Though old Ben Franklin wasn’t talking about choirs in 1776 when he talked of the risks of not ‘hanging together,’ maybe it’s not too big a stretch to apply it to our choral community. In 1776, the signers needed to cooperate with each other to protect the whole, or else. We don’t face British bayonets or ropes, but there are plenty of other threats, including cuts to arts education and decreasing exposure by youth to our art, the multiplying of media and leisure alternatives, economic pressures on leisure time, the shifting nature of music in church, etc.
In case these threats seem overblown, let’s look at some NEA numbers. In 1992 and 2008 about the same number of adults said they had sung at least once chorally in the past year, but the adult population ot the U.S. grew by the tens of millions over that time, so the percentage of adults participating in choir has actually decreased by about a fifth.
We don’t need to look to survey data, though, to get a picture of the road we’re on. We can look at our choirs. I had the chance to attend a church choir festival today, and take a look at the choirs singing. The good news was that there was a children’s choir from one church. However, once you adjusted your sights to the adult groups, singers appearing under thirty were rare, and those with hair grayer than mine were in the clear majority.
A scientific sample? Absolutely not.
Something to ponder? Absolutely.
Obviously, we’re already ‘hanging separately.’ Individual efforts by individual directors and churches seem to be hit or miss, with the number of misses being greater than places where the youth of the church are learning to love choral singing.
Can we learn how to ‘hang together,’ to support choir singing in church and community? I certainly hope so. It’s about time to talk about it.