I’ve not spent a lot of time on choir committees, or ever had one of the more demanding posts. It’s a truism that they deserve lots of gratitude for what they do, and only if you’ve been behind the scenes on the preparations for a concert do you realise just how many and varied are the tasks needed to make it happen and how much effort they require.
But that isn’t all that’s good about these committees. In many choirs the musical director is answerable to them about non-musical matters and this ensures fair treatment, and a body to appeal to if things go wrong. Elsewhere, there are the committees which exist only to do the musical director’s bidding, or in extreme cases are even more closely associated with them. I once had an unsatisfactory audition with a (now recently deceased) conductor, was put on a waiting list and later tried to audition again. I rang the ‘choir secretary’ at home and ended up speaking to the conductor again! I hadn’t realised they were married to one another. No chance of complaining of an unfair audition procedure there.
I am sure that sometimes the committee can be taken over by a clique, and obviously people who have it in for specific other singers shouldn’t be allowed to abuse their powers. It is a sad and unhealthy thing when back-stabbing creeps into a choir; that is why I’m no longer singing with one cathedral-going outfit I used to enjoy. But as far as I know no committee I currently deal with has these issues.
My first experience of being on a choir committee was that of the Kodály choir when I was an undergraduate; in those days the choir was about 150 strong. I started off with the most thankless post: that of membership secretary. There were two difficult aspects to this. One was telling people they could not sing in the concert, once they’d missed too many rehearsals. I had some pro forma notes to send out warning singers, then dismissing them and asking for the return of their score; but there was also a sheet of messages to tenors inviting them back even though they’d previously been sacked! The other hard task was collecting scores from people who had not returned them; inevitably they were living in digs at the far end of Iffley Road or somewhere equally inaccessible. (However dropping a note in at the digs if the former singer was out almost always resulted in the score coming apologetically back.) I graduated to choir secretary, a post I held for two years during what was a turbulent period in the choir’s history, which made for some interesting sets of minutes.
These days I’ve moved on to making venue bookings for one choir and doing some social media for another; close enough to the more responsible tasks to appreciate the work involved.