It began during a lockdown.

In 2020, when concert halls were closed and musical engagements were cancelled across the world, an American mother turned to Pergolesi. Her two sons — Anselm, ten years old, and his brother Nathaniel, twelve — simply stood in a room and sang the Stabat Mater together, unaccompanied. Anselm took the first soprano part, Nathaniel the second. No stage, no orchestra — just two voices and three centuries of music. The mother made the video:

Whoever watches the recording made that day will understand immediately that this was no ordinary pastime. Two boys with clear treble voices, entirely committed, in music that has moved audiences for nearly three centuries.

Four years later, in April 2024, the brothers appeared together again; this time at an impromptu performance at a retirement home in Emeryville, California. Anselm was thirteen and still a treble. Nathaniel was fifteen.

Then, on 14 September 2024, Anselm stood on stage once more for Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. This time at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica, in a concert by the ensemble Musica Transalpina. Beside him stood the professional countertenor Kyle Sanchez Tingzon. Anselm was fourteen — almost fifteen. It would turn out to be his final performance as a boy soprano. Not long after, his voice broke. Listen to part XI of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater:

Anselm is now focusing on piano. Nathaniel, meanwhile, has become a countertenor himself — the same voice type that accompanied his brother on that September evening in Santa Monica.

We owe this story to Theresa Marie Decker, Anselm’s and Nathaniel’s mother, and the one who pointed the phone at her sons in 2020.