How I became a choir director

Here’s some background info for the St. Blogs musicians & liturgists. I think it shows that having prayerful liturgies that draw from the musical tradition of the church is bigger than one person.
Read on…

When I was in college studying music, I lived in McLean, Virginia with the Youth Apostles and got a summer job doing grounds-keeping at St. Luke’s parish. Fr. Stewart Culkin was the pastor, and Katherine Chrishon was the music director. I was introduced to Katherine and became a cantor there as well. Katherine is a genius on the piano, a super-talented composer, and a joy to work with. Fr. Culkin appreciated Katherine’s virtuosity and wanted to encourage the music program. Shortly thereafter, Fr. Culkin was transferred to St. Mark’s. Katherine and the new pastor didn’t get along (and that’s a long story) and after several months at another parish, Katherine was asked to audition at St. Mark’s.
St. Mark’s had an interesting setup: a music director that served mostly as a liturgy planner/program administrator and one director for each Mass that had a group of 15-25 people at each Mass. It’s exceedingly rare to get that level of participation at a suburban parish – most of the time there’s one choir, even that may only be a folk group and the rest of the time it’s cantor with accompaniment. St. Mark’s had a thriving program in place and the nature of the program had already turned off one candidate who had said, “You don’t want a music director – you want an administrator.” In some ways he was right. Each director had his own domain, but there was also a small amount of overall collaboration from the standpoint of liturgy planning. (More on that later.)
Katherine made a good impression on the search committee and was hired, and within a year the director of the choir that sings at the 10 O’Clock Mass retired. Fr. Culkin and Katherine had agreed that I would be a good candidate to direct that choir for two reasons: I have voice training, and vocal training is something that choirs in Catholic parishes need very badly, and I had more exposure to classical repertiore through my college training. Fr. Culkin really wanted the choir at that Mass to lean more towards classical repertiore: metrical hymns done more frequently than songs, chant, polyphonic or otherwise classical choral anthems. He also was focused on quality, something that is lost on many Cathlic priests who don’t have general exposure/enjoyment of sacred art music.
I started at St. Mark’s when I was in my early 20’s and it was only by the grace of God that I was able to direct that choir. Nearly all the members were twice my age or older, I had to prove to them I was dedicated, knowledgable and understood that the choir was ministry. Some had been there for 20 years and are still singing or playing with the choir, our current organist at that Mass, Dick Weiand, has been there 30+ years and does a great job each Sunday. Candidly, I was a kid, headstrong, eager to please Fr. Culkin and do quality music. And that’s where God’s grace comes in because I could have easily gotten into a tough situation without His help.
Choirs are full of personalities, because musical people don’t have a problem with expressing themselves. It was tough to change the habits of people who had been doing the same music for 20 years. Things like getting people to pronounce “Alleluia” and “Amen” properly took a long time, and believe it or not, being in Virginia, I still have to work on the “Al LAY luia” problem. There was some music that I did for diplomatic reasons and has since been retired from our repertiore. “I Believe” is a great example of something the choir seemed to love that was just a big hunk of aged Muenster cheese festering in the back of the fridge. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s the unfortunate juxtaposition of the Gounod “Ave Maria” melody (sung by the ladies) and the contemporary tune “I Believe” (sung by the men.) It had a big Cecille B. de Mille ending. It was traditionally sung on Mother’s Day regardless of the readings. That went away after a couple of years and will hopefully not be sung at St. Mark’s ever again.
The structure at St. Mark’s didn’t change much – I had my choir and I had the full support of the pastor in repertiore choices. I didn’t get into Palestrina over night because we had vocal issues and the overall issue of learning difficult music.
Katherine moved on to another parish and was replaced by Mike McMahon. Mike has a doctorate from Catholic U and has been an organist/liturgist for over 25 years. He was with us for four years and then became the President of the National Pastoral Musicians Association. Mike brought much more discipline to the liturgical approach within the parish and in some ways reign in the choir directors. We started to more combined choir liturgies, particularly during Holy Week where before the folk group did Holy Thursday, another group did Good Friday. Before we had a huge disconnect in the character and tone of the Triduum liturgies. He got all the choirs working together for the important feasts and stretched everyone’s horizons related to repertiore. We got the Ritual Song hymnal, which is one of the best Catholic hymnals in terms of having all the psalms, many service music options (including latin chants) and standard hymns and songs. Ritual Song, though published by the same publisher as Gather, kicks Gather’s tail in terms of the quality and breadth of music. Mike set the stage for even further parish-wide planning of the liturgies and important events and brought a lot of discipline to that process. We still miss him and we remain great friends to this day.
So to summarize the key points:
I had a pastor who supported the idea of moving toward a more classical approach to sacred repertiore.
I had the authority to train the choir and select the music I deemed appropriate.
I had a group of very dedicated volunteers who were eager to learn and grow both musically and spiritually.
I had the support of the overall music/liturgy director and the accompanist for that choir.
I was given the grace to pursue change over time rather than try to make huge changes at once.
You can’t really change the musical orientation of a choir or parish without those things. Particularly if a congregation or the musicians are just not used to hymns, chants and motets. And the nice thing about St. Marks is there’s something for everyone: if latin makes your blood boil (too bad for you) you will never do latin chants at the folk group Mass.
The current environment at St. Mark’s is just as good – the pastor and the music/liturgy director as just as supportive as Fr. Culkin was. We’re doing a bit more chant now and much more latin polyphony. The choir has done a great job with Palestrina motets like “O Rex Gloriae” on Ascension Sunday and “Benedicta Sit Sancta Trinitas” on Trinity Sunday. Next year we’ll add the “Loquebantur” motet for Pentecost. We do metrical hymns for the gatherning/sending forth and do all the verses (I keep selections to under 4 verses in most cases.) I don’t have anyone at my throat at the end of Mass about the type of music we do because people just know that at 10 O’clock Mass at St. Mark’s that’s what they will hear.
My greatest blessing at St. Marks: a beautiful and talented soprano named Teresa Mueller joined my choir 5 years ago. We’re married now and make music together every week.
Fr. Culkin passed away about two years ago. We sang the C.V. Stanford “Justorum Animae” at his wake (held in the church) and I often think about how, if he somehow heard it, he would have been happy to know we finally got there. God rest his soul. And thank God for great things.