28 February 2023

What to do if your parish or church community wants to have good music but operates on a shoestring budget and cannot afford to pay anyone to lead it?

The traditional solution to this common problem is for a member or members of the congregation with keyboard or other instrumental skills to volunteer, perhaps on a roster, at least to provide the accompaniment for hymns and other congregational singing. Indeed, in past decades in very many churches competent volunteer musicians were the norm, reflecting an age when learning the piano was a childhood rite of passage. Many church musicians played purely for pleasure and/or as a way of making their particular contribution to the life of the church. Today, however, volunteer organists or even pianists are a rare and precious commodity. And, let’s face it, volunteers can be a mixed blessing. Sometimes the result can be most encouraging, on a par with having a paid professional. Sometimes it can be, erm, not…. And brave is the vicar who will take aside the only person who has volunteered and tell them that their efforts are no longer required even though there is no-one ready to replace them. 

In fact in the contemporary church it is not at all uncommon for a congregation to have no one who is capable or willing to volunteer to lead music. What might we do to encourage and enable the congregation to sing when there is no-one to play?

There are basically three options: give up and have no singing, try unaccompanied singing, or use pre-recorded accompaniments played through a sound system.

There is certainly some value in having a service with no singing as one of a suite of Sunday options. Much of great spiritual depth can be achieved with silence and a measured tone, and for some people a quiet, said service is exactly what they seek. If desired, pre-recorded “mood music” can be added, to help to set the tone before and after the service, and perhaps for reflection at some point during it. However this does not lead to anyone singing! Scripture itself tells us that from earliest times the Church sang “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” It is difficult to create an air of celebration with no singing at all.

Unaccompanied singing may be an option in some places, especially if the priest and/or a group of congregation members is capable of “holding a tune.” In such situations it is important to programme music that the congregation is likely to know well and that can be easily managed without accompaniment. This inevitably restricts the repertoire to “pot-boiler” hymns and perhaps some chants from Taizé or elsewhere. It’s not perfect, and it usually turns the priest into a de-facto director of music, but at least it keeps people singing. In a past ministry I was involved with leading a regular unaccompanied “Taizé Eucharist” that worked fairly well. (Of course it helped that I can sing and that there were one or two others who could also hold a line or even break into harmony.) I would argue that unaccompanied singing is better than nothing, as long as people are encouraged to “give it a good go” and there is at least one confident voice in the building. But the question needs to be asked: what if there are no strong confident voices available to give a lead?

Which brings us to that great bête noir of professional church musicians – recorded music.

Let me lay my cards on the table here: if it is a choice between badly-played music, no music at all, or pre-recorded accompaniments, then I say let’s plug in the amplifier. There are some very good resources available to assist congregations to sing – No organist? No problem! and a variety of similar recorded accompaniments can be used to quite reasonable effect and with relatively simple technology.

Given the option I would always prefer to have live music played by competent performers, however when such cannot be found, then surely good quality “canned” accompaniment is better than something excruciating, and certainly better than nothing at all. Indeed, if the pre-recorded accompaniments are well-managed, perhaps by a volunteer who is prepared to press “play” at the appropriate moments so that it does not become yet another thing the vicar has to manage, then the experience of the congregation can be surprisingly close to “normal.” And normal is attractive. Consistency, and the commonality of song, however it is achieved, brings glory to God. It may even encourage congregations in their enjoyment of the act of singing in Sunday worship. Who knows, it may even lead to growth…