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.
Organs, as I am sure you know, need maintaining and tuning. I don't know what the annual operating cost for a "typical" church organ is, though.
As I recall, if we’re talking about regular maintenance it’s not nothing but it’s not a major line item either.
And how much will depend on the rest of the building - if the temperature and humidity fluctuate constantly the organ will likewise need a lot of attention.
Said organ is still used, although not in midwinter when services transfer to the church hall. But one can see why churches - for cost reasons if no other - abandon pipe organs and turn to other methods of musical accompaniment.
Even with regular maintenance there comes a time in the life of a pipe organ when major work is needed. That typically involves dismantling it, renewing leather bellows, renewing electrical contacts and cleaning pipes. The cost of that can run well into five figures. Many of our churches have Victorian organs that are at or beyond that stage already. I have played several in our town that are basically only fit for the scrap heap but where the churches regularly spend what they can to keep bits of them playable. None of them have paid organists.
With declining congregations, changes in the style of worship and the dearth of musicians with traditional classical skills who could play the organ (not helped by the squeezing out of the school curriculum of music) churches must wonder what is the point of finding that sort of money.
I do know that for many of our congregation, traditional ( Common Worship/BCP) services with traditional music ( organ and choir) are really important, when the alternative seems to be (dare I say it) happy clappy action songs of little or no theological or musical merit.
Or are cathedrals and major city churches the only ones who can afford traditional music?
I tend to be a bit hard line when it comes to what people want. Do they want it enough to find the money to support it?
Our church, which admittedly is very much at the "worship bands and praise songs" end of the spectrum, seems to make quite clever hybrid use of live musicans and recorded backing tracks. It does result in things being more rigid then a purely live band (and means the musicians cannot spontaneously add extra verses / repeat things so easily!) - but on the whole I think the end result is better than many smaller churches that try to do it all live with volunteer musicians of varying abilities, time commitments etc.
We have a moderate-sized pipe organ that we try to keep in a state of good repair. I used to know exactly how much that cost; I don't now remember but as I say it was a nontrivial sum but not one that loomed particularly large in the big picture. If if needs a major repair or rebuild that's obviously a different story.
I think the big picture here for many parishes is that we live in a world of dangerously unbalanced budgets. Understandably, no one wants to spend money that they don't have to. The danger is cutting to the point that immediately undermines the viability of the parish and sends it into a death spiral. Long-term uncertainty about viability is not a good thing but it is a better thing than certainty of failure in the short term.
The church where I grew up, in what is now a suburb of London, was built in c.1830. It has an apology for a chancel, and a West gallery. In around 1900 it was reconfigured, with rood screen, choir stalls and an organ squeezed uncomfortably into the chancel, the gallery being used merely as overflow seating. It reconfigured again about 20 years ago with the rood screen and chancel furniture removed and the organ installed into the gallery. I've not seen it but the whole arrangement seems to be much better.
The area is pretty wealthy, I guess that this project would not have been possible elsewhere.
I am sorry for your parish's struggles, @Puzzler, and hope you're able to keep going.
I have been pushing them to hire at least a paid pianist, but they claim they cannot find one. So we muddle along. And that describes the health of that congregation.
Contrast this to the congregation I normally worship at. Both the organist and choir director have been music faculty members at the university. They know their stuff. The choir is all volunteer, but most of them also have advanced degrees in their own professions. We received our new pastor yesterday. They essentially pulled out all the stops. I think he was blown away with the quality of the music. And I would add it also speaks to the health of the congregation.
To the point of using canned music. It has been my experience congregations and canned music don't aways mix well. Either the congregation sings a hymn slower or faster than the music. Or the canned music uses a different tune than the congregation is accustomed too.
How have those who do resort to canned music adjust to these differences?
To the question of trying to maintain old organs, has there been any discussion of purchasing a new electronic organ? They sound very much like pipes now. The cost of maintaining them is minimal. One previous congregation I pastored bought an electronic. Unfortunately, it was not quite able to play in the middle ranges well. We called the company. They sent out a new motherboard. A technician came out, swapped the new board for the old board, and everything was perfect. Since it was still under warrantee, no cost to us.
Might be a good time to retire the old, beloved organs for something that can last well into the future. Kind of like buying a car. Eventually, you know it will wear out. Eventually you know you will have to upgrade.
Select the correct tune in the first place, and use Musescore to set the tempo (I can't swear to always get it right but neither can a human pianist). There is a difference between a CD of backing tracks where you get what you're given and producing something specific to your congregation's needs. I include a voice track on mine too, partly to help cue the start of the hymn but also for housebound members to feel like they can join in.
This is one example (a few years old, I think I've got better at it):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zfPxzysCSKZPYLfQZX-mfK4XbcY_rLGj/view?usp=drivesdk
We are obliged to use our endowments to ensure we pay the Parish Share in full. At the present rate, there will be nothing left in a few years, neither money nor congregation, especially if we do not get a new incumbent. But that is another discussion altogether.
All this tweaking does take its time ...
Audacity is your friend for direct audio editing - it's pretty easy to slice a single verse in the middle of a track and either cut it out or paste it in a couple more times. I record voice tracks in Audacity and sometimes do a little editing to replace short section e.g. where I stumbled over words or got the volume wrong and it clipped.
This puts a lot of pressure on the choir and we are fortunate in having a reasonable one.
I was booted off it so the quality has improved.
I notice when visiting churches which have 'quires and places where they sing', that some of the same people appear in those choirs.
An Anglican couple regularly join our choir with our priest's blessing and also sing at RC parishes. I attended an Ash Wednesday Mass and recognised an RC woman who used to sing in the choir alongside my late wife at choral evensong and on 'high days and holidays' in a rural Anglican parish north of here.
Several people seem to turn up for various choirs in those few places that still have them regardless of denomination or tradition - which is lovely I think.
I love Evensong and Compline and am saddened by its decline.
I'm afraid canned music would send me screaming into agnosticism or atheism.
I'm sure it can be done well but when I heard it at a service in a URC setting it made my toes curl.
Worse was a charismatic fellowship, now dispersed, where they played a loud backing track presumably recorded at a mass rally in what seemed to be an attempt to paper over the cracks and compensate for declining numbers.
Is outrage.
I've attended some Orthodox services with very squawky or irritating chant but generally there are icons to look at so that sugars the pill.
There's not a great deal of expense involved on the musical side in Orthodoxy but not all parishes have people who know what they are doing.