I’m sick today so I was lying in bed listening to the Today Programme on radio4 and there was this piece about selfish Christmas carol choirs. This guy was on complaining about the fact that Christmas choirs are hogging all the carols. He was saying and the presenter was agreeing that when one goes to a choir service - not that I do - the choir now sings most if not all and the congregation doesn’t sing. They had a representative from St Paul’s choir service who was on saying that it’s not a big change and that the congregation still participate by quiet prayer and contemplation. Whereas the presenter and the other guy were lamenting a lost time when everyone came and sang their heads off out of tune.
This seems to me more of the whole bowling alone phenomena. Organisations of participation (which the Church used to be, and very good at it in it’s time) are divorcing themselves from these small rituals of participation. Even though I might not be going to a carol service I find myself angry and appalled at the thought of not allowing a group of people to sing along with traditional carols, or marginalized by creating new ones that no one can actually sing along to. Not singing together to carols is a great example of the Putnam thing as well as the broadcast/performance mentality that grips the population.
It also brings to mind a documentary I was watching the other night on the origins of music. It seems that everyone in the “developed” world listens to more music than they used to, but the number of people making music is significantly less. This is all due to the mediation of recordable music. In “primitive” societies everyone makes music and they create rhythms all the time, music to work to, music to celebrate, music to communicate. The western world tries to make music professional and the non-developed world makes music participatory.
Hopefully we have reached the full pendulum swing to the small number of professional musicians and that advancing music technology is bringing the so called professional standard to the general public. The pendulum is swinging the other way and more people will be able to make music that others will take part in.
January 6th, 2004 at 11:37 am
This is probably a bit out of date now but I stumbled across this and I thought I would leave you a cheering message. I’m not a big church goer myself but I’ve always liked Christmas carols. I went to a carol service before christmas (with a church going friend) and the vicar made a big deal about this being carols for the people and not a carol concert as the trend seemed to be. The choir would sing but everyone should sing along and sing their little hearts out. It was very festive