Bryan Holten

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Bad Choral Music in Disguise: Four Tell-Tale Signs

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How many times have you struggled to find great choral music for your church? You have so many limitations to consider. Your choir doesn’t learn difficult music quickly, so you can’t program old masterworks every week (if ever). Your existing library has a bunch of anthems in roughly the same style. And so much of what’s out there is so thoroughly mediocre.

Finding choral music you’ll love is certainly possible—and easier than ever with new resources available all the time. (Stay tuned for a future post about these!) But if you really want a program filled with variety, creativity, and fun, you need to learn how to weed out the stuff that won’t work. Quickly.

With that in mind, here are four tell-tale signs that you’re looking at a lemon.

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Four Freely Available Pieces of Choral Music for Every Church Musician

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If you think you have to sacrifice quality to get free sheet music for your choir, I’m here to tell you that it isn’t so! This is one assumption you should definitely test. Choral music doesn’t always have to cost you a lot of money.

Our assumptions hold us back because they limit our perception of what is possible. If you assume that your choir will revolt if you program anything written for fewer than four voice parts, you are depriving them and the congregation they serve of the opportunity to discover many great works of art. If you ask me, that’s a challenge worth testing, because its consequences are immense.

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Music Quality in the Church Choir: Tips for Directors

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Don’t assume that your church choir can’t do quality music just because they learn slowly.

We’ve all been here before. Somewhere in your music files (likely tucked under “Q” for “Quatre Motets”) is the Duruflé Ubi Caritas, a much beloved setting of a timeless text. Trouble is, you only have enough tenors and basses to place one on each part, and that’s if they’re all present! So much for programming something great, right? If only your church choir could learn music more quickly.

Because there are so many faults underlying this assumption, I’m going to tackle them one at a time.

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Choir Anthems for Church: A Strategy for Filtering

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sheet music for choir

Learning to simplify in the right ways can make life easier.

One of the most challenging tasks for any church music director, especially those who serve smaller congregations, is choosing music for their small choir. Generally speaking, the fewer congregants you have, the smaller your choir (if you even have one), and the more limited your options. My challenge to you today is that you reconsider how to respond to those limitations. Often the best solution is to simplify. Choose easier music, so that your singers can actually enjoy the process of making music, rather than merely learning notes.

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Resourcefulness in the Church (3 Ideas for Music Ministers)

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It starts with using what you already have.

Before you feel dismayed about how your church seems to always have less money to spend from one year to the next, I want you to consider a simple truth. No organization, no matter how large and influential, and no matter how quickly it is growing, has the freedom to spend without consequence. How much you have at your disposal is only part of the picture. The other part is how you make use of what you have. It is in the spirit of that truth that I present to you three examples of resource-stretching mastery. It is difficult (and unfair) to expect others to contribute additional resources (usually in the form of money or volunteer labor) if you are not making effective use of what you already have. This is the very definition of resourcefulness.

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