Note 1 — BOYS’ SINGING SCHOOL

Because of the tender age of these boys, since they enter at the age of six or eight years, and remain until that of fourteen, they are not permitted, except in rare exceptions, to play wind instruments. The gain due to this institution is public and well known to all who have heard the harmony produced by those sopranos in the churches of Manila, and the skill demonstrated by the same in instrumental music for almost three centuries past. Not few of them have been justly praised and rewarded in musical contests where they were presented, for example, in the Liceo Artístico [i.e., Artistic Lyceum] later the Sociedad Musical Filipina de Santa Cecilia [i.e., Filipino musical society of St. Cecilia].1 This institution has contributed not a little to the propagation of musical art and good taste.