Choirs

From Vienna. In Manhattan's big Carnegie Hall--a bit too big for their frail, clear trebles and altos--last week 20 Wiener Saengerknaben, aged 10 to 12, began a U. S. tour which will take them to the west coast and back. The Vienna Singing Boys, famed 439-year-old choir from Austria's old imperial palace give U. S. audiences Dixie and the Star-Spangled Banner in English, chaste church music, operettas in which they rouge and dress up as laundresses, guardsmen, 18th Century gentlemen and ladies.

Goodwill. At the top of Manhattan's Empire State Building one day last week eleven young Britishers launched into a hymn and an Elizabethan madrigal. The English Boy Choristers were about to go on a six-month "Goodwill Tour" of the U. S., their expenses of some $25,000 paid by the Church of England. Aged from 11 to 13, the boys were chosen from 125 applicants, trained by Carlton Borrow in the London Choir School.

In Philadelphia. A well-trained boys' choir should study together, sing together every day, live together in as complete harmony as they sing. Last April Rev. Dr. John Mockridge, ruddy high-church rector of Philadelphia's patrician St. James's Episcopal Church, had 30 boy sopranos selected from 97 applicants in Philadelphia public schools, put them at his congregation's expense in the swank Episcopal Academy on City Line Avenue. Further weeding brought the group down to 20. Dr. Mockridge taught the boys the Episcopal service, had them attend his church in a body every Sunday during their training period. Last week for the first time St. James's congregation heard its proteges sing so ably that Choirmaster Alexander McCurdy announced plans for a difficult Cesar Franck mass next Ascension Sunday.

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