Starting from Scratch?

[Nick Baty]

Elsewhere, SOP asks:

How do you encourage singing in a non-singing parish?

I've done this twice in the last 15 years and, I have to say, enjoyed both experiences immensely.

Although it sounds tough (and can be for a while) the great joy of starting from scratch – having no choir, no instrumental ensemble, often no organist – is that you are starting with the raw and most important material: the assembly.

In the first there was an existing hymn trifle, and in the just second an occasional hymn.

In both cases we started with a Gregorian Alleluia they half remembered and a simple Holy, Christ has died and Amen. And that's all we sang for several weeks. I remember that people simply stood there and sang: no hymnbooks needed, nothing too complicated to remember.

Next stage was to seek out a few volunteer cantors. In the first parish we presented this as something special, "just for Holy Week" and that certainly had a positive effect. After Holy Week the cantors were back in the assembly but were leading in a different way. They then developed into the People's Singing Group and became choir/cantors as and when necessary. The layout of the church meant they didn't look like a separate body. It was only when they sang without the assembly (verses of a gathering song, for example) that their specific function became obvious.

I can remember the second occasion quite vividly. Again, we persuaded half a dozen people to become cantors and they worked for three or four weeks preparing Farrell's Unless a grain of wheat – it was chosen as it enabled us to establish the principle of cantor-people music while giving the assembly a refrain which I knew they would enjoy and which they could learn easily. After Mass that day, I heard people talking quite proudly about "our choir", perhaps because they had seen that this small group of cantors had come from them and was still a part of them.

In both parishes it was a case of adding a bit here and there, building slowly, never going faster than the assembly could cope with.

It is a slow process – and rightly so. Folk don't come to Mass for a music lesson. But a step-by-step approach in both these parishes helped music become an integral part of the liturgy rather than a bolt-on.

[Southern Comfort]

Elsewhere, SOP asks:

How do you encourage singing in a non-singing parish?

I've done this twice in the last 15 years and, I have to say, enjoyed both experiences immensely.

I too have done this in a number of parishes.

The first one I vividly remember. No organist, no choir, no nothing. So I was the unaccompanied cantor for a couple of months. I had been told that this parish knew lots of hymns. Within a few days I discovered that they didn't know any. (They'd always had a choir singing everything. The choir was now gone.) So for the next six months, we didn't sing a single hymn ─ and no one noticed! I started with a simple Gospel Acclamation in week 1, then some Hosannas in week 2, and we went on from there, singing parts of the Mass and nothing else, gradually building it up. After a couple of months of this, some people came out of the woodwork and said they'd like to know what the music was going to be in advance each week. Hurray! the nucleus of a singing group (choir would have been too grand a term). Then a lady came along and said she was a pianist and could she help out by playing the organ. She was a bit of a liability, but we worked with her. By Christmas, a few months in, we felt able to start to include hymns ─ i.e. Christmas carols. And so it went on.

All you need initially is a cantor and an assembly. I have started a significant number of parishes off in just the same way. It really works. The cantor, of course, has to know what she or he is doing, and how to encourage people gently without being threatening. (In my view, you have to love people into submission!) Once they are up and running you can leave them and move on to the next one. Well, not always, but quite often.

I still remember, after six months in that first parish, a lady who had sat every week with folded arms and a frown on her face in the fourth row and hadn't opened her mouth in all that time. She came up to me at the end of Mass and said "I think I see what you are trying to do, now." Well, blow me down! She was the last person to "get it" ─ sometimes, it takes that long.

[Nick Baty]

Over the last couple of years I've had two frowning elderly ladies who "refused" to join in.

The first turned out to have cataract problems and couldn't see the service sheet: And recently I've noticed her singing all the acclamations and the communion psalms, presumably because none of them need sheets. (Actually, we did get off to a bad start when she decided I was a snob because I'm from "over the water".)

The second lady had, I thought, grumped at me for four years. Then at Easter, when we were selling a CD of our Triduum, she came straight up and bought a copy, saying, "I can't hear it but I'll support you". This elderly lady's hearing has almost completely gone. And it had taken me several years to find out.

I was also shocked to discover three elderly members of our parish – there could be many more – who quite simply cannot read.

In my day job I have to practice Differentiation, it's one of the Ofsted buzzwords of the moment but, in short, it means understanding that not every student learns in the same way or at the same speed and not every student has the same needs. I feel quite ashamed to say that I had not taken this into account within the parish.