When I first joined our choir two years ago, I was thrilled to be in it. I was full of inspiration during many of our songs and during Mass. I felt it was important to continue staying in the choir. Yesterday we sang at the big modern cathedral for rite of election with a world class choir director. I felt like a cog in the machinery. The secular music values seemed to overshadow spiritual intent (my impression) and I felt stressed afterwards and like I was out of my league. In short, I felt I didn’t sign up for that.
If it’s practicing til you’re blue in the face, being stressed at Christmas and Easter,
comparing degrees of musical talent,
jumping through hoops and just doing a job; then I’m thinking perhaps my time would be better spent elsewhere. Now some of the songs seem mechanical. I would miss the companionship, but even that seems to disappear after choir functions are over. Has anyone quit choir and for what reasons?
Hi Rosalie - This just might be a time for you to take a break from the choir for a while. You don’t have to quit altogether. Until about 5 or 6 years ago, practically all my life I sang in all different choirs - from the children’s church choir, high school choirs, university choirs, volunteer church choirs to professional church and secular ones. There were always people who’d take a break or leave all together for a variety of reasons. Then, they’d come back again when they were ready sometimes after a couple of months, sometimes after a few years. It’s actually not that unusual.
I guess I’m in the same category as Cat and idrum677. Although it is a wonderful and joyous thing to be praying through music, it is still “work” and we are doing a job within the liturgy to provide a form of prayer to those who are there. This is how I look at it. If God gave me the gift of music and the ability to give 100%, the very least I can do is try to give that 100% back to Him. It is very rare that a musician does something perfectly - any musician will tell you that, but their love of music and their integrity incites them to give their best. And when a musician is a spiritual person that is even more enhanced in terms of sacred music. To not give more than my best at that moment in time is, for me, an insult to God and an insult to those who depend on that kind of prayer. It means that I wouldn’t be doing my responsibility and not showing reverence and respect to God who gave me those gifts. In many ways music is so wonderful and almost always beautiful. For me, it is a constant prayer no matter what kind of music I sing. Sometimes you can attain a level of spirituality which lifts one up and away from the earth. It can be heavenly. It can also be “easy” and can be approached with a certain joie de vivre, but it also has to be tempered by discipline and hard work, no matter what level of musician you are.
For choirs, if the director knows he/she can pull more out of a choir than what is given, he/she has the responsibility to do that. Mediocrity and just getting by can’t be acceptable if more can be done especially when it comes to giving to God. Also, as Cat described, it can be EXTREMELY STRESSFUL for choir directors and organists. Many times, their jobs depend on the quality shown during the masses, especially for Christmas and Easter. Very rare have I ever seen a choir director not stressed during the preparation for those times.
Try doing some renaissance motets when all but one or two tenors decide to not come for mass. Or with a children’s choir - they’re always there for the rehearsals because it’s during school, but on the weekends their parents don’t take them to mass and you only get about 10 kids out of a 30-voice kids’ choir. Some will take measures and basically kick those repeat offenders out. But then you have to deal with the lay-person politics of the parish or the school should you enact those rules and be ready to get attacked and hope that your pastor will defend you. Otherwise, your dead. Every parish has a different kind of dynamic and any person working within that parish can get really stressed out trying to work around it. Some directors have an better time not passing on that stress to the choir. But there are some directors who might have bad days or bad years (that often has to do with bad bosses) and the stress is felt by the choir.
All that said, I do understand how it can be very stressful and hard to accept when it is a church choir. If it is affecting you mentally, physically and spiritually, it would be a good time to take a break for a while. Otherwise, you’ll end up hating it. And if you feel a call to go back to it, you can join again refreshed. God bless.
