Essentials in Conducting/Chapter 11

by Karl Wilson Gehrkens

CHAPTER XI

Directing the Church Choir

THE PROBLEMIn taking up the special problems of conducting involved in directing a church choir, we shall first of all need to consider the dual nature of church music—its religio-artistic aspect, and in studying the matter from this standpoint we shall soon discover that most of the difficulties that have encompassed church music in the past can be traced directly or indirectly to a conflict or a lack of balance between these two factors. The churchman has not been sufficiently interested in the art side of church music, while the music director, organist, and singers have all too frequently been not only entirely out of sympathy with the religious work of the church, but have usually been wholly ignorant concerning the purpose and possibilities of music in the church service. The result in most churches at the present time is either that the music is vapid or even offensive from the art standpoint; or else that it emphasizes the purely artistic side so strongly that it entirely fails to perform its function as an integral part of a service whose raison d'être is, of course, to inculcate religious feeling. "The church wishes for worship in music, but not for the worship of music," is said to have been the statement of Father Haberl at the Saint Cecilia Conference in Mainz (1884).^[1] And it is indeed a far cry from this demand to the very evident deification of music that exists in many of our modern city churches, with their expensive soloists and their utter failure to cause music to minister as "the handmaid of religion." The problem is not a new one, and in a book written about a century ago the author says:^[2]

The guiding rule which ought always to be present to the mind of a clergyman should also be held in mind by all good musicians who would help the church's object, and not employ the sacred building merely as a place where all kind of sounds that tickle the ear can be heard. All kinds of music are suitable for sacred use that do not raise secular associations. A Largo, an Adagio, a Grave, an Andante, an Allegro, a fugal or a non-fugal composition can all be performed in the Church but should one and all be of a staid and dignified character throughout, elevated and sober, and of such a nature that any preacher of note could say: "This splendid music is a fitting introduction to my discourse"; or "After such singing my lips had better be closed, and the spirit left to its own silent worship."

A distinguished modern writer voices the same thought in the following words:^[3]

The singing of the choir must be contrived and felt as part of the office of prayer. The spirit and direction of the whole service for the day must be unified; the music must be a vital and organic element in this unit.

But in most churches music does not function in this ideal way and in many cases (especially in non-liturgical churches) there is no unity whatever in the service, and the music is evidently both performed and listened to from a purely art standpoint; or else it is so crude and inartistic as to be actually painful to the worshiper with refined sensibilities.

THE REMEDYWhat is to be the remedy for this state of affairs? Or is there no remedy, and must we go on, either enduring tortures artistically, or suffering spiritually? We are not omniscient, but we venture to assert that conditions might be caused to improve by the adoption of several changes of procedure that are herewith recommended.

1. Educate the minister musically during his general and professional training, causing him not only to acquire a certain amount of technical musical ability, but attempting also to cultivate in him that intangible something which we call musical taste. A few seminaries—notably the Hartford Theological Seminary and the Boston University Department of Religious Education—are doing pioneer work along this line, but they are the exception rather than the rule, and the thing must be done by all if the desired result is to obtain in the future.

2. Encourage the organization of chorus choirs composed largely of those who belong to or attend the church and are therefore vitally interested in its work.

3. Select more churchly music, i.e., a type of music which when appropriately rendered will tend to bring about a mood of worship. This will often mean a simpler style of music; it may mean more a cappella singing; and it undoubtedly implies music that is fundamentally sincere. That many of our modern sacred solos and anthems fail in this latter respect must be evident to any one who has given the matter any thought whatever.

4. Let the church make an attempt to secure as its musical director one who possesses a type of seriousness and high-mindedness that will make him sympathetic with what the church is trying to do, thus enabling him to minister to the people through music even as the priest or preacher does through words of consolation or inspiration. We admit that this sort of a man (who is at the same time unimpeachable in his musical authority) is often hard to find; but that the two elements are incompatible, and that such a type of choir director cannot be trained, we absolutely refuse to believe. If the church sufficiently recognizes the failure of music as now frequently administered, and makes a strong enough demand for leaders of a different type, they are bound to be forthcoming.

CORRELATING THE MUSIC WITH THE REST OF THE SERVICEHaving trained our minister from a musical standpoint, organized a chorus choir, selected appropriate music, and secured the right type of choir leader, let us now make a strenuous attempt to correlate the musical with the non-musical parts of the service; and if we succeed in our effort at this point also, our task will be at least in sight of completion. This desirable correlation will only result if both minister and musician are willing to work together amicably, each recognizing the rights of the other, and both willing to give in upon occasion in order to make the service as a whole work out more smoothly. Many humorous stories are told, the point of which is based upon the absolute incongruity of the various parts of the church service. The writer remembers most vividly an incident that occurred during the first year of the Great War, in the church in which he was at that time the choirmaster. The choir had just finished singing an anthem written by an English composer as a prayer for peace,^[4] the concluding strains being sung to the words "Give peace, O God, give peace again! Amen." As the choir sat down, after an effective rendition of the anthem, there was a hush in the congregation, showing that the message of the music had gone home to the hearers. But a moment later the spell was rudely broken, as the minister rose, and in a stentorian voice proclaimed the text of the day—"For I come not to bring peace into the world, but a sword."

The responsibility in this case rested as much upon the shoulders of the choir director as upon those of the preacher, for he should at least have taken the trouble to acquaint his coworker with the nature of the anthem, so that some reference might have been made to the subject in either the prayer or scripture reading or in some of the hymns, if not in the sermon itself. It is perhaps not always feasible to have sermon and anthem agree absolutely in subject, but it is entirely possible to avoid such occurrences as that cited above, if even a small amount of thought is given to the matter of correlation each week. Surely the choir leader could at least provide the minister with the titles of the anthems and solos to be rendered.

DIFFICULTIES INVOLVED IN THE CHORUS CHOIRIn advocating a return to the volunteer chorus choir instead of the salaried solo quartet, we are well aware of the disadvantages that are likely to accompany any attempt along this line. We know that the chorus choir composed of volunteers is often poorly balanced, usually contains for the most part indifferent voices and often unskilful readers, and frequently consists largely of giddy, young girls, whose main object in singing in the choir is obviously not based upon their interest in the spiritual advancement of the community! But we believe that under the right type of leadership most of these bad conditions will in time disappear, and that, through the chorus choir, music may well become a vitalizing force in the life of many a church in which a revitalizing process is badly needed.

In order to make ourselves perfectly clear, let us summarize at this point the qualifications especially needed by the conductor of a volunteer church chorus.

1. He must be a reasonably good musician, possessing not only familiarity with music in general, but in particular an intimate knowledge of vocal music, and knowing at least the fundamentals of voice training.
2. He must understand the purpose of church music, and must be in sympathy with the religious work of the church.
3. He must be young in spirit, and thus be able to take a sympathetic attitude toward the members of his choir as human beings, and particularly as human beings who are still young, inexperienced, and frequently thoughtless. This implies, of course, a certain amount of personal magnetism and this is as necessary in the volunteer choir for holding the membership together and securing regular attendance as it is for inspiring them musically.

THE DANGER OF INDIVIDUALISMOne of the chief difficulties encountered in more or less all choral organizations, and especially in the volunteer church choir, is the tendency on the part of many members to do all they possibly can in the way of dress, actions, loud singing, and lack of voice blending, to call attention to themselves as individuals. This not only results in frequent offense to the eye of the worshiper because of clashing color combinations (the remedy for which is, of course, some uniform method of dressing or perhaps a vestment), but what is even more serious, it often causes a lack of voice blending that seriously interferes with both the religious and the artistic effect of the music. For this latter state of affairs there is no remedy except to learn to listen to individual voices, and when some voice does not blend with the rest, to let the person who owns it know that he must either sing very softly or else stop entirely. This can often be accomplished by a look in the direction of the singer who is causing the trouble; but if this does not suffice, then a private admonition may be necessary and here we have a situation in which the diplomacy and the good humor of the conductor must be exercised to the utmost, especially if the offending voice belongs to a prominent member of, and perhaps a liberal contributor to, the church. In such a case, one may sometimes, without unduly compromising one's reputation for veracity, inform the offending member that his method of singing is very bad indeed for his voice, and if persisted in will surely ruin that organ!

Needless to say, the conductor must exercise the utmost tactfulness in dealing with such matters as these, but it is our belief that if he insists strongly enough in the rehearsal upon a unified body of tone from each part, and backs this up by private conversations with individual members, with perhaps a free lesson or two in correct voice placement, or even the elimination of one or two utterly hopeless voices, a fine quality of voice blending will eventually result. It might be remarked at this point that such desirable homogeneity of tone will only eventuate if each individual member of the choir becomes willing to submerge his own voice in the total effect of his part; and that learning to give way in this fashion for the sake of the larger good of the entire group is one of the most valuable social lessons to be learned by the young men and women of today. It is the business of the choir leader to drive home this lesson whenever necessary. It is also his task to see to it that no member of his choir by his actions causes any interference with the worship of the congregation. In plain speech, it is his duty to see to it that choir members conduct themselves in a manner appropriate to their position, and that they do not by whispering, laughing, note writing, and other similar frivolities, hinder in any way the development of a spirit of reverent devotion on the part of the congregation.

SOLO SINGING IN THE CHURCH SERVICEAnother type of undesirable individualism is to be found in the case of the church solo singer. We have no quarrel with the sacred solo when sung in such a way as to move the hearts of the congregation to a more sincere attitude of devotion; and we are entirely willing to grant that the sacred solo has the inherent possibility of becoming as pregnant with religious fervor as the sermon itself, and may indeed, because of its esthetic and emotional appeal, convey a message of comfort or of inspiration to many a heart that might remain untouched by the appeal of a merely intellectual sermon. But it has been our observation that the usual church solo very seldom functions in this way; that the singer usually considers it only as an opportunity to show how well he can perform; that he seldom thinks very much about the words; that the selections are usually not chosen because they are appropriate to the remainder of the service but because they are "effective" or perhaps because they are well adapted to the voice or the style of the singer; and that our congregations have grown so accustomed to this sort of thing that the performance of a sacred solo is now usually listened to, commented upon, and criticized in exactly the same way in the church service as would be the case at a concert performance.

Instead of thinking, "I am delivering a message," the singer is only too palpably saying to us, "I am singing a solo, don't you think I am doing it well?"

The remedy for this condition of affairs is the same as that which we have been recommending for church music in general, and before church solo singing can be commended in very glowing terms as a method of assisting the congregation to become more thoughtful, more fervent in their devotional attitude, we must have:

1. More appropriate selections.
2. A more sincerely reverent and a more thoroughly non-egoistic attitude on the part of the soloists.

Because these things are so difficult of attainment under present conditions our feeling is that, all in all, chorus music is probably considerably more effective as a vehicle for making a religio-esthetic appeal, than solo singing.

PROGRESS IN PUBLIC SCHOOL MUSIC AS RELATED TO CHURCH CHOIRSThe public schools are doing very much more in the way of teaching music than formerly, and in many places consistent work is being carried on as the result of which the children now in school are learning to read music notation somewhat fluently, to use their voices correctly, and are cultivating as well a certain amount of taste in music. Because of this musical activity in the public schools, our task of organizing and directing volunteer church choirs should be very much simplified in the near future. Community singing will help at this point also, and the very much larger number of boys and girls who are receiving training as the result of the development of high school music, ought to make it considerably easier to secure the right type of choir director in the future than has been the case in the past. As a result of the present widespread interest in music and music study, it should be possible also to get very much better congregational singing, and withal to interest the congregation (and the preacher!) in a better type of music. All in all, the outlook is extremely promising and we venture to predict a great improvement in all that pertains to church music during the next quarter century.

IMPORTANCE OF CONGREGATIONAL SINGINGLet us close this discussion by urging the choir director to remember that the most important music, at least in the Protestant church, is the congregational singing; and to consider the fact that if music is to help people worship without becoming a substitute for worship, it will be necessary for him not only to inspire his choir with high ideals of church music, but also to devise means of inducing the congregation to take part in the singing to a much greater extent than is now the case in most churches. It is usually true that the finer the choir, and the more elaborate the accompaniment, the less hearty is the congregational singing. If there is to be steady growth in the efficiency of chorus choirs, therefore, it will not be surprising if congregational singing sometimes falls off in volume and enthusiasm. The reasons for such a decline are: First, because the people take no responsibility for the singing, knowing that it will go well whether they join in or not; second, because the choir often sings so well that the people would rather listen than take part; third, because the director frequently stands with his back to the congregation and apparently does not expect much singing from them; and fourth, because the choir leader often insists upon a highly musical interpretation of the hymns, this involving the carrying over of phrases, et cetera. These latter things may well be done after a long period of training, but in the early stages the way to arouse interest in congregational singing is not to insist too strongly upon the purely artistic aspects, but to remember that most of the congregation are musically untrained and not only do not see the point to all these refinements, but will frequently become discouraged and stop singing entirely if too many of them are insisted upon. It will be well also to apply to this type of group singing the principles already discussed in connection with community "sings," having the congregation sing alone part of the time, having a stanza sung as a solo occasionally, making use of antiphonal effects, and in other ways introducing variety and placing more responsibility upon the congregation; and, most important of all, calling attention more frequently to the words of the hymns, either the preacher or the choir leader sometimes giving the stories of their origin, and in other ways attempting to interest the congregation in the meaning of the hymn as a poem. Perhaps a more careful selection of the hymns would help also, especially if a consistent attempt were to be made to give the congregation an opportunity of practising the more musical tunes, so that they would come to feel familiar with them and at ease in singing them. If the choir director will take the trouble to go through the hymn book and select forty or fifty really fine hymns and tunes that are not being used, suggesting to the minister that these be sung sometimes in connection with the more familiar ones, he will very often find the minister more than willing to meet him half way in the matter. In these various ways the choir leader and the minister may by consistent cooperation inspire the congregation to the point where the vocal response is as hearty and as heartfelt as it used to be in the olden days.

1. Quoted by Curwen on the title page of Studies in Worship Music (second series).
2. Thibaut, Purity in Music, translated by Broadhouse, p. 24.
3. Dickinson, Music in the History of the Western Church, p. 401.
4. John E. West, O God of Love, O King of Peace.