This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A nine-year-old girl is taking Berlin’s oldest boys’ choir to court, claiming the state-run institution’s admissions criteria are gender-biased and violate Germany’s constitution.

Next week, Berlin’s administrative court will hear that the decision of the State and Cathedral Choir Berlin (SDB) to reject the girl after an audition in April this year was discriminatory because it infringed on her right to equal opportunities in state support.

The girl’s mother, who is bringing forward the complaint on her behalf, argues the choir’s girls-only partner choir at the Berliner Singakademie could not have provided her daughter with training of a similar quality.

Founded in 1465 under Frederick II, the elector of Brandenburg, the choir is the German capital’s oldest musical institution, and found international fame in the 19th century under the direction of the Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn.

It currently provides training to approximately 250 choirboys and 75 young men in 11 different choir groups. It has never admitted any females.

The directors of the choir, part of Berlin’s University of the Arts (UdK), claim the girl’s rejection was “not predominantly” about her gender, and say she would have been asked to join if she had displayed extraordinary talent and motivation.

Susann Bräcklein, a lawyer representing the girl and her mother, told the Guardian the choir’s account was questionable, since UdK had put the girl forward for the Julius Stern Institute, an elite school for highly gifted young musicians.

Bräcklein said the SDB’s rejection was “very strange” and could only be explained by bias against her gender. “Exceptional talent does not appear to be an entrance requirement for boys,” she added.

The choir’s directors said in a statement issued by the court that boys’ and girls’ choirs sound different for anatomical reasons, and that higher rejection rates for girls were justified on the grounds of artistic freedom.

Bräcklein said experts had dismissed the notion that prepubescent male voices had a unique tonal purity, pointing to a 2002 study by the British academic David Howard – Gendered Voice in the Cathedral Choir – which found that most listeners could not tell the difference between choirs of girls and boys singing the same songs.

“Voice formation is crucial,” said Bräcklein. “Practising three times a week can achieve a lot, even with average voices. People call it talent, but in fact it’s a matter of training.”

Lesley Garrett says King's College Choir must accept girls Read more

The British soprano Lesley Garrett recently described boys-only choirs as a “throwback to a bygone age”, questioning the existence of “an exclusive purity in the boy’s voice”.

The SDB’s website says “boys aged five to seven and older boys with a musical background” are regularly invited to auditions.

Asked whether the choir would accept female applicants who fulfilled its criteria, a spokeswoman for the chancellor of UdK said she could not comment during legal proceedings.