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Girl’s Quest to Sing With Berlin’s Boys’ Choir Is Dashed

The Berlin Cathedral. A 9-year-old girl is suing a centuries-old boys’ choir that performs in the cathedral, arguing she was illegally rejected because of her gender.Credit...Paul Zinken/DPA, via Associated Press

BERLIN — A court on Friday blocked a 9-year-old German girl from joining Berlin’s oldest cultural institution, its all-boys’ choir, after she sued to be allowed to sing with the chorus, in a case that pitted a push for gender parity against centuries of musical tradition.

Berlin’s administrative court said that artistic freedom was more important than equal treatment in this case.

The case had prompted a fierce debate about the difference between the voices of girls and boys at certain ages and the mystique surrounding the tone quality of boys’ voices — described as “wondrous” and “natural but utterly transient.”

But the suit argued that because the choir — the State and Cathedral Choir, part of Berlin’s University of the Arts — is a publicly funded cultural institution, its high-quality, intense musical education, voice training and performance opportunities must be made available to everyone, regardless of gender.

Coming months after a leading British soprano, Lesley Garrett, spurred an international debate on gender restriction in the arts by calling for girls to be admitted to the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, in England, the German case had reverberated beyond Berlin.

Abbie Conant, an American trombonist who is now a professor of trombone at the state conservatory in Trossingen, in the Black Forest region of Germany, said that what was at stake in the Berlin case was more than just the right to sing: It was about granting girls the same access to music education that can shape their lives and careers.

While women in classical music have made progress, she added in a phone interview from her home in New Mexico before the verdict, there is still a gap.

“I have several male colleagues who were in boys’ choirs and had that training and experience performing at a very early age, and that gave them a leg up in their careers,” Professor Conant said.

The 9-year-old girl, whose identity has been withheld under German law because she is a minor, has a voice that causes patrons in a cafe in Germany to pause when she breaks out in a traditional Christmas carol.

She first tried to enter the choir in 2016 but was denied. Two years later, she again sought entry and was informed in a letter signed by the dean of the music department, “Never will a girl sing in a boys’ choir.”

In March, the choir invited the girl to sing before a selection committee, but the choirmaster, Kai-Uwe Jirka, judged the girl to not be good enough. The choirmaster said she lacked the “high level of motivation” and “extraordinary talent” necessary to participate in the ensemble, the university said in a statement released by the court.

The university further said that the girl’s voice did not “fit the sound sought after for a boys’ choir.” The university did not respond to a request for comment.

After three hours of arguments, the five-judge panel in Berlin ruled on Friday in favor of the artistic freedom of the choirmaster. The head judge said that the case was about the conflict between artistic freedom and the expectation of equal rights guaranteed by German constitutional law.

The judge described the case as a test case and allowed for an appeal.

The State and Cathedral Choir of Berlin, founded in 1465 by the ruler of Brandenburg, Frederick II, promotes “free musical education for boys,” according to the institution’s website. At the time of its founding, girls and women were not allowed to speak or sing in church, so five choirboys were chosen to make up the ensemble.

Since then, the choir has grown into a public institution that includes more than 250 singers in 11 ensembles who undergo rigorous voice training and perform around the globe. What had not changed in more than 550 years is that it has only accepted boys.

Germany’s tradition of boys’ choirs includes the St. Thomas Choir in Leipzig and the Kreuzchor in Dresden, steeped in a tradition that interweaves faith and classical music. Along with the State and Cathedral Choir, they are all publicly funded.

The university’s argument that the girl’s voice did not fit the boys’ choir raised the issue of whether girls’ voices sound different from those of prepubescent boys, and if a difference does exist, whether it is audible to the patrons who flock to hear boys’ choirs at concerts around the globe.

In a country that prides itself on a musical heritage that helped define the classical repertoire through the works of Bach and Mendelsohn — both of whom composed for and conducted boys’ choirs — high young male voices are viewed as unique and uniquely fragile.

Equally important, experts say, is the limited window the boys have to perform before their instruments break at the onset of puberty.

But studies have shown that the differences in boys’ and girls’ voices are so marginal that roughly half of professional musicians could not discern a difference.

All-girls’ choirs exist in Germany, most notably in Cologne, Germany, where an all-girls’ choir was founded in 1989 as a pendant to the traditional boys’ choir, offering them access to an equivalent musical education, vocal training and the right to perform in the cathedral. Similar programs exist in England.

But in Berlin, the girls’ choir is only organizationally linked to the State and Cathedral Choir. The ensemble’s website does not advertise a superior music educational opportunity for girls. Instead, there are links to PayPal and details about the foundation that parents can join to support the choir.

The girl involved in the lawsuit had been accepted by the Berlin girls’ choir, but she decided to sing in another ensemble in the German capital, even though it does not have the comprehensive musical education provided to the boys at the State and Cathedral Choir.

The girl, who lives in Berlin, first learned about the existence of the boys’ choir when she brought home a flier from her elementary school about the chorus’s search for candidates. Her reaction when told that it was only for boys: “That’s not fair!”

She wanted to try out anyway.

Recently, the girl sat for an interview in a cafe in Germany. Asked whether she would join the boys’ choir if she were allowed, she brightened with a smile and gave a determined nod.

But not everyone agreed with her quest.

Christian Ahrens, a professor emeritus of musicology who published a study on gender parity in the world’s leading orchestras, said that although he supported equal access to music education, integrating boys’ choirs was not the way to do it.

“I am very clearly against what she is trying to do,” he said in a phone interview from his home in Berlin.

Mr. Ahrens argued that beyond the sound, there is the fact that because boys’ voices break around age 11 or 12 while girls can continue to sing the highest notes until up to 15, girls’ voices would dominate.

“In a mixed choir,” he said, “the girls will have much stronger voices and simply drown out the boys.”

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: In Berlin, Judges Block Girl’s Attempt to Join Renowned Boys’ Choir. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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