Communal Singing in Church

[keitha]

From Sajid Javid's statement to the Commons today: "There will no limits on the number of people who can attend life events such as weddings and funerals, and there will be no restrictions on communal worship or singing."

[alan29]

The Bishops might not go for a "back to normal" approach, in view of the age of our clergy and congregations.

[Southern Comfort]

It has been suggested that our bishops might welcome the return of congregational singing but advise that congregation members should be masked when singing. Certainly, tests with professional singers have shown that emissions are greatly reduced by the wearing of masks, although aerosols are still produced.

In fact there has been congregational singing of a sort all the way through. Some parishes, mostly Ordinariate, appear to have carried on as normal with both choirs and congregations singing. In other places, the clergy have (perhaps inadvisedly) been singing the "Through him" doxology, resulting in a muted but noticeable sung Amen response from congregation members, so to speak "accompanying" the cantor.

I suspect that the bishops might also suggest that, in the light of rapidly increasing cases of the delta variant, Communion under both kinds not be re-introduced until we are a bit further down the road.

In the end, I think people will need to decide for themselves how cautious they wish to be. A significant proportion of our congregations is made up of the vulnerable.

[alan29]

Our parish Coordinators Group (which nobody elected, posts neither agendas nor minutes, and seems to not contain the people who are most active in the parish) has decided that current arrangements re music will continue until September, no matter what the bishops decide. This without consulting the one person (me) who has continued to provide music for the main Sunday Mass week in and week out throughout the pandemic.
To say that I am unimpressed would be an understatement of intergalactic proportions!

[organist]

You are right to be unimpressed! Facebook is full of stories of organists resigning because of lack of any consulatation! So sad!