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Views from the Choir Loft

Repeating Repertoire? • Andrea Leal

Andrea Leal · April 4, 2020

F WE WERE all angels, we would sing endless hosannas for eternity in Heaven, praising the Lamb with the most exquisite and breathtaking music in all of Creation. We would know how to do this without ever having learned it, and yet it would be absolutely perfect. Our hymns of praise would exalt the Most High in ways that no earthly composer, and no human masterpiece could ever attain.

But alas, we are not beautiful angelic beings. We are greatly limited in knowledge, understanding and ability to praise the Lord with song. And yet, being His creatures, we still deeply desire to exalt him with music. Unlike the angels, our music must be taught, learned and mastered. This takes an incredible amount of labor and sacrifice!

When you are further challenged by being in a parish that does not have a natural pool of “talent” to draw from, you must create that talent by teaching willing volunteers. It is no exaggeration to say that the process of training volunteer singers and teaching them a basic repertoire can take years. For this reason, it is my belief that every choir should have a set of hymns that they have mastered, which a choir director can confidently pull out of their back pocket without advance rehearsal. Especially with smaller choirs, where it is difficult to ‘hide” the mistakes of weaker singers, it only makes sense that once you have spent the time to master a song you should make full use of it.

Additionally, when you consider the sheer quantity 1 of music a choir may sing on any given Sunday, it becomes clear that doing new music all the time is truly out of the question. Consider what you must cover with your choir when you learn a new song. It isn’t just about teaching the right notes. You must also perfect vowels, tone, Latin pronunciation (if it isn’t in English), rhythm, phrasing, and you must spend time ironing out challenging sections. Practicality demands a certain amount of repetition. Case in point, my choir has this lovely hymn during Lent for the last couple of years. By now I know that we can sing it at the drop of the hat. Being able to do that is an incredible advantage.


Not only does my choir love singing something familiar, knowing that we will be singing a familiar piece on a given Sunday frees up valuable rehearsal time to dedicate to other (new!) pieces.

Therefore, while we can and should repeat some of our repertoire, once you have a core set of songs to fall back on it is important to regularly introduce fresh pieces. Not only does this prevent you and your singers from becoming burned out, but it can also be a good way to expand their knowledge of different composers and musical eras. New things are exciting to us humans. Being constrained by our earthly limitations, we do indeed tire of singing the same things over and over. If we were more like the angels, we would never tire of singing endless songs of praise, just as our Blessed Lord never tires of hearing them!

“And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings,
are full of eyes all round and within,
and day and night they never cease to sing,
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!”

Rev. 4:8



NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   For example, in the Extraordinary Form, there are 5 propers that are chanted at every Mass, and their melodies are not repeated very frequently. In fact, many are never repeated at all.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Repeating Repertoire Last Updated: April 5, 2020

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Andrea Leal

About Andrea Leal

Andrea Leal is a wife and homeschooling mother of 6 children. She serves as choir director for the Traditional Latin Mass in Las Vegas.—(Read full biography).

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20 January 2021 • REMINDER

We have no savings, no endowment, and no major donors. You can help us (please) by subscribing to our mailing list. It’s incredibly easy; just scroll to the bottom of any blog article and enter your email address. Thank you!

—Jeff Ostrowski
19 January 2021 • Confusion over feasts

For several months, we have discussed the complicated history of the various Christmas feasts: the Baptism of the Lord, the feast of the Holy Family, the Epiphany, and so forth. During a discussion, someone questioned my assertion that in some places Christmas had been part of the Epiphany. As time went on, of course, the Epiphany came to represent only three “manifestations” (Magi, Cana, Baptism), but this is not something rigid. For example, if you look at this “Capital E” from the feast of the Epiphany circa 1350AD, you can see it portrays not three mysteries but four—including PHAGIPHANIA when Our Lord fed the 5,000. In any event, anyone who wants proof the Epiphany used to include Christmas can read this passage from Dom Prosper Guéranger.

—Jeff Ostrowski
6 January 2021 • Anglicans on Plainsong

A book published by Anglicans in 1965 has this to say about Abbat Pothier’s Editio Vaticana, the musical edition reproduced by books such as the LIBER USUALIS (Solesmes Abbey): “No performing edition of the music of the Eucharistic Psalmody can afford to ignore the evidence of the current official edition of the Latin Graduale, which is no mere reproduction of a local or partial tradition, but a CENTO resulting from an extended study and comparison of a host of manuscripts gathered from many places. Thus the musical text of the Graduale possesses a measure of authority which cannot lightly be disregarded.” They are absolutely correct.

—Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

“The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the Pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.”

— ‘His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI (11 May 2005)’

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