The Deputising Choir

The choral tradition in England goes back centuries, and because of it we have a wealth of composers in both the Catholic and Anglican traditions to be grateful for. I suppose it may be easy to blame the advances of Vatican 2 for the state of choral music in some of the provincial cathedrals and most parishes, but I’m not entirely certain that that is an accurate reflection of a complex issue.

Let me just anecdotally compare the two traditions for a second, the Catholic church is strong in certain parts of the country. The north west for example has a strong Irish Catholic community where whole areas are dominated by a Catholic population. London (especially), and the south east have many wealthy and intellectually traditional parishes such as the Oratory and two cathedrals that are less than a couple of miles apart on either side of the Thames for the diocese of Westminster and Southwark. In other parts of the country the Catholic populations are smaller, the diocese more recently erected, and resources sparse. On the Anglican side of the fence you have numerous monumental cathedrals with a musical tradition going back generations with a choir of men and professional lay clerks on the back row, but dwindling congregations and spiralling costs of maintaining music departments.

So, in many ways, the problems are shared even if perhaps the causes differ, namely the money and the human resource of musicians to hold together the music for the liturgy. For reasons I don’t wish to analyse here the Anglican tradition seems to have found a way to address this issue where the Catholic Church seems not to have. I’m talking now of the “deputising choir”.

The deputising choir is as it says, it fills in the gaps when the regular choir is unable to sing because of breaks in the term (having a front row of boys means drawing from either a choir school or local schools in the diocese and that means breaks during the academic year) and the obligation of paying the lay clerks at an average cost of £400 per service. What has emerged to fill this gap is a number of choirs up and down the country that regularly deputise, and many Cathedrals and “Queens Peculiars” (large churches with a status similar to the Catholic Basillica) have come to rely on them to maintain the choral calendar.

The model for many of these choirs is similar; they draw singers from up and down the country and work on a “booking in” basis where singers commit to meeting at a cathedral for a day or a weekend to sing the rosta of services. In my case, I sing with Poscimur (pictured), which draws its name from the Latin for “we are called”. But what can we learn from this model, and how might it work?

Well firstly, there is a definite thirst for good quality liturgical music, there is no doubt about that, but to convince both people to give their time and goodwill to singing means offering them something they want to do and be part of, and the other challenge is obtaining the good will and the invitations to sing in our Cathedrals and major churches. The problem there is any choir wanting to come and sing chant and polyphony in the cathedral of my diocese is likely to be given a polite but firm “thanks, but no thanks”, but some Cathedrals would be grateful for the opportunity. It’s all about defining your purpose and what you “do”. There might be a need to model yourself as a schola for traditional masses in the area/region. There might be a need for a choir of a good quality to sing at Ordinary Form masses where a balance of the modern and the ancient would work. There might be the opportunity to deputise in some Cathedrals and basilicas and give the full cathedral experience. This will vary depending on where you are. But if you are thinking “hey, I can do this, and I want to give it a go”, then the first thing to consider is your purpose and the gap you aim to fill. Like any venture, its success or failure depends on research and also knowing who is doing what out there.

The first thing you need is a good administrator. Poscimur works on the basis of individual responsibility, in that each singer obtains their own copies of the music for a particular venue and is responsible for being familiar with it on arrival. Some of us are professional musicians (we count the Assistant Master of Music of a provincial cathedral as one of our singers, and the Head of Music at a leading independent school as another) and others are skilled and experienced amateurs. Rehearsals are usually on the day, but for particularly complex venues the Director of Music holds rehearsals in the run up to events, and you may wish to consider for choirs that draw their singers from long distances asking some of your more proficient musicians to run regional rehearsals to a schedule so everyone has the opportunity to come prepared.

Of course, with resources all over the internet, this may not be entirely necessary. I’ve rehearsed a choir unfamiliar with chant for a mass on the feast of Christ the King using the resources on Watershed, and that has worked well. Geography need not be a limiting factor these days.

The other major issues are funding and recruitment. Any choir that fails to continually recruit will eventually wither, especially if the model you are following is to book in for certain events. You may have to ask for certain levels of commitment in order for it to work initially, but as the choir grows organically you can rely on your regulars who turn up all the time as well as those who can’t be at all places you sing at. Universities can be good recruiting grounds, especially as many academics are also budding musicians, not just the student body! Don’t be afraid to contact local choirs, many people sing in more than one choir and as long as you don’t deprive other choirs of their singers at key dates they are usually more than happy to help you recruit, providing you help them out when asked. As you grow, so will the potential for funding. Most choirs will charge small fees to cover admin costs. You may also need to decide if, and when to “vest” and whether your singers will invest in buying their own cassock and if you have the resources to subsidise this, though a vested choir is more likely to be invited to sing at acts of public worship than an unvested one.

The other thing you will need is a recording. This is cheap and easy to achieve and it gives a Director of Music at a church considering your offer to sing the opportunity to judge your standards. Once you have a reputation for a particular repertoire and standard then repeat invitations should be easy to come by, but a recording will often be the substitute for an audition. It would also help to be affiliated to a musical body such as the Royal School of Church Music and its international equivalents.

What I’m hoping to achieve by sharing this is to encourage anyone who feels the same frustrations I have about the lack of supply to meet the choral demand to perhaps consider entering the market. What’s really changed in the past 5 years or so is the level of freely available resources that enables this kind of ad hoc choir to function. If the willingness is there, and the enthusiasm, then eventually even those places that have not warmed to the notion of chant, polyphony, and psalmody resounding from their quires and galleries in recent years may find it hard to say no to the occasional visit from your deputising choir and who knows what will grow from there?