Angels heard on high C

There were only six of them, but the boys' high, sweet voices filled the huge, empty church.

"Christe Eleison," they sang, sending the Greek words for "Christ have mercy," to the vaulted ceiling high above the sanctuary, and to the diamond-paned windows in the darkened nave.

It was three days before tonight's Christmas Eve service, and the last chance for the boys in the choir at All Saints Episcopal Church in Dorchester to be drilled on their high notes and their phrasing.

It takes a lot of practice for 9- and 10-year-olds to sing like angels in Latin and Greek and archaic English.

The boys are part of an institution that endures at All Saints -- improbably, in the face of tight finances, rising secularism, and tectonic changes in the neighborhood that surrounds the limestone and Quincy granite building.

The church, built by Brahmin benefactors Colonel Oliver Peabody and his wife, Mary Lothrop, in 1893, has a congregation that is 60 percent West Indian. Only two of the eight boys in the choir have the Irish ancestry that once dominated the area. The others have parents born in India, Vietnam, Honduras, Haiti, and Jamaica.

Tonight, they will put on their red cassocks, white surplices, and starched, ruffled collars. They will conquer jiggling legs and itchy noses and the temptation to horse around with each other. They will hold candles and try not to let the wax drip. And they will sing.

The boys will get paid a couple of dollars each for tonight, as they do for every performance, but it's not about the money, they said.

Minh-Anh Day , a 9-year-old given to bashfully rolling his eyes, was in need of somewhere to sing besides his Milton home, where he did so constantly, his mother said.

Day, the youngest of the group, plays the cello, soccer, and baseball. He likes building houses out of blocks. He likes taking things apart to see how they work. And he likes the way his head feels when he and the other boys hit their top notes, sometimes as high as two octaves above middle C.

"OK, it's like, I like the feeling in the head. . . . It's like a vibration," Day said, holding his palm to his forehead at a recent rehearsal.

Being in the choir has made her son more independent, said Day's mother, Thu-Hang Tran . He rarely allows her into the rehearsal room, preferring to be dropped at the door. One of the few times she accompanied him inside, Day learned that a 14th-century Latin song would be on the night's practice list.

"He did this dance," she said, in wonderment. "Here is this kid doing this silly dance because one of the songs is this 14th-century Latin song. He'll get in the car after practice and he'll sing me some of it."

Abhay Shukla, 10, was tone-deaf when he started in the choir in January, he said. But after coming to practice every week, he got "better and better," he said. He likes hip-hop artist Sean Paul, but he likes church music just as much, he said. He plays drums and clarinet and piano. He used to play violin, he said, but it hurt his fingers.

"This year I didn't play football because I wanted to do this," said the long-haired, soft-spoken Quincy boy. "My friends didn't understand why. They don't know how good it is."

Still, as much as he loves music, Shukla said he would probably end up being a professional baseball player, though he added that he might also sing the national anthem before taking the field to play ball.

The All Saints choir is one of only 30 remaining choirs of men and boys in the country. A century ago, there were hundreds of them, said Frederick Backhaus , the choir's director. Boys need not be Episcopal parishioners, or even Christian, to join the choir. A few of the boys are Catholic, and one is Hindu, he said. The boys are taught about Christian traditions so they can understand what they are singing about , he said.

There are fewer boys in the choir than Backhaus would like. A choir like this is not for every grade-schooler, he said. Few have the good pitch, the facility to learn to sing music on sight, which can take two years, or the confidence to hit their highest notes.

"They're afraid of sounding like girls, and we say 'Listen, girls can't sing half as high as boys,' " Backhaus said.

Few boys have the patience, the time, or the family resources, to invest in two rehearsal nights a week, services every Sunday, and special performances in the Boston area. Or the will to subject themselves to the instruction, which is in the strict, English Cathedral Choir tradition: Choristers are expected to learn complex pieces, and demonstrate skilled musicianship. Backhaus is a tough choirmaster, requiring that the boys raise their hands every time they make a mistake, and urging them not to sound "like chipmunks being put in a blender."

Backhaus also demands that they know repertoires far larger than those of most adult choirs.

"We train them to read music, so they're not learning by rote," he said. "You know how kids always play at being grown-ups? Here, they get to be treated like adults: they sing same music as men do, they get rehearsed like the men do."

Last year, Backhaus held auditions with about 200 boys in area schools. He invited 45 of them to consider the choir. Ten of those joined. Five stayed.

Choir changes the boys, said their parents, teaching them better punctuality, discipline, and concentration. And it gives them confidence, said Nancy McCuen , whose son Colin, a 10-year-old from Quincy, had never wanted to sing in front of people. Now McCuen, a jokey child who says cramming himself into small spaces is his chief talent, has one of the choir's biggest voices.

Singing takes up a lot of the boys' time, in addition to their parents'. Which is a good thing, according to Marie Halverson whose grandson Akiv Carries sings in the choir. Halverson, who was born in Haiti, joined the parish in 1973, when hers was one of just three black families at the church. Her daughters were in the choir back then, when it was mixed. Now four of her grandchildren are acolytes at All Saints.

"I like that it keeps the kids busy, they don't have time for the street corner," she said.

But for other children, more scheduled than ever with sports, choir is too big a commitment, Backhaus said.

And keeping the choir going is a challenge: the program is expensive, costing at least $80,000 annually, and the church cannot afford both a choir director and a janitor. So Backhaus and the rector pick up cleaning duties. A generous benefactor does as much as he can to support the choir, Backhaus said, but "one day he's going to go to his eternal reward."

The choir director is trying to build a strong network of choir alumni to help bolster the program's funding.

But there were no signs of that strain at the end of rehearsal Thursday night, when Backhaus gave the sung-out young choristers their pep talk for tonight's two-hour performance.

"You need to be alert, because you're going to be up for a while," he told them.

The singing begins at 7:40 p.m. at the Ashmont Street church, and usually draws about 200 people. This year the church hopes to draw more.

Asked what they would do to prepare for tonight's service, the choirboys seemed entirely unfazed.

"I usually just take a shower and go," Colin McCuen said.

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com.