Are YOU or your children in a schola?

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The univ. programs for scholas are all free in my university- or you can take it for credit to be included in your GPA. I’m surprised that you would have to pay 150.00 for an hour for a schola/choral lesson.
 
I apologize with all my heart for being confusing in my post.

A professional, experienced, and well-educated (Masters or Doctoral degree) accompanist will often expect to be paid between $75 and $150 per hour or more (depends on the location–in a big city, it will be more).

This would be divided up between all the participants in the choir. If there were 50 people in the choir, each person would pay $3.00 per hour for the choir session. Not bad at all.

However, a parish choir is very likely going to chip in most of the accompanists fee out of the parish budget, which means that the singers will not pay anything for the accompanist.

The fact remains, though, that a professional musician, either a conductor/director or accompanist, has a right to a decent wage, and SOMEONE will have to pay it. Even if the parish pays it, it’s still money that parishioners have given.

I hope this clarifies my utterly confusing post.

One more thing–music lessons cost money. I pay $65/hour for my organ lessons. Most piano teachers I know charge an advanced student $50/hour or more. (A beginner will not be charged so much.)
 
Are you in the United States?

NOTHING is “free” at a university in the U.S. Either the taxpayers have provided funding, or the students’ tuition is providing the funding, or perhaps a private donation is providing funding.

So even if you don’t have to pay, someone has paid it forward so that you can learn. Enjoy and study hard.
 
That doesn’t sound like a “hiphop program”. A “hiphop program” would require multiple keyboards, guitars, percussion, jampods, headphones, mixers, computers, software, etc. Most districts don’t have them precisely because they are so expensive and it’s cheaper to hand the teacher a guitar and tell her to play the hokey-pokey. Whether it’s Mozart or hiphop, passive listening to music or singing along to a recording is not going to build any critical thinking skills, but it certainly is possible to teach any musical skills as well as critical thinking-skills through any genre, including hiphop.
 
I agree with you entirely. It’s not a program. But the School Board called it a program.

And as our schools have become worse and worse (as measured by constantly decreasing scores on the standardized tests and an increasing drop-out rate, and also by the attrition of students to private and home schools), there is work going on to make changes.

I’ve already mentioned that band is being restored, beginning at the middle school level (imagine having a high school band consisting of students who have not had any type of training on their instruments until high school!).

Many of the private schools and home schools in our area have good music programs taught by qualified music teachers.

A lot of the difficulty lies with the racism that is still pretty pervasive in our city. Many of the non-white, non-European people see the traditional music curriculum as racist and non-inclusive. Even music-reading and theory is scorned as “white.” Even young children rebel when they are asked to sing “white songs”–the traditional, highly-melodic songs that children have been taught for decades.

There are also many white students who rebel at learning traditional songs because they want to sing what’s currently popular.

And the parents aren’t really going along with traditional music training, either, because they want “popular music.” They don’t understand that music is a “precept upon precept” discipline just like math, and just as in math, you can’t jump into calculus until you know basic arithmetic, you can’t jump into PitBull and Taylor Swift without starting at the very beginning and learning, “Do, Re, Mi.”

Interestingly many of the popular musicians have a background in traditional music, and some have music degrees. Gaga was trained classically, which is one reason she’s such a good singer!

I wish that some of these popular musicians would join with the national teaching organizations and encourage children and teens to learn music “from the beginning,” instead of demanding to sing street songs and popular music. I think it would make a big difference, as as a side effect, I think we would begin to see improvements in our liturgical music in churches.
 
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Wow, there’s so much going on here, I don’t even know where to start.

First of all, the vast majority of musical genres that have been the soundtrack of American life have been created and taught through the means of aural tradition. This even includes “white music” such as folk singing, bluegrass, barbershop quartets, spirituals, country music, Celtic music, etc but also includes what you probably consider “ethnic music” such as gospel music, ragtime, blues, jazz, and other music that associated with black Americans. These are correctly labeled as American genres, rather than “ethnic genres”, but that’s another discussion. While standardized notation has existed since before Gregory the Great, the vast majority of plainchant was also taught through aural tradition, as was nearly all secular music. The reasons for this included lack of music literacy and the expense of creating paper and the time required to copy manuscripts by had. Notation-based music didn’t really become the “norm” until the advent of printed music. As far as American music goes, the only genres of music that are appropriately notation-based are those borrowed from post-Renaissance Europe, and theatrical music. Prior to the invention of recorded sound, the vast majority of what is American folk music (black and white) was created and performed by informally trained musicians and passed on aurally. So notation-based music education is not at all “traditional” anymore so than informally taught musical styles.

Furthermore, it is not “racism” for black parents and students to resent being whitewashed out of American musical history. The genres of “black” music are in no way inferior or less melodic than “white” folk songs. If it is someone’s “tradition” to exclude “black” folk music upon those grounds, then that is, in fact, racism, and a disservice to all students, regardless of color.

“Popular music” is generally considered music that is primarily proliferated through sound recording rather than notation. It includes nearly every genre of music we currently enjoy in our everyday lives. It is what is relevant to our culture and it is where nearly all musical professions exist. So, it makes sense for students and parents to expect to see it in the classroom and for their children to be taught to use the methods of making music that are associated with it.

I’m not sure what you think “the beginning” actually is, but I’ve already mentioned what the rudimentary music skills consist of and they can all be taught through pop music genres just as easily as “white” folk songs.
 
With all due respect, I don’t think what goes on in the public school music classes has anything to do with whether a schola is sustainable or not. In my experience, schola works best where there is a large, dense pool of Catholics so there are enough people, especially men, interested in doing it, and also where there are universities nearby that draw a significant crowd of people interested in forms of historic music. If you don’t have a big population of Catholics and/or university folks, and/ or you are spread out over a wide area so people have to drive a distance to participate or even hear the schola, it’s going to be harder to keep it up.

Public school music programs are designed to teach the basics and get kids interested in music. As someone else said, pop music or rap or whatever is sufficient to meet both needs. The forms of music taught to the average public school student don’t determine whether some kid will, probably later in his or her life, get interested in relatively esoteric forms or music like Gregorian chant.

Also, I’m not one of the people who cares whether some parish church has chant or a trained organist or some middle aged hippie strumming the guitar. I’ve seen and heard it all and I like that there’s such a variety of musical ways to lift our talents to the Lord.
 
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All quite true. There is a Greek Orthodox parish near us that has an absolutely gorgeous choir that sings Byzantine chant, despite the fact that there are only two Greek Orthodox parishes in the entire city and both are relatively smaller than the average Catholic parish. The men join their choir because it’s a tradition in their family and part of their culture. If you want to sustain that aspect of Catholic culture, it’s probably best cultivated in the family, the parish, and the parish schools, not public school.
 
I would add that the term “schola” is used by a lot of people to just refer to the group of men who perform the chanted parts of the Mass in the EF Mass. Not musical selections at an OF Mass, but the actual parts of the liturgy in Latin for EF. That is where I see the local schola around these parts - chanting the parts of the Mass or other liturgical services like Tenebrae. I haven’t seen them at OF Masses. So in addition to an interest in chant, there might need to be a local interest in EF Latin Masses as well to make this viable.

It is likely more common to have a mixed-gender choir that might do a couple of chant selections as part of a varied repertoire, but is not chanting the actual parts of the liturgy. To many musical people, this is a choir, not a “schola”.
 
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Not sure how to answer this. I live here. And my quote that only 13% of our public school students achieve minimal competency requirements on the standardized testing and that the dropout rate among African American young men is 65% and the overall dropout rate is 50% means that we have a large unemployable population (we have the highest unemployment rate in Illinois).

We have the highest crime rate by percentage of any city in Illinois, even greater than Chicago. We have a shooting (not all fatal) almost every day.

The problems go on an on.

I agree with you that much can be learned though hearing, but…that’s certainly not true when it comes to reading in general. At this time in history, people have to know how to read text! People who can’t read are still valuable in the sight of God and should be treated with respect–but they won’t be able to get any kind of job that will pay a living wage.

Reading music isn’t a vital skill, but it certainly opens a lot of opportunities for people. Some people who don’t read music have a good ear for learning songs, but many do not. Knowing how to read music means that you can pick up any hymnal and sing the hymn. And although Suzuki-trained instrumentalists begin their training without learning to read music, eventually they do learn to read music. Even writing music and creating new songs–you have to be able to read it to write it (although you can write a song and sing it over and over to a friend who DOES read music and they can write it down for you–this has happened throughout history.)

You describe how much can be learned through oral learning of music and it all sounds wonderful–but it’s just not happening that way here! The public schools get one music class a week–they simply don’t get the rich musical education that you describe.

And I disagree that what happens in the public schools doesn’t have anything to do with what happens in churches. Although we have a large private school and home school population in our city, the majority of children and teens attend public schools. Of course it will make a difference in all aspects of life in our city.

It’s obvious in our community. Our few community choirs have very few singers, our symphony orchestra gets most of its players from elderly musicians, wealthy white families, and from the universities surrounding the city but not in the city. Our city music club (the oldest continually-open music club in the United States) struggles to stay afloat–most of the bills are being paid by a few devoted doctors!

I’m just having a hard time with this whole discussion because I live here and I know that the education is not the way you describe it. Listening to popular music with no analysis of what’s happening from a knowledgeable teacher is not music education! If it is, then tell the universities to get rid of their Music Ed. programs–not needed! All those methods of teaching music–not needed! Just tell everyone to take our their phones, insert headsets, and listen to iTunes until it’s time for their next class.
 
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« Schola » is still used in the OF in monasteries. It refers to the men, or women in a nun’s monastery, that are the most experienced singers. They typically chant the more complex parts such as the verses of graduals, alléluias and offertories, or on high solemnities, prolix responsories. And they help sustain the tone for the parts the entire choir of monks or nuns sing. Since chant is made to be a capella, they are sort of taking the place of organ accompaniment for the choir.
 
Oh, if only the Catholic Church had a way of educating our young people in Catholic culture and our rich tradition! If only we had a large network of Catholic schools, for instance…🤣
 
If I’d had to rely on the Catholic schools in the 70s and 80s to educate me about being Catholic, I’d probably be “spiritual but not religious” today.
 
I snuck through in the '60s. We had a French equivalent of the rote Baltimore Catechism. We’d have to remember our lines the night before as homework and be able to recite them by heart the next day.

To be honest I’m not sure it was much better. I was good at remembering the lines but didn’t have a clue what they truly meant. We never really received instruction in that. Somewhere in between rote learning and laissez-faire teaching, there must be a happy medium that actually explains things at a level that a 6-12 y.o. can understand? And it would be too much to ask that the explanations be both simple and orthodox?
 
Hi @Peeps,
No, I was in Canada- now I am in South Korea and not attending university, but instead, I am in my church’s choir (schola).
Technically, we pay for the scholas as part of our tuition to univ., but this is declared ‘free’ due to funding that comes from the Government of Alberta and many other donors. But I believe this case is not universal for all university schola members like myself in Canada, as I am in the biggest university by faculty in Alberta (outside of Univ. of Alberta) with a diverse musical program.

Pax Christi.
 
No need to apologize! Thank you for clarifying. Please do not feel pressured at all.
Agreed about your post on having an accompanist- my university’s faculty hired a Master’s Degree student for accompanist for organ or piano.
I was actually a pianist for my schola (welp lol) in my church in Canada but I didn’t want to be payed. I was part of a youth Catholic organization called CCO (Catholic Christian Outreach) so we were all doing this without getting payed- but I felt so joyful for sure.
Usually, the organist would be payed, but it was rather a volunteer position in my case. But my organist/pianist and my conductor are payed in South Korea, so it’s different here, so definitely understanding your viewpoint!
They’re doing absolutely hard work so they need to be recognized for what they do.

Pax Christi 🙂
 
At no point did I say what I was describing is what IS happening in your community. My point was that it COULD be done in your community, and it COULD be done with hiphop music. If the music teachers are lazy and not doing their job properly, or the administrators are unsupportive of them making the changes necessary to facilitate actual learning, then it doesn’t matter what the repertoire is. They aren’t going to learn. However, if those changes WERE made, and correct pedagogical practices WERE put into practice, you would find that elementary students WOULD learn best through aural training being taught primarily.

You would also find that they would learn to play, sing, and create better if they were taught aural skills at a young age, rather than a training based entirely on notation. You would also find that teachers that engage the students by selecting music that is relevant to their experience will have students that learn more, retain more, create more, engage those higher-level critical thinking skills more, and perhaps most importantly STAY in music.

Even in the “good” schools, music departments rarely retain more than 20% of their entire student population past 6th grade. The students who stay are typically white, financially secure students who come from a family with a tradition of activity in school musical ensembles. That doesn’t mean that only 20% of students are smart enough or talented enough. It means that either they or their parents can’t justify spending that kind of time and money on a marching band or choral program that has no relevance to the music that is listened to in our culture, and has no “market value”. Remember that the most supportive parents that come from an impoverished background are always thinking about one thing and that is their child getting out of poverty. No one makes a sustainable income playing in a marching band and that’s a fact. Then there’s the whole “interest factor.” Those students who aren’t interested in dressing like a goof and marching down the street or wearing a robe and singing songs by people who are over two-hundred years dead, but still enjoy music, have to seek musical opportunities elsewhere. (Private lessons, community ensembles, garage bands, youtube channels, etc) Now, here’s the scary thing! There’s a recent study of students who participated in their all-state ensembles in high school. These are the “best of the best” in high school music programs and are nearly all from the “good schools”. Their parents have invested tremendous time and money on multiple ensembles and most likely, years of private lessons. As many as HALF of them do not continue to play or sing in an ensemble once they graduate high school. Of those that continue to play during college, as many as half of those never pick up their instrument again after they graduate. Meanwhile, students who sought musical experience outside of the academic world, in rock bands, church bands, and private lessons, etc. have a much higher rate of retention in musical activities as an adult. So yes, relevance matters.
 
PS- You don’t need a friend to write down music that you sing or play. There’s an app for that now. (Actually, musicians have been able to play into recording software programs and have it generate notation of what they’ve played for the better part of three decades now.) Also, if you are working with other musicians who are aurally-trained, they don’t require notation. You just give them a recording of what you want to share with them, and they play or sing it.
 
Allegra said:
…Then there’s the whole “interest factor.” Those students who aren’t interested in dressing like a goof and marching down the street or wearing a robe and singing songs by people who are over two-hundred years dead, but still enjoy music, have to seek musical opportunities elsewhere. (Private lessons, community ensembles, garage bands, youtube channels, etc) Now, here’s the scary thing! There’s a recent study of students who participated in their all-state ensembles in high school. These are the “best of the best” in high school music programs and are nearly all from the “good schools”. Their parents have invested tremendous time and money on multiple ensembles and most likely, years of private lessons. As many as HALF of them do not continue to play or sing in an ensemble once they graduate high school. Of those that continue to play during college, as many as half of those never pick up their instrument again after they graduate. Meanwhile, students who sought musical experience outside of the academic world, in rock bands, church bands, and private lessons, etc. have a much higher rate of retention in musical activities as an adult. So yes, relevance matters.
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Okay a couple of things about your post. You list “private lessons” in two categories: Non-“relevant” musical experiences, and also “relevant” music experiences.

Your comment that students who sought musical experience in rock bands, church bands (and private lessons) have a much higher retention rate. I think that’s partly because those kinds of groups are small and informal, and much easier to find and schedule into their lives than something like a community orchestra or larger choir. Also, kids who have a more “educated” musical sense, I think have an idea of how much work it actually takes to make music sound good, rather than, say a garage rock band, or church group who often makes music that is “good enough”. IMHO
 
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