Music infrastructure

[SMHW]

How much physical space does your parish devote to its music program?

My parish doesn’t have a choir “loft” but we do have three alcoves in the “back” walls of our Church where the seats are on built in risers. They are all designed for choirs but only one is actually used that purpose; the others are used as seating for parishioners. The middle (and largest) section used by the choir is designed to accommodate about 80 singers. The floor in front of this section has an organ, piano, and room to seat other musicians who play flute, cello, etc. There are cabinets built into the wall behind the singers where sound equipment and a few boxes of music can be stored.

In addition to the space in the the Church the Music/worship director has an office next to all the other parish offices. We have several meeting rooms and one of them is where the choirs practice. It has a piano, several built in cabinets and several rolling file cabinets for storing our choir music. There never seems to be enough room for all the choir music. We keep having to find new spaces to put it.

We’d love to have a practice room right near where the choir sits so we wouldn’t have to warm up in the church before Mass. (The multipurpose room we use during the week isn’t available on Sunday mornings.) But that’s probably years away from happening.

So what kind of space/equipment does your parish have for music?

 

[Sarabande]

Both of the parishes where I work have a choir/organ loft. It is the only place to practice as well.

 

[gh4]

Your church sounds wonderful.

I think my parish church holds 100 people tops.
The choir sits in the back and takes up one or two rows (each row holds 4 people) and the musician (guitar player) stands behind the pews when she plays and has a folding chair to sit on when she’s not playing.
We have a very small area in a storage room for music, two 3 foot sections of shelving.
Our choir practices in the church during the week.

We have no organ player though we do have an organ. We have no piano.

 

[englishredrose]

we have an organ loft and sit up there. we don’t bother with warming up before hand as only a casual church choir and not a cathedral choir as such. its great as get a good view of everything (too much a view sometimes when folk think they are having a discreet itch behind or squeeze of their partners buttocks thinking no one else has seen though they are wedding people that fall into that trick etc) and can hear the sermons and service far better up there. and people can’t see what we do through out either which has its other blessings I can tell you in more ways than one. Like having a major cold is not a problem as no one sees the tissues and boiled sweets and bottles of water in the hot weather.

 

[OrganistRob]

At my Parish, we have the choir loft in the church. There is a small closet in the choir loft staircase where I keep the choir robes and music folders/hymnals. We have a storage room in the basement where we keep the choral music which is shared with maintenance. There used to be a music room in the school building but that was destroyed when they sold the building. As of right now, I do not have an office at the church.

 

[Phemie]

Our church has a center aisle and on each side of the center is a section of ‘large’ pews (seat 6-7), an aisle, and a section of small pews (seat 4-5). The first 4 small pews on the right hand side (as seen from the back) have been turned sideways and that’s where our choir sits and from where they sing.

The organ has been moved to the sacristy since no one can play it and it was sitting there taking up space. The only musical accompaniment we have is 1-3 guitars, depending on who’s in town on a given Sunday. They only rehearse before Mass, except at Christmas & Easter, and they do that in one of the offices.

 

[The_Curt_Jester]

My parish has a choir loft (large), but not really anything in it for storage. There’s a small folding table, a tiny shelf, the organ bench (inside), and a large “shelf” that runs along the back portion of the loft. Other than that, there’s half a cabinet and one drawer in a filing cabinet for music. In the storage room there are some more cabinets with old music, but these are in a place that is very, very inconvenient to access. Anything to do with music at that church has been declining rapidly.

At the parish in which I work (considerably smaller than the first), I have the organ loft, the bench, a double shelf, and pretty much all the chairs I want to store music. Since I don’t live close enough to the place, I generally just carry my music back and forth instead of storing it. The Church has very little music of its own.