Friday 22 July 2011

Music - the end of the choral tradition

Engaged in a conversation about a church choir in a place that my companion had visited, they made the observation that the choir was 'well advanced in years' and as a result the women were thin and reedy and the men obviously past 'their sell by dates'. Another person expressed the view that the 'Glee' type programmes and other 'music' shows had to be good for the choral experience and that therefore this had to be good for the English Church Choral Tradition (ECCT) too!

They seemed shocked and perhaps a little antagonistic (or just plain unbelieving) that I had considered that to be the case but I stand by my views.

The reality is that this country was shaped, musically, by the ECCT. People went to church and by so doing were exposed to singing with others and the hearing of some great (and some not so great, I'll say it before someone else does) choral and organ music. When I was a young boy I found myself in a church choir (I was eight) and dutifully turned up every Thursday evening for choir practice (if you didn't go you couldn't do weddings and weddings meant money!) where I learned to read music, to listen to other people singing and sing with them. This gave me a love of music, all music, and has served me well ever since.

Then we came to the time when decline 9and other influences) meant that we had mixed choirs. My how the purists threw up their hands at that. But the loss of the pure treble and the male alto for women wasn't all bad m'Lord, for it extended the experience and swelled the, often diminishing, ranks. A love of music is to great to be witheld of restricted and so on the ECCT went.

Then as church-going declined and the availability of so many other forms of music and the leading people away from the square ECCT took hold the choirs began to close their doors. The marketing of what music was according to shows like Britain hasn't got talent, Flop Star and many others told the kids who once would have graced a church choir that this was what music was all about.Singing through the nose, epiglotis-wobbling, musical cobblers! Even if they sing (badly) there would be redemption for them in a church choir but this is outside the experience of the parents and so the children never get taken along.

"But," (always a BUT) says one of those with whom I conversed, "If they make Glee groups or sing Gospel, this will lead them to move in to sacred (my word) as they develop!" Would that it did, for in conversation with the head of a supposedly specialist music school some time back, asking whether we could encourage the pupils who were doing grades into the local church choir to help them with their aural tests and improve their listening and musical skills, I was shocked to hear that they'd tried and found not one pupil interested. A week after this there were queues outside the school hall when they auditioned for Annie get yourGreased Lightning Oklahoma show!

The thrill of singing with others and making a sound that echoes the concord of God and touches something deep inside of us is something that we are fast losing. My girls (have a houseful) sing all the latest songs and they are musical, but if it wasn't for the stuff we play and the fact that they sing in church, they'd merely be like the rest of the one-dimensional musical experience kids that walk past our doors.

The demise of the ECCT is about more than church-going, it is also about the demise of music in a nation that has been sold a minuscule part of musical experience and told that it is the whole. Consumerism in music limiting rather than promoting it (perhaps that's because those who do so don't promote 'serious' of sacred choral stuff!)

Pax

7 comments:

Jill said...

It is sad to see once-flourishing church choirs diminish to three old ladies and a dog. Happily the choral tradition is still alive and well in cathedrals - which have increasing attendance!

I have been a church chorister myself, but admit to preferring an all-male choir with a treble top line (I just think the sound is better!).

A lot of the problem is with boys - they no longer think it's cool to sing at church (or even to go to church) and they often have money anyhow so cannot be bribed, as you were, Vic :). (I have to admit to a similar attraction for my own daughter, who I think at the time was only in it for the money!)

Having said that, we have one large church choir locally, mainly due to the efforts of the Director of Music who actively recruits boys and girls from schools every year. The result of this has been to bring their parents to church too, so a win/win there.

Singing is a joy. I have belonged to a number of choirs in my time, and still do. The decline of the choral tradition is very sad, and impoverishes people who are fed a monotonous diet of dross and will never hear anything better.

Revsimmy said...

I served my curacy in a large town-centre church. Interestingly, the choir was the one group in the church that encompassed all ages from 8 year olds to singers in their 80s. I had to deputise for the Director of Music a couple of times and it was great fun.

Recently one of my colleagues locally has started a choir of clergy from across the diocese and I haven't had such musical fun since I moved here.

I think the reasons for the decline of the ECCT owes as much to social as to musical change. It goes along with the demise of secular choirs and brass bands. Now that music is electronically "on tap" fewer people are interested in making their own, and those that are want to ape the commercial genres.

Bob said...

These days so many have very narrow views of what "Church music" should sound like. For some it MUST be a full choir plus organ; for others it MUST be a solo guitar and a couple of voices; for others it MUST the whole congregation joining in with some well loved song or hymn; for others it MUST be a rock band blasting forth; and for others it MUST be.... Each to the exclusion of all others. Personally I enjoy all these, but like to be able to choose that which is appropriate to my mood, and the mood of those around me. Church music is all about a person being able to communicate their feelings of love and worship to God, not as anyone else dictat

Helen said...

It saddens me that children are being kept away from aspects of life that might bring them great pleasure and enrich their lives because of a narrow view of culture - and maybe, sometimes, (unreasonable) fear of 'indoctrination.'

Vic Van Den Bergh said...

It is indeed a sadness that so many people keep their children away from the pleasures of singing with others.

Whenever I meet a choirmaster/organist I ask about children and they all tell me they have stopped looking and now work with their (often ageing) choirs!

Missing so much and depriving us of something very special too!

Mind you, not far from here there are many who would like to put the choir to the asword and have a rock band - which in the setting would be most inappropriate :(

Anonymous said...

I would say the rise of Britain's Got Talent and X-Factor is irrelevant to the decline you're describing (although I fully agree that it's a Bad Thing).

I would say the most relevant factor in the decline of the ECCT is simply the decline in the church-going population overall. There are just fewer people who normally go to church from which a choirmaster could choose from. Outside of church congregations, you would have to find people who were willing to spend time contributing to a religion they either definitely didn't believe in or simply didn't have strong feelings about.

Having been brought up Christian, I gained quite a bit from the ECCT, and I agree that it's a strand of our heritage we shouldn't, in essence, give up on. Yet now I am an atheist I would not contribute my time and effort to a cause I don't believe in, so I sing for a secular choir. We still perform some religious music, but we do it in concerts, not as part of an act of worship.

So while I'm not saying you're wrong to worry about the decline of the ECCT, I'm just proposing that it's a symptom of overall decline of the church. I don't think you can "fix" the choir situation without either (1) gaining lots of new church-going members to choose from or (2) encouraging people to support an organisation they are, at best, apathetic about.

Andrew.

Jane said...

I've been an organist and choir master for decades and have found that my greatest problems are with the ministers, who more often than not regard a traditional church choir as something for old people and therefore irrelevant. (they are of course quite wrong) I have almost given up trying to prove them wrong. I have even been bullied out of my organist's position because I was not sufficiently into praise bands etc....(Church of Scotland)(ARCO< LRSM< BMUS< MMUS)