I. Introduction: German Choral Singing and Vocal Health

In 1836, Trier-Born Music Teacher Joseph Mainzer addressed him-self to the children of France. “Mes petits amis” (my little friends), he started, and he described to them the central place of song and music in German (primary) education. His method for song, based on the solfège system in which each note is represented with a syllable, prom-ised to bring the same effects of joy, health, and community to French children, and therefore to the country's future adults. “Si un jour, quand vous serez grands, vous et vos petits amis savez chanter comme on le sait en Allemagne, vous pourrez dire alors à tout le monde, que les petits Français ont d’aussi jolies voix et autant de plaisir à chanter que les petits Allemands” (If one day, when you have grown up, you and your little friends can sing as they can in Germany, you will be able to tell everybody that the children of France have equally pretty voices, and take as much pleasure in singing, as the children of Germany).

For Mainzer, like many of his contemporaries, music and song were important means by which a nation could be built. His descriptions of a “German” method of schooling and singing were likely more wish than reality: in 1836, the German lands were not nearly as unified as Mainzer made it appear, and there certainly was no centralized system of schooling through which methods of teaching song could be dispersed. Nevertheless, the image of Germany as a place (and later as a nation) characterized by its love of music and communal song would have been a familiar one to many of Mainzer's readers, and the unifying forces that were at work in the German lands already often operated through (vocal) music.

The practices of singing connected to the formation of politicized identities or national unity are often presented as the exclusive domain of men: the song of soldiers, of students’ unions, of workmen's choruses very clearly symbolizes political messages. Such singing also stands out by its public nature and has received considerable attention from musicologists and historians. However, as Mainzer's text also shows, the prac-tice of singing did not start in adulthood, and was not reserved for the public sphere.