The wheel turns again?

Back in the early years of the millennium, there was a shortage of choral singers in Bristol, with choirs all fishing in the same limited pool. After some defections and outright poaching, the Brandon Hill Singers could not recruit new members in order to stay viable. A few years later the situation was very different. I enquired about one of the large choirs in the city, and was put on a ‘waiting list’ for auditions – I never heard from that choir again. I heard from another source around that time that all the city’s choirs had such waiting lists.

In 2012 I joined Bristol Choral Society by means of what I understand is the standard procedure – I came to a few rehearsals, and then auditioned. I spoke recently to a member of that other choir with the waiting list, who told me that their choir did indeed once make people wait years on end for an audition, but after a change of membership secretary they now audition all prospective singers quickly.

I sense there’s been another change in Bristol’s choral culture. Here are some possibilities:

• We may be back where we were a dozen years ago, where singers are a scarce resource that choirs compete for. Some choirs have appeared or expanded recently, so this is quite plausible. [2016 – Bristol Cathedral Concert choir appears to have been the victim and gone under this time.]
• It’s been realised that waiting lists for auditions are, in my words, ‘miserable alternatives to singing’ and so they have been abolished out of courtesy to prospective singers. I’d like to think this was the case, though realistically I have to doubt it
• It’s been realised that by putting people off unheard, choirs may damage themselves by losing good singers who will be recruited by their rivals
• There hasn’t been an overall change at all; I just had the misfortune to encounter a tidy-minded membership secretary who didn’t wish to deviate from a set quota of singers in each voice (but who didn’t bother to contact those on the waiting list when a vacancy appeared)
• Choirs are now more relaxed about numbers of singers because as audiences shrink they need the income from subscriptions. A cynical view perhaps, but at least one choir round here has been known quietly to drop singers while continuing to collect their subscriptions by direct debit, because the money is useful even if the voice isn’t.

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