Choir

[musicmantg11]

Hello, I am the music director and organist at my parish church. The choir and organ is always in the choir loft. Almost always, the choir’s family comes upstairs too (even though they do not sing). Is this okay? I really don’t think it’s good to have the choir and their family and friends up their sitting beside them.

What’s your opinion??

 

[SMHW]

Hello, I am the music director and organist at my parish church. The choir and organ is always in the choir loft. Almost always, the choir’s family comes upstairs too (even though they do not sing). Is this okay? I really don’t think it’s good to have the choir and their family and friends up their sitting beside them.

What’s your opinion??

You are asking a musical question which is most likely peculiar to your church. If you think that friends and family are distracting to the choir, create too much noise, or otherwise cause problems then you as choir director, with the agreement of the pastor, can say musicians only should be in the loft.

But that said, there is no liturgical reason to separate the choir from family. The role of the choir is an assembly role not a ministerial role and what I can tell you from personal experience that it is a real sacrifice for both choir members and their families to be separated every week.

 

[Don9of11]

It’s always a good practice to only have choir members and musicians in the choir loft. Family, friends and relatives belong in the pews. I have been a choir member for my church some 30+ years and that has been our “rule” for as long as I can remember. In my tenure the choir has consisted of over 20 members, so having the family in the choir loft would have been impractical.

 

[Paul3144]

It’s always a good practice to only have choir members and musicians in the choir loft. Family, friends and relatives belong in the pews. I have been a choir member for my church some 30+ years and that has been our “rule” for as long as I can remember. In my tenure the choir has consisted of over 20 members, so having the family in the choir loft would have been impractical.

How many people do you have singing each part?

 

[Don9of11]

A quick clarification before I begin. Most of our choir members have passed on. Today we have less than a handful. We are on our third organist and for the most part sing unison and only songs from the missalette. But during our best years we had pretty close to an equal number of men and women. We had two Altos and two Tenors the rest of the crew men and women sang Soprano and lead/melody parts. The choir was divided with men sopranos, tenors and trumpeters on one side and the women sopranos, altos and flutist on the other side.

We would have a few more members at Christmas and Easter including three trumpeters which consisted of two french horns and trumpet, and a flutist. The organist would enlist his daughter’s help who sang Alto, so we had an extra Alto during the holiday season. We would do “concerts” at Christmas and Easter times usually before mass with our last hymn being the entrance hymn for mass.

I miss the ol’ gang and beautiful music we used to sing.

 

[passus]

This isn’t a liturgical question, so it’s really up to you. How big is your choir loft?

 

[Sarabande]

Most of the parishes I’ve sung in for choir usually had a rule that only choir members and other musicians were permitted in the loft or whereever the choir was situated. It was usually because having everyone’s family would be too much of distraction for the choir director/organist or even a distraction to some of the choir members. Also, for practical reasons that the loft/area would not be able to contain everyone’s family up there with a 30 voice choir.

It is up to you, since you are the choir director, to decide what would be appropriate. If having the family up there is too much of distraction for you or any of the other musicians, you might want to set a rule to have the families downstairs. But if this has been a long-time tradition in the parish and if they do not distract you, perhaps have the families sit up there separately from the rest of the choir. I’ve been “separated” from my family for years either singing in choirs or cantoring. I will admit that although I feel called to do this, it is a little bit of a sacrifice to not be near my family when at Mass, so I can understand where your choir may be coming from.

 

[m134e5]

Hello, I am the music director and organist at my parish church. The choir and organ is always in the choir loft. Almost always, the choir’s family comes upstairs too (even though they do not sing). Is this okay? I really don’t think it’s good to have the choir and their family and friends up their sitting beside them.

What’s your opinion??

That set-up wouldn’t look very good, and it wouldn’t sound very good either. A choir is an ensemble- the people in it need to be spaced evenly and in a certain way, so they make the best possible sound. The best possible sound certainly isn’t going to happen if the choir loft is overcrowded, or the choir is split up because there are non-choir members dispersed among them. It would also be very distracting to me as a singer or as a conductor to have anyone in the choir loft other than the choir members, the organist, any other instrumentalists who I may be including in the ensemble, and myself- so I would not allow it if I were the director.

I doubt there is any canonical prohibition on such a thing, but there isn’t a canonical prohibition on letting people keep lap dogs on their laps during Mass either- but I’d still find it distracting!