Boychoir. The Movie and a Memory

    Recently I went to the media preview of a movie now out in general release.  Boychoir  is the story of a boy destined to go nowhere fast until, within placement in a national boy choir,  he realizes self-determination through music.  A bit of a tear jerker with really solid performances by Dustin Hoffman and Kathy Bates as Headmaster and Headmistress, Eddie Izzard doing a version of his usual character, Glee's Kevin McHale on the other side of a music sheet and  a straight-out-of-Hollywood-typecasting Garrett Wareing (complete with slightly shaggy hair and beesting lips) as the young boy Stet.  It's school is a real one- a North American version of  The Vienna Boys Choir. 
   And when in the movie the travelling choir from this school frequently rehearses in front of school groups when it travels through towns was I transported to a long ago memory.  I sang in my church's youth choir. Our director, the wonderful Mrs. L., was a stickler for singing vowels correctly and not holding consonants at all. (I still tsk-tsk well known artists who are repeat offenders of this rule. Yes, you Barbra Streisand.)  One evening, Mrs. L. was in a very excitable state. No, we weren't going to be singing at all. The Vienna Boys Choir was going to rehearse at the high school across the street that very evening and we were going join other youth choirs to hear them practice!!  Yeah, OK, but what's the Vienna Boys Choir?  Mrs. L. hustled us to the high school auditorium and we waited.  The boys walked on stage in not too relaxed a fashion and the Choirmaster had them start with a popular selection from the stage show Oliver! A three part start: who will buy...Who will buy...Who Will BuyyYYYYYY? Who will buy this wonderful morning?  Sounded fine to me but the Choirmaster was unhappy. Totally out of sync. And the Viennese boys started again with a precision doubtless envied by German engineers. And completely deflating to the ragtag youth choir of Our Lady of Fatima.  Mrs. L. was raptured.   I recall no other song nor any other detail of that evening but this one moment and it remains as clear as the boys' voices.

Benjamin P. Wenzelberg

    I enjoyed the Boychoir movie for the most part.  I prefer more mature voices for Pie Jesu.  Loved the line to Stet losing his high range to puberty, "It is not your voice, you only get to use it for a short while."
Annoyed that Garrett Wareing lip-synced all of the singing (and it was fairly obvious in some scenes.)  Near the bottom of the credits--for which I remain in movie theaters until the very end--was the identity of the real singing voice of Stet.  His name is Benjamin P. Wenzelberg. And Ben gets more credit here than in the movie. Perhaps a real member of the Boychoir.