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Boys have been involved in the fine arts from an early age. Here there were great differences. Some artistic disciplines were uniquely suitable for boys at a young age, especially choral singing because of the physical characteristics of a youthful age. Many countries of Western and Central Europe have a long tradition of church boys' choirs dating back to the medieval era. Boys often at mom's urging have participated in various dance programs. Many American boys somewhere between 10 and 13 take dancing lessons. Children need less encouragement to pusue the visual arts, although real achievement requires training. . The European tradition involves teaching music comprehensively. Individual instrumental skill training is combined with history and theory study, solfeggio, and ear training. Skill in other were acjieved only after years of study and practice. Here we are talking out perforance art such as music and dance. While only a rare number of prodigies were able to achieve competence as children, for many of these desciplines, especially dance, it was important to begin at a youthful age. Another important performance art was drama, but here beginning early seems to have been of little importance. In fact we notice that few child stars are successful as adult actors. Civilizations over time have varied widely in the art forms they pursued and the level of skill achieved,but civilizations are in part measured by their artistic achievements.
Many countries of Western and Central Europe have a long tradition of church boys' choirs
dating back to the early years of the church. Some of the first European schools after the fall of the Roman Empire were formed by the church at monestaries to educate young choristers. The choirs were primarily associated with the Catholic Church, but choirs were also formed by some Protestant churches. The Orthodox Church was less interested in boy choirs. The choral tradition was to a large part lost in the disorders and wars following the Reformation and relious wars of the 17th century. It was further weakened as a result of the anti-clerical direction of the French Revolution. Choirs survived in England and scattered other various locations in Germany and Austria. The boy choral tradition was revived in the 20th century, especially in England, France, Germany, and America. Although there are now many girls' and mixed choirs, until recently the church choirs were all boy choirs.
Dance is a series of artistically rhymetic movements of the body expressing emotions. People are born with an inate need to move. Children in particular are not only able but eager to move. This is a basic instinct; we all take a natural joy in movement. Dancers take this instinct along with another basic human instinct--to excel--and impose upon themselves the discipline of dance training. Boys often at mom's urging have participated in various dance programs. Many American boys somewhere between 10 and 13 take dancing lessons. For some it is an escrutingly painful experience requiring that he dress up in his best suit. Other boys are involved in various ethnic dance programs. It is usually, however, not the boys themselves who chose to pursue dance--although some boys themselves are enthusiastic. There are some national differences here. Russian boys seem eager from an early age. American boys may need considerable urging--often from mother. Dance training is available through various dance programs. Younger boys often participated in school dance programs. Older boys had the ritual of learning social dancing. Other boys participated in ethnic dance while some pursued various forms of clasical dance such as ballet or tap.
Drama is one of the fine arts. Most children including both boys and girls enjoy participating in dramatics. Both the costuming and the acting appeal to many children. Of course mos children are involved in school or other amateur dramatics. Most schools put on plays and skits. At some schools, the annual play is a mnajor event. Often for the younger children all the class is involved in one way or another. By the secondary level it is the youths that have a real interest in drama. There are many other opportunuities for amateur dramatics, including community, camp, church and other possibilities. A much smaller number of children get involved in professional dramatics.
The artistic desiplines vary greatly in the extent to which children can participate. Quite young children can preform and even create great music. Prodigies like Mozart are possible. Other disciplines like art and literature seem less inate and require education and training. Thus for literature, children are limited in what they can create and the education and training much more important. For HBC's purpose, here we are more interested in the child characters that authors around the world have created. Here there appears to be an Anglo-American dominance for reasons we do not fully understand.
Music is intrinsically liked with humnity, although it is not well understood just how any why. All human socities have developed music in some form. And all humanss respond to music. Capabilities to produce music, as with other skills and talenrs, vary from individual to individual. and as a result of culture, the musical creativity varies to sone degree from society to society. No society has developed music to the same level of sophistication as the west. The European tradition involves teaching music comprehensively. Individual instrumental skill training is combined with history and theory study, solfeggio, and ear training. Many children of modest abilities pursued musical instruments. Some hated it, some found it made possible a life-long appreciation of music. A few demonstrated great talent from an early age. Modern boys often at mom's urging have participated in various fine arts programs. Some boys have decided on their own to pursue interests in the fine arts, but this is probably a minority. Most boys have other things on their mind. Most are much more interested in sports. There are varying interests in different disciplines. Many boys do decide on their own to learn to play musical instruments. In many other cases, especially learing dancing, the choice is promoted by the parents. There are several musical and music associated images that we want to address. Music is one of several topics, however, on which CIH/HBC has very little core comptence. For this section we have relied very heavily on the input and suggestions of our readers. We incourage readers who have studied and are knowledgeable about music to provide their insights to help build this interesting section of our website.
The visual arts encompass a wide range of media. They are organized into two dimensional art forms and threee dimensional forms. The two-dimensional art forms are dominated by painting and drawing. But there are a number of other media such as silhouttes, mosacics, stained glass, and textiles. The three dimensional art forms or called the plastic arts. They include sculpture and ceramics. Architecture might also be included, but many authors separate
architecture and art. The common thread is that they require molding or modeling. For HBC we have focused primarily on painting ad drawing because they convey the greatest detail about clothing. The other media, however, should not be ignored and we have also used then to the extent that we have been able to find suitable examples. A major factor is that the media vary considerably in their stability over time. Sculpture can last millenia unless intenionally destroyed. Textiles on the ther hand are hughly perishable. Thus we know a great deal about civilizations who pursued sculpture such as the Greeks. We know much less anout the Inca who produced wondeful woven texties which were mostly destroyed by the Spanish or perished over time.
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