It’s a strong term for something that it’s unpleasant to be on the wrong side of. I’m referring to the practice of persuading members of other choirs to leave and join yours instead. It’s commonest when there is a shortage of singers or when there is intense rivalry between choirs.
Poaching was rife between Cambridge college chapel choirs when I was there. If you went to another College to sing for any reason, chances were their chapel choir might get wind of you and try to recruit you. You didn’t have to be really top-notch to have a lot of this; I was approached unsuccessfully by three college choirs outside my own College, and successfully (for a year anyway) by a fourth.
It didn’t happen between chamber choirs in Manchester because it couldn’t; at the time I lived there there was only really one, the William Byrd Singers. However it certainly went on between the Hallé and the RLPO choruses.
When I’d moved to the South West, I saw it contributing to the demise of the Brandon Hill Singers. They changed conductors, and although there was a stop-gap concert in the term before the new one took over, during that time other choirs stepped in to lure singers away. So many left that the choir became unviable.
Since I launched myself on the symphony chorus circuit, I’ve started to experience it again. It’s quite gentle: someone says ‘Why do you go to Bristol to sing? Why not sing with us in in Bath?’ I do have a standard answer to this (it begins ‘When did any Bath choir last sing the Glagolitic Mass?’) So I’ve been thinking about poaching recently. Is it really wrong, and how can choirs guard against it?
There’s a good argument in favour of it. Some singers value singing with the same group of people for a long time; others are always on the lookout for interesting repertoire, the best possible standards, solo opportunities, exotic tours etc. Why not tell such singers about other choirs that might interest them?
I’m fully in agreement with this, and yet still feel that the predatory behaviour of other choirs towards the Brandon Hill Singers wasn’t really fair. I think it is because it was raiding another choir wholesale at a time when it was vulnerable, rather than approaching individuals for their own benefit.
What can choirs do? You can’t prevent poaching altogether, of course, and it isn’t necessarily detrimental because the singers who go might be ones who didn’t really fit in anyway. But there are particular points at which it is especially dangerous. During a change of conductor is an obvious one. Those who have recently joined and are yet to form a strong attachment are also at risk of being poached. More generally, it is a good idea for those who run choirs to give members a real opportunity to express any concerns they have, before too much damage is done. I have certainly come across choral directors who assume their singers exist in a vacuum and never talk to any members of any other choirs, forgetting that singers are not pawns on a chessboard, but people who can up and go elsewhere. (I must add this is not true of any choir that I currently sing in, though it was true of at least one in the lifetime of this blog.)