IMO it is a cultivated, deliberate ignorance - and it comes in part from clericalism.

The old model lurking behind "organists should donate their time because it's church stuff" is: religious sisters who lived in the convent next door whose order only got a modest stipend.

I once had a job of playing for 5 weekend Masses, one choir practice, and evening prayer once a week. Funerals and weddings paid extra. It was considered 6.5 hours per week, but I got paid $65/hour, so it actually wasn't bad.

The entire matter of compensation has seemed to be based on some idea about what it costs to live at whatever moment the job is described. I won't relate right now our (my wife and I) experiences offering our services as a team more than to say that few have believed the story when it has been shared.

The stress placed on families around the issues of time; weekends, Christmas (the whole season), evenings, etc. is enormous and has damaged marriages in many instances beyond repair.

I had a friend who was the Music Director at a Protestant church. His duties were the music program; adult choir, youth choir (100singers+),and the duties of Youth Director that involved him in innumerable hours of basketball, classes, meeting with kids of all ages, etc. Eventually his wife decided that it was too much and filed for divorce and the church fired him because they couldn't have a divorced man in a "pastoral position in the church". The last I heard of him he was a single guy teaching in a public school.

A terrible story, that, but not so very unusual. He was paid decently, but it cost him more than it paid, I fear. The callousness of people who would employ someone to take on that load is hard to imagine, let alone their reaction to the damage to his family, especially in any Christian context!

That’s fine, but your small rural parish isn’t trying to pretend that they have a part time job that is actually full time.

If you want volunteers, have volunteers.

If you want to pay or talent, pay for it, (or you’ll “get what you pay for”).

I'm happy and grateful that I can donate my time and musical skills.

I have always said, I would [donate] if I could.

But being able to do this without worrying about livelihood — investing in making it the best it can be — is a blessing in its own right, too. And I try to be generous in return.

Blessings abound! A privilege to do what we do.

No matter what job one of us takes, the first year or two, the word "No" is your best friend. While I love my work and everything, being able to set boundaries early is so important. I realize I am replaceable to my employers. What is not replaceable in my life is my wife and my family. In my current role, I have been defensive about providing music at a 7:30AM Mass. I've played daily Masses in the past, but they began after 8AM. I would not compensated for taking those Masses on. On top of that my current role has me at church three out of five weeknight evenings. 7:30AM Mass was not in my job description, therefore I have to politely decline to play it, no matter how much parishoners or the senior Parochial Vicar might ask. (I do get along very well with everyone, but this is that elephant in the room).

you cannot do enough practice in the preparation time listed above, the rest is on your dime, just like it is with any other professional.

Not counting practice time for weekly work hours is one of the more absurd things I've read on this forum.

I had one of those "part-time" positions for a number of years. Funny thing about it, it took far more than part time to do. The money wasn't that great, either, for the amount of work involved. I am now retired but don't see myself ever working in a Catholic music position again unless it is in a vastly different situation.

Lol

As long as organists keep accepting poor working conditions, churches will keep providing them. There is perhaps no mainstream denomination that treats its employees worse than Roman Catholicism.

Practice applies to volunteers too. I had a volunteer accompanist who didn't want to be held to a requirement to practice with the choir at rehearsals during the week in order to play on Sunday. He said, "I sub all over the diocese. Other directors just trust me to be prepared when I show up on Sunday."

He wasn't that good. He turned every song into an easy-piano fake version that he would improvise.

I held him to the rehearsal requirement.

He lasted all of two months before he stopped showing up and stopped communicating.

Jesus didn't say "go forth and play".

Well, GOD himself says to "play" in the Psalms -- many times... and I believe he is related.

"I sub all over the diocese. Other directors just trust me to be prepared when I show up on Sunday."

The skilled choir in which I served in the past made it clear that, notwithstanding that, all of the other choristers needed to be able to practice/rehearse with any paid musician in order to become a properly cohesive ensemble.

It's not ideal, but my schola haas people willing to practice at home when they can't make it to practice. They're volunteers!

Also, it assumes choir members who are competent adults and able to behave as such (eg only need one reminder aobut events, pick up their materials when the arrive, and put into folders themselves - I almost died of shock the first time I met a choir director who wasted their own time doing this.)

I agree. For Vespers, I have a complicated system (long story) and I set it out. People can ask me of course, but I'm often busy trying to rehearse one last time or to get the priest squared away, if I'm not trying to pray.

But I've seen choir directors who put the whole binder together. In the past, I've sung under people who passed things out. Or were gracious if somehow we missed a piece on the way in. Stuff happens. But doing the whole binder… man.

That said, I think that organists should be allowed to use at least some of their required time for practice, and some negotiation slash shifting needs to happen if it's insufficient in normal seasons…but of course, you need time to prepare music for feasts months in advance!

My week (on avg during choir season — summer is filled with more admin):

3 Sunday Masses and 1 Sunday Vespers (services only no warmup) — 4-5hrs
Feast Day / Daily Masses (~24 Feasts in season, 3 out, 1-2 weekly daily Mass) — 2-4hrs
Warm-up / ensemble prep (in rehearsal with other musical beings physically present) - 5.5-7hrs

Running total: 11.5-16hrs — and that’s just the front-facing part of my work

Standing staff meetings - 2hrs (in my experience of parish work, this is light)
Score prep - 1-2hrs (minimum)
Leaflet generation - 3-4ish hrs if all machines work

Running total: 17.5-24hrs

Music & language classes for Oratory novices - 3.5-4hrs
Payroll & HR stuff (subs, hires, comm., queries...) - 1-3?hrs

Running total: 22-31hrs

Notice that I still haven’t planned anything, met with brides, the bereaved, put out administrative fires, arranged for organ maintenance, or indulged in these vaunted 2-3hrs of daily practice. At this point, if my week has been as light as possible, 3hrs daily (2 if heavy) would pop me over 40. But we all know the rest will already have supervened and made 1hr of personal practice /day a real luxury.

Running total doesn’t matter anymore. At this point, I’m deciding what not to do when I have hit 40, or whether just to keep going, or what is necessary.

Yes, my job is above average in its demands of both quality and quantity of work for a just-a-parish job. But, in my experience, most parish jobs involve a school Mass a week, and working / planning for kids’ choirs, cantor / accompanist scheduling and deconflicting, and way more funerals and time spent in meetings — so they make up for being less demanding on the Sunday side.

To be fair, each of my Masses is in a different language. I have no cantor specials. Unique leaflets.

But still — I think 3 per weekend in 12hrs is a fantasy unless they are as low-bar as possible and nothing ever changes.

As far as preparing binders, if I put the music packets together, then I know that everybody is on the same page, to turn a phrase. Once I’ve prepped the scores, gotten everything out, and/or printed, it really isn’t a great extra burden of labor to put it all together and stick it in people’s cubbies.

As to the idea that a secretary or parish office staff could do printing etc. for you, I guess that’s technically true. However, I’ve been in situations where some of that was expected of them. Normally, that meant that it was actually much more work for me to get what I want it into the final document, not through the fault of the parish staff, but just by virtue of trying to communicate things that makes sense to the parish musician to a different staff member whose finger isn’t quite on the pulse of the music.

Also, there is the bigger point that regardless, the parish is paying someone to do this, and the secretary would have to be relieved of other duties in order to perform this one. Secretaries are not magic. They can’t just do infinite things for a flat fee. So, why not simply pay the musician to prepare the music and the service folders, freeing the secretary and other office staff for other work, with the happy byproduct of thereby ensuring that all of the liturgically adjacent pieces are to the musician’s satisfaction?

I'd also add, again for those here interested in true discussion, that you need to consider the long-term consequences of the bare minimum mentality. 2-3 hours a day is not excessive, actually - it is considered the bare minimum for a music major for their major instrument. Having spent many years on the organ competition circuit, I can tell you that 2-3 hours is maybe half or less of what the top-level people put in to be competitive (and yes, competing internationally is excessive, and not what we're talking about here in terms of paid church work!). My only point is that 2-3 hours is quite reasonable for anyone hoping to make steady progress in skill over time. Consider just the bare categories for a church organist: repertoire; hymn-playing; choral accompaniment; improv. If you'd like to make any kind of steady progress in these over your career, you should put time into each, daily, and they are all different things that require their own practice regime. So that "excessive" 2 hours, actually just becomes 30 minutes on each key category. In other words, it's fairly minimal, and far from excessive.

Why care about this? Practice is not primarily a matter of maintaining your "professional status" whatever that is. It is, on the survival level, time spent preparing music for Mass. And beyond that, it is time spent becoming more skilled at what you have to offer the church. In other words, unless all church musicians are, categorically, as skilled as they reasonably should be, or could be, (and judging by the state of church music that is not the case) the church would benefit by those musicians increasing in skill. And those musicians would benefit as well, personally and professionally. I've run across musicians who play things the same way, same preludes and postludes, interludes, hymn techniques (if any) etc. etc., decade after decade, and it is not inspiring, to say the least. It is not offering God our best in the liturgy, and it is nothing to be proud of (I will be very clear: I'm talking about salaried professionals here; substitute or part-time musicians may just not have time to progress over the years, because this is not their main career, and that is ok). When I get lazy and fall into this trap, it is depressing and guilt-ridden. The best practitioners in any field are always learning and growing, and we should be no different.

If we'd like to see an increase in quality in church music, we as musicians have to (among other things) put in time on the bench. Real time, not bare minimum survival time. We have to take it seriously as part of our job. And on the employment side, the church needs to understand the importance of practice and not play any silly games trying to ignore practice time. Again, I'd just emphasize for any readers here that most salaried jobs do not play such silly games. If you're stuck with a strange situation where you're "not allowed" to practice, move on to a place where you can thrive and grow, and quality matters to the congregation and clergy.

Nihil - Understood, and I fully agree! I wasn't responding to you, as much as to PaxM and his (her?) leitmotif that practice time should not be considered part of this job.

The daily practice time is, for me, an ideal and a baseline to aim for as a foundation for the job - but in real life it does definitely get disrupted by all the other things you mention. Weeks with three funerals, for example! But it's kind of like exercise or even spiritual exercises in personal life - it's good to make resolutions and a plan, and stick to it as much as we can for our health; but real life often intervenes. Rather than throwing it all out, we should try to get back to a healthy routine as we can, and not let the disruptions discourage us from good stewardship of our time and energy.

Honestly one of the trad-but-not-quite things around here is the return of adoration where the priest handles the music, instead of arranging for the organist to do it (the timing actually works out in a few cases). Having the organ and a separate singer from the priest and server shows that you’re giving it attention and solemnity, and hopefully you sing correctly. I recently discovered that around here that “Veneremur cernui” in the mode III chant known to all of us and then the “Amen” are troublesome (the mora vocis was applies only to the second note…). So for those who actually know chant, you can’t sing without getting lost.

Not that we doubted your integrity before, but it’s nice to know good people even just via the web.

Also, from experience: I can tell when a choir or organist is not prepared for Sunday or ordinary occasions but is prepared instead for major feasts, and it’s distressing, because my schola cannot just drop the Sunday propers to practice something else. We have to squeeze it in. I start as close to on-time at 6 as I can, as we end at 8 to let the dads get home in particular (and me too, lest I have to leave at 4:45 and get home only after 9).

I also would suggest saying to pastors who don’t want to pay for any or all of your practice time that even the start and stop nature of practice is not a hindrance and is even a benefit to those who may find themselves praying quietly. When I did TAPIF, the titulaire would practice on Tuesdays when the church was open, and I tried to pray on a regular basis
during what wound up being his practice time. A little Bach never hurt (and he went crazy for Bach before and after Mass because he had to play hot garbage in between).

I just did an internet search on the salaries of various professional musicians. Church organists were at the bottom of the list. Pianists, strings players, woodwind players, brass players, and singers make over twice as much.

That's crap, even for parishes that can only do hymns at most or all Masses; as much as it pains me to say it, most parishes cannot or should not do five Gregorian propers in this day and age.

I mean, I don't disagree in the abstract (and I find this kind of back-and-forth not so much helpful or clarifying as annoying, because I know the norms). Notice that I said "cannot" — there is no shortcut to time, and even then, you're still dependent on factors sometimes out of your control. You can't always actively recruit for the schola either… November to Epiphany is out. March to after Easter or beyond is out. I'm always looking for new people, and maybe we should have been more active…but my experience is that people can't commit if they even express interest.

Yeah, singing the whole proper is the norm, but we need fewer parishes, church buildings (or we need to make wiser use of them), communities, even it as true that we apparently lose about 1/3 of a congregation when parishes are reorganized. We cannot all be competing for the same resources. We saw this already before TC: there was something of an upper limit on the TLM and especially on sung TLMs which were served well, on a regular basis, by enough young men and boys and which never ran out of singers. Which never or only most rarely had to turn a sung Mass into a low Mass because enough strong singers in the schola showed up every time. (I don't agree that simplified propers are better particularly on a weeknight evening; it is extraordinarily disappointing to turn up for that to be the case.)

Consolidation in some ways was for the best in terms of resource application. It was not intended that way, and I'm not asking bishops to consolidate TLMs, but shoot, even having enough priests has been a problem. The same applies to the Latin NO with the Gregorian proper.

There is also a political reality that not everyone will really want this, even if they should. I think that it's great that I know of country parishes doing the right thing, which certainly wasn't what happened before Vatican II. But where do you find singers where there are not a lot of Catholics in the first place? And how do you sustain them even if you have a few and take time to make them good singers?

I have my issues with the "reverent NO", on a spectrum so wide that the term is meaningless once interrogated, and I think that it is probably not great that the people who like this as opposed to Breaking Bread and the nonsense with which I grew up are aesthetes and fussier than trads at this point, as the trads are really into the doctrinal and other arguments that can't be papered over with aesthetics (the reign of Christ the King — not exclusively liturgical, although Lentini modified the hymn of Christ the King for no reason other than his politics — the lectionary and collects, the obfuscation of sin and traditional fasting discipline, etc.)

It's also possible if a pastor is able to secure a second term early, but with pastors moving every six years, it's like anything else, subject to the whims of the next priest.

Pax:

"But the vast majority of churches are not cathedrals, and cannot afford a full-time musician. It is absolutely not required to be full time in order to provide the bones of a musical program for a parish. "

The issue is not so much cathedral vs. non - in fact, the parishes with the most money are almost always the big suburban ones; while cathedrals very often struggle to make ends meet because of the demographic of their urban core parish.

But I think the larger issue here is that you are selling the field short by categorically stating that the vast majority of parishes cannot afford salaried musicians (or at least full-time musicians). I don't think that that is true - it is usually more a matter of priorities than absolute numbers. I worked at a parish that said it could only afford a part-time musician - on a roughly 2 million dollar a year parish budget. The year after I left (on good terms - my degree was finished), they did a multimillion dollar capital campaign to expand the entryway to church, fix the parking lot, add a wing to the school, etc. It was quite successful and millions were raised. On the flip side, my current cathedral just finished raising millions to fund a world-class organ and a significant music endowment. These are contrasts of vision and priorities, not of absolute numbers, nor of what is possible in a given community.

When you assume, a priori, that only a few elite parishes could possibly afford full-time musicians, then argue from that foundation that things like practice are not necessary in this field anyway, I feel you are poisoning the well for our field. It's a depressing, bargain-basement attitude toward what we do, and I don't think it benefits us or the parishes we serve. Aim higher, or at least, don't disparage those who do.

All that said, I DO agree with you that some parishes can only afford a bare minimum. And to those who answer that call and do the best they can with very limited time, I say "Thank you!". My only point is that we should not assume this is the norm, or something to strive for if it is at all possible to invest more in church music.

My parish does NO and TLM and splits the duties between two choir directors and two organists, all on part time stipends. Doing this I think they get away with paying somewhat less overall than if they hired one full time professional musician for all functions. This isn't a clever plan on their part, they just prefer to hire parishioners and none of us are dedicated professionals. I hope this doesn't cast me as an interloper who's driving down wages.

I'm contracted for one Sunday mass per week, holy days of obligation (pretty limited in Canada), and two traditional big events at our parish. Funerals and weddings have an extra stipend.

In terms of group preparation I lead 3 hours of practice per week. I'm not sure what I personally practice, but it certainly isn't 2-3 hours per day. I think I would land in that 12 hours per week zone, with fluctuations. In my situation it's enough to deliver performances that myself, my singers, the priest, and the latin mass congregation are very pleased with. I dare say that on any given Sunday we have the best music in the city. (With plenty of room to improve.)

It may sound self-serving, but I believe that in my local context, hiring me part time is the best decision the priest could have made. I don't have the organ skills and mastery of polyphony that would be expected from a full-time professional, but overall I'm better at chant than even most professionals are likely to be (present company excluded), and this is after all the core music of the mass. At the same time I get to explore a passion with a level of pay that helps me substantially, though the hourly, if I worked it out, would look grim.

If I have any point at all here, I suppose it's that I agree with some others that part-time can be an effective solution depending on th local context, and I also suspect quite a bit of this debate would dissolve if we had fuller knowledge of eachother's situations. I realize some more experienced heads are taking a broader view of the overall state of church musicianship and willingness to pay for quality, and I'm sure I agree with it.