Singing by boys’ choir ‘sounds more brilliant’ when girls in audience

The centre for music in the brain at Aarhus University, Denmark, teamed up with St Thomas choir in Leipzig, Germany, for the study into vocal shifts. Photograph: DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy

Behind the rousing song of an all-male choir lies an evolutionary force that is better known for shaping the sex lives of hopeful frogs and crickets, research suggests.

Recordings of an elite boys’ choir once directed by Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig, Germany, reveal that the more physically mature boys in the group boosted their vocals with an appealing ring when girls were in the audience.