Letter: Girls in the choir

Sir: David Hill's belief that the advent of girls' choirs will attract more boys to sing in cathedrals because they will sing one Sunday service less seems naive ("After 900 years, girls are allowed to sing at cathedral service", 17 May).

This week's Church Times, reporting a decline over the last ten years in boy recruits to our choir schools, cites the obvious causes: counter- attractions, declining church attendance, few boys singing in schools. May another factor not be that boys of an age to sing treble rarely enjoy singing alongside girls, who may dominate them socially ("boss us around"), though not musically; look what has happened in parish churches, where the boy treble is already an endangered species.

GORDON HEMMINGS

Exeter, Devon