something unintentionally cruel or insulting or crude or vulgar or racist or sexist and then try to justify the ensuing damage by saying I didn't mean it that way . He knew he had to consider how someone else might interpret or react to his words or actions. lSee the Chairman's Graduation Day comments about the old saying Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me which can be found else- where in this yearbook.l In the spring. some of the students wanted to have a Prefect Slave Auction to raise money for charity. Though a noble end. the means couldn't be justified by it. When I asked why the event had to be a prefect slave auction. the answers ranged from It will be fun ordering them around to It's a way of getting back at them . Most of the students realized. as they listened to the reasons, that such an event was an ill-conceived idea. For the unconvinced. I asked them to consider how they would feel if they were one of the prefects being auctioned and they received the lowest bid or no bid at all. The potential humiliation was something I think they under- stood. I hope they did. I had a disturbing conversation last year with a Georgian who stated quite proudly that he was a super- ficial person who didn't think about things and took everything at face value. without digging deeper. Though I believe such a thoughtless attitude is a minority one at St. Georges we must strive to make it a non- existent one. Of all the things we try to teach students at the College. the most important. albeit difficult one. is the ability to THINK - thoroughly, rigorously. and honestly. And. if that's difficult to teach. it's even harder to learn and to do. But we must make the effort. All of us. G.D. O'fNleara Head of the l'pper School

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LOWER SCHOOL REPORT CHOR L MUSIC St. George's College Lower School spends more time on music than any other independent school. Each day, every boy has 45 minutes of either instrumental or choral training, and each boy has a private music lesson once a week. The reason for this amount of musical education is tradition, founding principles, and conviction. St. George's College was founded as a choir schoolg it not only promotes the boy choral tradition in its own right, but also acts as the choir school for St. James Cathedral, though a system of scholarships and by pro- viding practice space during the week. In spite of all this, we seem to be slow to explain why the training of boys' voices is so important in the cultural history of the world. Our Lower School bands are exceptional in their quality and professionalism and more than a match for any other band of the same age. But there is a subtle difference in 4 instrumental and choral programmes. When we put to- gether an orchestra or band of children between the ages of 9 and 13, we can be impressed with the high quality of their performanceg yet in no way do we expect that per- formance to be as good as an adult orchestra. Oc- casionally, there may be an individual child whose vir- tuoso playing is equal to that of an adult, but these children are so amazing that we call them geniuses or childhood prodigies . It is unusual for a child to have developed the embouchure, small muscle skills, or breath control to match that of an adult. However, in the field of all-male choirs, which have been around for more than a thousand years, we regularly expect young boys to perform at the same level as the adults in those choirs. Having performed in such choirs for many years, I know how f1u'ious the men can be if the boys' sight-reading, intonation, diction, etc. is not up to their standard. In one choir that I sang in, the Head Boy challenged any of the men to a competition in sight- reading, no one took him up on it. In short, this is the only endeavour that I can think of where children are expected to perform with adult skills. Because this instrument lan unchanged boy's voicel disappears so quickly, we cannot wait for adulthood for its use to reach perfection. Choirs, too, demand a level of maturity and leadership of boys that few other activities can match. For many Cathedral choirs in England, in the absence of the choir master the practice lmen and boysl is conducted by the Head Boy. In the early St. George's Choir Tours, before we had Travel Agents, the Head Boy and Chorister Pre- fects lnone over the age of 14D used to handle the complete booking into hotels, while the adults waited outside with the rest of the boys. One could argue that the continuance of boys in choirs is not necessary because the adult female voice can sing the same notes. But anyone who has seriously listened to both mixed-voice and all-male choirs, will readily be aware that the two sounds are very different lto say nothing of the difference between female altos and counter-tenorsl. This difference has led many composers to write church music specifically either for the female voice lBeethoven and Brahms! or for boys' voices lBachl. Some choirs have used boys and women in the same choir. Mixing two different sounds again changes the result, but there is also a tendency for boys in such a situation to revert to a dependency on the women such that they never realize their potential to perfomi at an adult level. The number of boys in choirs is declining at the moment in North America. In many public schools, we find the participation in choirs to be viewed by boys as a feminine activity. Consequently, it is most important that St. George's provide an opportunity for this thousand- year old tradition to continue. - Andrew Barlow

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TUDENT