Objective: Choral singing in UK Cathedral choirs has been part of regular daily worship since it was initiated by Henry VIII. Initially the top line was sung by boy choristers only but over the past few decades, girl choristers have been recruited to sing the Daily Office of Choral Evensong on certain days of the week as well as the Sunday services.

Methods/Design: The girl choristers of Wells Cathedral in south west England have been recorded individually twice a year speaking and singing a variety of vocal exercises whilst they were in the Cathedral choir in order to observe their vocal development whist in the choir resulting in a large database of longitudinal material. The purpose of these recordings is to enable the quantitative exploration of voice development for girls aged between 8 and 16 who are involved in a professional choral singing context on a regular basis. These choristers rehearse for at least one hour per day and in addition, they lead the cathedral daily office of sung evensong usually on an alternating day-by-day basis with the boy choristers. They also sing the Sunday morning Eucharist and Mattins services on alternate weeks. In addition, they sing for special services, national broadcasts, concerts and occasional professional CD recordings.

Results: The recordings are made in stereo, comprising their acoustic output and the output from an electrolaryngograph, for a series of vocal tasks that include: speaking a passage, speaking and singing a set of words, singing a two octave ascending and descending G major scale, and singing an extract of a Christmas carol, or when this is unfamiliar to younger singers, a nursery rhyme. The background to this work and examples of early analyses made will be presented, and their implications will be discussed.

Conclusions: There is strong evidence of measurable pitch range variation and overall vocal power with age for all choristers.