A Historical Comparison of Public Singing by American Men and Women

Abstract

Period writings about singing activity from early eighteenth-century Boston and current data on singing in the United States provide material for a comparison of sex-related differences in public singing involvement. This material shows that, in America, there has been a marked shift from male to female predominance in public singing interest. Males arrogated singing leadership to themselves in early Boston and urged women to sing. Today, adolescent and adult American males are much less publicly involved with singing than are females. A cursory analysis of this phenomenon suggests that an inversion of leadership interest in public singing by sex has taken place in America. This interpretation, however, does not explain the facts, and music educators have some cause for concern that choral singing involvement of both sexes will continue to wane.

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