Pope Francis (!!!) on choir and congregational singing

A combination of travel and illness has sidelined this blog for a while. How nice of Pope Francis, of all people, to hand me a little boost to get the blog back on its feet and at least starting to recover with a little warmup entry.

Apparently the Vatican welcomed an event with the unprepossing title "International Meeting of Choirs" over the weekend. In giving welcome to the participants in the event the Pope said many fairly boilerplate-type things about the importance of choirs and the power of music and all that. Naturally, one particular, not very boilerplate-type thing (at least in the context of a gathering of choirs) that the Pope said is what caught my attention.

The money quote:

“You are the musical animators of the whole congregation. Don’t take its place, depriving the people of God of the chance to sing with you and bear witness to the Church’s communal prayer.”

Not bad, particularly considering he's speaking to a whole bunch of choir singers. (Not to mention speaking from a tradition that has only been practicing congregational singing for about half a century.)

Of course, choirs can be allowed or even encouraged to outshine the song participation of the congregation. To the degree that significant resources, i.e. dollars, are invested into the program - music, possibly paid soloists, etc. - the temptation to put the choir front and center more often is going to be pretty natural, responding to a perceived pressure to "show a return on that investment." Still, the choir's principal job is to encourage the song of the congregation, and to the degree that it becomes a substitute for the congregation rather than a support to it, the choir becomes a problem.

And let's be clear that choirs are not the only potential such impediments. There is supreme irony that in churches that go the "contemporary" route, the very bands/worship leaders ostensibly hired to lead or encourage the congregation's song can (and do, often enough) end up drowning it out. Heavy reliance on soloists can do it, as can an overzeaous organist.

At any rate, I wouldn't have expected the Pope to be quite so direct on the subject, but hey, when it comes to the encouragement of congregational singing, it's nice to have such an ally, even from outside the mainline.

That headline though:

"Help community sing, don't replace its voice"