All choral singers must be wondering just what will be left when their choirs are allowed to perform again. One sector I am reasonably sanguine about is that of the Cathedral visiting choir. These choirs are essentially self-funding. Of the two I sing regularly for, one funds each Cathedral visit ‘pay as you go’ (including singers buying/hiring music), taking no income from the annual concert it gives in aid of charity; the other has a cash reserve, including money from a bequest which is used to subsidise younger singers who join us, but no expenditure except what is needed for its visits. There seems to be no reason why these choirs can’t simply pick up where they left off. No need to confine themselves to crowd-pleasing repertoire, because there is no income from the people who listen to them; nor a need to organise something in order to justify collecting a subscription. If some Cathedrals have to cut back on their own musical expenditure, the visiting choir, and indeed the voluntary choir if there is one, may become more valuable to them.
What may raise a problem is if singers have to stand further apart and so there is room for fewer of them. Some people may self-select themselves not to sing, because they feel they are at higher risk of infection, but I would not want to be the musical director who had to choose which half of their choir to take on a visit. I recall the mishandling of a concert where five singers (out of 35 or so) were left out ‘because there wasn’t room in the choir stalls’; they all left the choir soon afterwards.
When choirs can meet in their usual numbers I foresee a lot of recruiting going on; some people will have left and there will be a lot of people desperate to do all the singing they can.