Blood will out. My mother’s father was a piano teacher and my mother was in a choir when I was a teenager which I thought was unutterably lame, as was anything my parents did! Even my sister was in a choir until she slipped and broke her ankle and couldn’t drive anymore.
Three years ago I decided that I wanted to join a choir, too.
My musical tastes run more to indie rock than classics and I’m still unable to explain what it is that draws me to this group activity. I suspect it’s similar to why a dog howls when it hears an ambulance siren.
For three hours every Wednesday evening a group of adults aged between 19 and 80 meet to do the choirmaster’s bidding. His name’s Perry, a young bloke who looks a bit like my eldest son. We try our hardest to please him and he is usually very patient, but occasionally we succeed in pissing him off by not concentrating.
Some of us can read music, some can’t. There are some amazingly strong voices and many (like me) who don’t aspire to be soloists but are more than happy to add to the sound.
Who are we? We’re retirees, teachers, librarians, physios, public servants, architects, mothers, nurses and doctors. We all want the same thing, to produce something beautiful that is both inside and outside ourselves.
Sometimes it sounds like this: ‘lux_ae_ter_na_lu_ce_at_e_is_lux_ae_ter_na.’ Perry coaches us in Italian, Latin and German because much of what we sing isn’t in English.
Our repertoire includes religious music, show tunes, traditional Christmas carols and modern choral works. On any night we can flit between Mozart, Elton John, Handel, Sondheim and on to Ben Folds.
Even pieces that initially seem cheesy, tedious, boring or much too difficult become transformed by Perry’s vision and our collective efforts into something joyous, significant and beautiful.
Of course, that’s after lot of bum notes, frustration and extra rehearsals.
The journal New Scientist reports that individuals in a choir synchronise their heart rhythms while singing.
Maybe this is a physiological reflection of those times when, as musician Brian Eno puts it, ‘we immerse [ourselves] into the community and stop being me for a little while and become us.”
For most choirs the ultimate goal is performance. The choirmaster’s got a bent for musical theatre, so he’s very focused on how we relate to the audience, not just with voice but also with movement and facial expression.
As a doctor I can do this kind of thing in my sleep. Displaying empathy and emotion in an exaggerated fashion is what I do all day long. It’s called acting! And this isn’t to mislead patients, quite the opposite. It’s to reaffirm to my patients how important they are to me and how much I care about them.
There’s been a lot of research into the psychological benefits of choirs. I haven’t read any of it. I just know that there’s something compelling and deeply satisfying when I spend time synchronising my pulse with people who used to be strangers and have now become friends.