A congregation of the United Church of Canada
Choir
“Might we sing in tune better?”
You may recall from past Noticings that my wife and I are members of a community choir in Cobourg called the Oriana Singers. This week marks our one-year anniversary of joining the group. It has become one of our favourite things to do, mostly because it’s fun and we do it together. Monday nights now contain the three S’s – soup, sing, and scream. (The scream is ice cream, of course, after choir.)
At Monday’s rehearsal our director was working with one of the sections by having them hold a sustained note. While they did that she directed them to subtly change the shape of their mouths – wider, rounder, more open, etc. It was amazing to hear what a difference these minor technical adjustments made, and when enough of the section made the right mouth shape together suddenly the held note both rang out more beautifully and more in tune.
It got me thinking that we never do that in church. We never get into technical teachings about things concerning our personal practice. We don’t do prayer coaching, or scripture reading techniques. We just leave it up to the individual to figure it out on their own. Well, sometimes we do workshops about such things, but it’s not a core part of church culture like it is for musicians. Church-folk like to be inspired, but not directed.
If our choir had that approach we’d rarely sing in tune.
If the church adopted such a practice, might we ‘sing in tune’ better?
I’m not exactly sure what such coaching/directing would look like. And while singers have certain vowel shapes that are right or wrong there is not a technical equivalent in prayer. It’s not that people pray ‘wrong’ necessarily, there’s no single ‘right way’ per se, but we could all benefit from some thoughtful analysis and coaching.
Alas, church-folk don’t think much about our personal technique like musicians do. Pity. I wonder what might change if we all saw ourselves as faith-musicians, striving to make the best music together possible, willing to allow ourselves to be ‘directed’? I suspect the ‘music’ we would make would be heavenly, and more in tune!