Congregational Singing

[Bruce Shewitz <ae217...>]

The success or failure of congregational singing has as much to
do with non-musical elements as with musical.

I work for a large Reform congregation which has a long tradition
of hiring professional lay musicians to lead worship music.
We do not have have an ordained or invested cantor; the singers
who do the solo sections are trained professional laypeople whop
(oops) who are responsible to me as director of music. Our
focus is on choral music with incidental solos, rather than
on solo music with "backup" choir.

In our 1900-seat main sanctuary, the issue of congregational
singing is almost a moot point; the acoustics are so impossible
that no one would feel comfortable singing out in the pews. So
that's where we do our "performance" services, primarily for
the High Holidays and festivals, where the melodies are not
as familiar as those for Shabbat.

For many years, the rabbis of the congregation did not
encourage the congregation to sing, and the congregation was
apparently happy with that. With  a change of rabbis came
a desire to have the congregation sing. I proposed a musical
solution of using the same Bar'chu, Sh'ma, Aleinu, and
several other prayer melodies at all services in our chapel
(mostly Kabbalat Shabbat) and suburban sanctuary (Erev
Shabbat and festivals) to promote familiarity, but I also
told the rabbis they HAD to encourage the congregation
from the pulpit to join the choir and soloists, and that
they (the rabbis) had to sing along as well.

And when we refurbished the chapel and suburban sanctuary,
with considerably improved acoustics, we noticed a significant
improvement in congregational singing again.

So, it would seem, familiarity with whatever music is used,
encouragement from the pulpit, and good acoustical settings
all contribute to the success of congregational singing.