So why do we hate choirs then?

[nazard]

I feel that a degree of separateness is inevitable if the proper is to be sung, which is what the bishops have decided in the new GIRM. Unless we adopt some very simple system of chanting the proper, I doubt if we can ever teach congregations the two hundred or so pieces of music they would need to sing the responsorial psalm, gospel acclamation, offertory antiphon and communion antiphon for every Sunday. That implies a choir of some sort is necessary. You then have to put it somewhere. If you take the extreme view that it is part of the congregation you put it in a pew. If you put it in the front pew it is facing away from the congregation. If you put it in the back pew it is singing into the sound absorbing clothing of the row in front. Some, particularly contemporary music groups, like to put themselves between the congregation and the sanctuary, but then they end up singing into the clothing of the front row of the congregation. A simple solution to this problem is to raise the choir on some sort of platform. The traditional choir stalls solve the problem acoustically, and are great for singing antiphonally, but do create the very formal liturgical choir some people object to. They also make most musical instruments impractical, and demand a very formal behaviour from the musicians if they are not to be distracting. The same applies to special choir platforms near the sanctuary. All this makes me favour a west gallery as the best place to sing from.

As for wearing a cassock, our church is so cold that we would be happy to wear two each. Unfortunately, we haven't got any.

[mcb]

if the proper is to be sung ... I doubt if we can ever teach congregations ... That implies a choir of some sort is necessary.

There's another reason for having a choir, which for me is decidely more compelling:

fostering the active participation of the faithful through the singing

If you take this seriously it makes a choir loft at the back of the church an unsatisfactory option, I think, My experience, both of directing a choir in a choir loft and of being in the congregation in a church with a choir in that position, is that it severely restricts the role of the singing assembly. With the choir and the choir director or animator out of sight, the assembly receives very limited cues to encourage its participation. The only signal that can reliably be given is to turn the organ up loud when the people are meant to join in. This rules out a wide range of musical styles and forms: in particular anything quiet or unaccompanied or antiphonal. In Marty Haugen's words, if you want the people to join the singing, you have to invite them, and to my mind there are more subtle and more effective ways of doing this than just playing loud hymns at them.

You then have to put it somewhere. If you take the extreme view that it is part of the congregation you put it in a pew.

No, that isn't so. For one thing it's no extreme view to believe that the choir forms part of the assembly; on the contrary this is exactly how GIRM puts it:

The choir should be positioned with respect to the design of each church so as to make clearly evident its character as a part of the gathered community of the faithful fulfilling a specific role. The location should also assist the choir to exercise its role more easily and conveniently allow each choir member full, sacramental participation in the Mass.

Meeting all three of those criteria is a challenge, but I believe the solution we've adopted in my place of worship is a better one that the old-fashioned choir loft: the choir is at the front of the nave but not obscuring the sight-line between the assembly and the sanctuary, close enough to the rest of the assembly to feel part of it, and crucially close enough so that it feels as though the assembly is singing with the choir, rather than separately from it. The choir faces approximately sideways on to the assembly, though perhaps angled slightly more towards the rest of the assembly than towards the sanctuary, thus allowing the sound to be directed towards the support of the singing assembly.

One thing this helps to achieve is what's set out in GIRM 104:

It is fitting that there be a cantor or a choir director to lead and sustain the people’s singing.

For my money having the choir director being able to give clear signals inviting the participation of the assembly, reassuring the people that they're encouraged to sing at a particular point and occasionally giving some indication of how the tune goes, is one of the vital ingredients in a successful sung celebration (along with the talents and efforts of the choir, the organist, the instrumentalists and anyone else who prepares and leads a sung liturgy) - at least a sung celebration that accords the singing assembly the active role foreseen in GIRM.

It's hard work for the choir director, mind you! There's a real challenge in trying to give effective signals to the choir and to the assembly, because the two groups need to be led in very different ways. (I don't conduct the assembly and I don't show the choir which way the tune goes with hand gestures!) But leading the assembly in the right kind of way can be very rewarding when it goes right.

For more on this subject, come to my workshop at this year's SSG Summer School!

M.

[dunstan]

For my money having the choir director being able to give clear signals inviting the participation of the assembly, reassuring the people that they're encouraged to sing at a particular point and occasionally giving some indication of how the tune goes, is one of the vital ingredients in a successful sung celebration (along with the talents and efforts of the choir, the organist, the instrumentalists and anyone else who prepares and leads a sung liturgy) - at least a sung celebration that accords the singing assembly the active role foreseen in GIRM.

I'm not sure I agree. If the assembly need prompting to start singing it suggests one or more of:

They are not sufficiently familiar with what they are being expected to song, or

They are not being given a clear musical cue for their entrance, or

They're an innately non-singing assembly (perhaps due to a poor acoustic)

Perhaps my experience is coloured by the relatively limited repertoire I use in my parish - four mass settings, three alleluias - but an assembly which is confidently singing New People's Mass or simple plainchant feels united in praise rather than dragged along.

[Tsume Tsuyu]

I'm not sure I agree. If the assembly need prompting to start singing it suggests......

They are not sufficiently familiar with what they are being expected to song

That may indeed be the case! It may be a new psalm setting, or a song that is only infrequently used, but is appropriate for a particular Sunday. How good then, to encourage the assembly, to invite them to join in, and to support their participation.

Perhaps my experience is coloured by the relatively limited repertoire I use in my parish - four mass settings, three alleluias - but an assembly which is confidently singing New People's Mass or simple plainchant feels united in praise rather than dragged along.

I'm all in favour of having a repertoire that is familiar by virtue of longevity, but the mass settings you use must have been unfamiliar at some point, Dunstan. Or have they always been sung in your parish? And I don't see why new pieces can't be added to the repertoire from time to time, by introducing them carefully, and ensuring the assembly is invited to learn them and join in.

I recall that I wrote lots on another thread, a long time ago, about the positioning of choirs. I still think that nowhere is ideal and it very much depends upon the layout of the church. The best place in one church is not necessarily the best place in another, but I believe that the choir should be seen to be taking part in the Mass as part of the assembly, even if it is set slightly apart to enable it to perform its job of "fostering the active participation of the faithful through the singing", as GIRM instructs.

[dmu3tem]

I feel that a degree of separateness is inevitable if the proper is to be sung, which is what the bishops have decided in the new GIRM. Unless we adopt some very simple system of chanting the proper, I doubt if we can ever teach congregations the two hundred or so pieces of music they would need to sing the responsorial psalm, gospel acclamation, offertory antiphon and communion antiphon for every Sunday. That implies a choir of some sort is necessary.

The implications of this are most profound. For those who support the idea of congregational singing at the expense of a choir doing solo stuff (I am not sure I do) then this presents the case for a version of the much maligned 'four hymn sandwich' since congregations (in GB) seem (to me at any rate) more willing to sing hymns than plainchant or responsorial psalms, entrance and communion antiphons.

The 'five hymn sandwich' that results is as follows:

Entrance hymn - instead of Entrance antiphon, but expressing the same idea.
Hymn based on the same psalm as is used in the Responsorial Psalm text. e.g. 'Crimond' as the metrical version of the relevant psalm.
Offertory hymn
Communion hymn - instead of Communion antiphon, but expressing the same idea.
Final hymn.

The new GIRM seems opposed to this. So, in effect, a policy that results in choirs singing antiphons and psalms instead of the congregation singing hymns will reduce congregational participation.

Worse, there is the suggestion I have heard in some quarters that a corpus of music settings will be recommended (perhaps even prescribed, or at any rate enforced due to copyright restrictions on texts controlled by ICEL and Collins/The Grail). This may well produce a repertoire of 'correct' but musically anodyne settings - as is often the case when things like this are bureaucratically arrived at by some committee.

Yet, as some people have remarked, it is by no means uncertain that congregations - properly led by a cantor/choir/other musicians - can learn such a vast repertoire. Here are some arguments:

(1) If congregations can learn an enormous repertoire of hymns (the congregation in my church knows at least 50, possibly 100) then they can, in theory, do the same with other styles.

Note, though that this strategy was attempted in the nineteenth century with plainchant through such publications as Johann Benz's 'Cantica Sacra' and, more extensively, in the 1930s through 'Plainchant For Schools', but with only moderate success and only as a result of ruthless compulsory training of Catholic schoolchildren.

However, this objection may not necessarily apply to other styles of music, so this argument may still be valid.

(2) With Psalms there is also the dodge of doing just the 'common psalms' (see the thread on this subject).

(3) Many congregations already learn new psalm and alleluia responses automatically every week. This is what I do now up here in Whalley, and what I have seen happening at St Anne's, Wendover.

(A useful additional device is to use the same musical material for the Gospel Acclamation as for the Psalm. Alternatively, with Gospel Acclamations a congregation can be taught a set of standardised responses to which is then applied a chant setting of the relevant verse, as an earlier correspondent remarked. This, again is a strategy I have used. This policy can also be applied to Communion Antiphons by treating these as a 'verse' sandwiched between a standard response like 'O Sacrament Most Holy' (see my notice in the 'Tips for Composing Arranging Thread').

Can congregations be expected to 'automatically' pick up Entrance Antiphons and Communion Antiphons as well as Responsorial Psalms and Gospel Acclamations every Sunday? The answer seems doubtful. Yet, even if it is 'Yes', consider the results:

(1) If there are no hymns then, apart from music for the Ordinary of the Mass, the congregation has to pick up nothing but new music.

(2) Moreover, to make it easy to pick up week by week, the music will have to be in a standardised format, even if each item is different. In other words a certain bland 'sameness' will extend over most over the repertoire, which some might consider a good thing. I have seen this happening already in some churches just with responsorial psalms. Yet, some would say that this was what was happening anyway if the 'four hymn sandwich' was dominated by old fashioned conventional four part harmony settings.

(3) Even if congregations are 'good' at picking up music this way there will inevitably be a lot of hesitation in their entries at the start. It is unrealistic to expect them to 'sing out' confidently in such circumstances, hence the greater reliance put upon choirs and cantors noted in the quotation.


Finally, we have to consider the suitability for music setting of Entrance and Communion Antiphons. As they stand, many (but not all) are unsatisfactory. Partly this is because they are prose settings, partly because they are too short (hence the attempts I have seen to add on chanted psalm verses). Some also seem designed more to act as a 'comments', personal prayers or 'ideas for meditation' on the themes enunciated in that particular Mass.

e.g. 'I can rely on the Lord; I can always turn to him for shelter, it is he who gives me my freedom. My God, you are always there to help me' (Communion Antiphon: 10th Sunday of the Year).

In pre-Vatican II times such defects were masked by the fact that these texts were in Latin and anyway sung using plainchant, often using rather elaborate or difficult settings - hence the tendency to reserve the singing of the 'Proper' to the Choir.

It is to be hoped, then that the new texts that have been promised will address these difficulties. In particular, I hope that some of the texts are metrical. Otherwise, despite efforts to the contrary, the balance between Congregations and Cantors/Choirs may be tilted in the direction of the latter, as Quaeritor predicts.

Thomas Muir

[estuaire]

MCB .....

WHAT ABOUT THE PRIEST??????? Should he merely be limited to an "anyone else"? With such an enlightened Priest who proclaims the date of Easter how could you leave him out MCB? :lol

[mcb]

I'm so sorry, Estuaire, you're quite right. Shame on me. In mitigation I'd plead that the happy situation at my place of worship, with two priests who readily sing (even things I spring on them at 10.55 on a Sunday morning) and take a keen and knowledgeable interest in things liturgical and things musical, is a pretty exceptional one! But yes, definitely: the leadership/guidance/co-operation/support/tolerance (delete as appropriate) of the clergy is at the top of the list of vital ingredients for successful liturgical music-making. (I think some here will testify that it can be achieved without some or all of these things, or at least that one has to try.)

For more on this subject, come to my... have I said that?

M.