The cost of maintaining traditional music in parish churches
Puzzler
Shipmate
Today my church is focussing on Stewardship. In that context, the cost of choir, organist, musical director is up for discussion, although it is tiny in comparison with the huge Parish Share and maintenance of an 800 year old building. Each year we draw on reserves to meet the total cost, but one day these will run out.
As a choir we are acutely aware of the small number of people who attend our monthly Evensong. In winter it moved to 4pm, but this actually led to a drop in numbers. Last week only two people attended. This couple go round the local churches attending Evensong in various places, they are not parishioners.
Currently the choir practises fortnightly, for a monthly Evensong, led by our young MD. He now has another post which means he cannot attend if/ when Evensong reverts to 6pm, nor can he attend most Sunday mornings because of other commitments. He is a young musician trying to scratch a viable income, playing, teaching, accompanying etc.
Our small village church has a long tradition of an RSCM robed choir, but we have no children in it and we are all getting older. The church has a variety of traditional and more modern services. The choir robes for Sunday morning Communion services and currently leads the hymns and parts of the Mass of St Thomas, as well as the monthly Evensong. We are not paid, nor do we expect to be. We have a number of regular organists, paid per service.
The choir is appreciated, particularly when we support other churches in our group.
We are all trying to find a way forward in this context, not least considering the approx £10k annual cost of the provision of traditional music.
Is it affordable? Is it money well spent? How long can we continue?
I am sure there must be other parish churches in this situation, so I am interested in your experiences. I am also aware that in many places, once the choir goes, traditional music is next to go.
As a choir we are acutely aware of the small number of people who attend our monthly Evensong. In winter it moved to 4pm, but this actually led to a drop in numbers. Last week only two people attended. This couple go round the local churches attending Evensong in various places, they are not parishioners.
Currently the choir practises fortnightly, for a monthly Evensong, led by our young MD. He now has another post which means he cannot attend if/ when Evensong reverts to 6pm, nor can he attend most Sunday mornings because of other commitments. He is a young musician trying to scratch a viable income, playing, teaching, accompanying etc.
Our small village church has a long tradition of an RSCM robed choir, but we have no children in it and we are all getting older. The church has a variety of traditional and more modern services. The choir robes for Sunday morning Communion services and currently leads the hymns and parts of the Mass of St Thomas, as well as the monthly Evensong. We are not paid, nor do we expect to be. We have a number of regular organists, paid per service.
The choir is appreciated, particularly when we support other churches in our group.
We are all trying to find a way forward in this context, not least considering the approx £10k annual cost of the provision of traditional music.
Is it affordable? Is it money well spent? How long can we continue?
I am sure there must be other parish churches in this situation, so I am interested in your experiences. I am also aware that in many places, once the choir goes, traditional music is next to go.
Comments
Aside from that, I'm really not sure if our choir, such as it is, costs the church anything. We got a few melody-edition hymnbooks recently, but they were a gift from a lady in the choir, so no cost to the church.
I suppose you could put the cost of heating the church for Evensong once a month down as a choir expense, but imho that would be a bit churlish.
At the moment we don't do anything except lead the singing, so there's no expenditure on music.
1) organists
2) music director.
I rather fear that it's the whole traditional life of parish churches that is unsustainable, unless someone finds a way of providing significant new resources. I genuinely don't know how to square this circle, but piecemeal cuts don't achieve that; they just make the agony feel interminable. On the other hand, just shutting everything down and starting again is too much for nearly all congregations, and would simply lead to either nothing, or whatever anyone can pay for, which at present is, shall we say, a very particular model, and one which I want nothing to do with.
There are a lot of places where you can get MP3 files of church music. Have you considered trying these? In my last group of churches, three used music files and the results were mostly very good. You learned through experience which music files to avoid but most were perfectly acceptable. In two churches, they were played via bluetooth over the church's sound system. In the other church, they had a very good speaker that was set up at the front of the church.
We have an ambitious music program at our parish that costs money. It’s worrying because like most everyone else, we are running deficits and this cannot go on forever. But it is an important part of why people are drawn to the parish and we would probably be non viable without it.
I would say that a "musical tradition" needs to be done well if it is to be attractive; I'd find it hard to be part of a church which consistently had anthems or voluntaries sung or played badly. In such cases I'd say, "Don't try to do what is beyond your reach". What one does need is instrumentalists and/or singers who can get the congregation singing.
I'm with @BaptistTrainfan on this. Circumstances may force change, but it is possible to reshape the place and style of music in worship without losing everything you value. Given your dwindling resources, financial and in choral terms, if you had to start afresh, what could be the options?
I don't use MP3s because they're a lot harder to customise. Midi files are great, and infinitely customisable with Musescore, and the musical reproduction is such that, while serious musicians will notice, they're fine for congregational singing.
There is a good selection made for congregational singing here:
http://www.billysloan.co.uk/index.html
I find them a little overenthusiastic about slowing at the end of the introduction but they're a good starting point.
Hymnary.org has a much broader selection but need a bit more work to make them singable.
If you have appropriate copyright licences there is a (subscription) app PlayScore 2 that will take a photo of a printed score and generate a pretty darn good midi or mxml version.
I’m not really disagreeing with BT’s comments about music needing to be done well but would add the caveat that there are various standards of “well” and there can be value in the doing of music even if the results are sometimes inconsistent. And perhaps inconsistency in some circumstances may be a necessary step on the way to better things.
Canned music is sometimes used in other services in some of the other churches in the group and in our monthly family services, though a pianist is normally available. The main services in my particular church always have an organist. It is considered a priority.
Admittedly when we had Evensong at 6pm attendance was still pretty sparse. People say they want a choir, but don’t turn up, in the same way as village people say they love their parish church and expect it to be there for them when they need it, yet don’t normally darken the doors or support it financially.
Undoubtedly the greatest loss would be felt by the choir community. Six of us are pretty regular on a Sunday morning, four more are committed to singing at Evensong and we have regular guest singers whose church no longer has Evensong. We all sing with other choirs and are competent singers, but some struggle a bit on so few rehearsals.
Our MD has been awarded an organ scholarship at a city centre church which takes up most of his time, but it is only for a year.
We are in vacancy at the moment, but of course things may change direction when/ if we get a new vicar.
We just think a long-standing choral tradition should not lightly be abandoned.