Singing and kneeling
  • Rebecca Bridget C-
    Posts: 79
    I'm curious:

    At your parish, does the choir kneel during the Eucharistic prayer, or remain standing? Does the practice differ depending on whether you are in the sanctuary, in the transept, in the loft, etc.? Do those choirs who kneel remain kneeling while singing the Memorial Acclamation?

    I've found the practice to vary widely by parish, often dependent on the average age of the singers (presumably young people are more confident in kneeling unsupported in the loft or on the floor). I've ironically found that most of the time, the sound produced when kneeling is at least as good as when standing, probably because the kneeling forces impeccable posture.

    (.....and.....if you do kneel as a group, or kneel while quiet and stand while singing....... do you have any trouble with dizziness?? lol)
  • Bridget Scott
    Posts: 39
    Our choir is in the loft and varies in age from 18 to 70+. The loft is small and there are risers. We also wear robes. A few choose to kneel, but most stand. I believe the GIRM allows for standing if there is an impediment to kneeling. I would think the narrowness of the space and the age of most of our singers is a valid impediment. Those that do choose to kneel, stand when it is time to sing the Memorial Acclamation.
  • JamJam
    Posts: 636
    At my home parish, when it came time to kneel or prostrate (the Orthodox do not do this on Sundays, but we do kneel on weekday liturgies and prostrate during Lent) the whole choir would kneel even when singing. During Lent they would prostrate during silent times, but just kneel when singing. That choir stood at the back of the church and there was no loft. At my parish here, I was the only person to kneel at Wednesday presanctified up in the loft. I wonder if there is something about the loft that mentally separates folks from the rest of the congregation and makes them think they don't need to kneel.
  • Donnaswan
    Posts: 585
    My choir- in the loft, mostly kneels, and except for half a dozen singers, we are mostly over 50. The cantor kneels up front also on a moveable kneeler while singing MemAcc and Great Amen . The recent acquisition of pews with kneelers attached in the loft has encouraged more to kneel,even 'old people'
    Donna
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    The upper posture not being affected, I have always found that one can sing as well kneeling as standing.
    Kathy, though, brings up a very significant point about choirs that are not 'in choir', i.e., not 'down front'. There is, when a choir is in a gallery, always a seemingly inherent air that they are not fully engaged liturgically; which leads to laxness of attitude and carelessness in all manner of orginisation, preparedness, and decorum.
    This is but one reason that choirs should be 'in choir'. There, they cannot (as they should not ever, no matter where they are) forget that not only by their singing, but by their decorous participation, they are examples for the congregation in act as well as song. A choir that is 'in choir' never forgets that it is an integral part of the liturgical action, leading the people in song and offering anthems and praise to God in their proximity to the altar.
  • Donnaswan
    Posts: 585
    M. Jackson, I do agree with you about behavior in the loft, although I once sang for a short time in a choir 'in choir' with a paid quartet, who felt free to comment, talk, and generally misbehave. (They were not Episcopalians- outsiders hired for their voices)
    There are trade-offs in both positions, I think.

    Donna
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,978
    Many of my choir member kneel, although some have reached the age where it would be perfectly acceptable if they stopped. I don't care one way or the other. I don't do it myself, because I am always sitting at the organ.
  • AngelaRAngelaR
    Posts: 319
    At my cathedral, we sing from the loft and there really isn't room to kneel. We have a number of paid vocalists in the choir, and I resonate with the above comments about paid vocalists and about the physical removal of the loft from the rest of the congregation. It can be difficult to keep a choir aware of the sacredness of the service they are performing. I've been spending lots of time in the Cathedral Chant School poring over the broader context of the liturgy, and how to pray what we sing. I wish that choirs had more time to educate their members about this service; we are easily too pressed for time just with getting all the notes right.
  • David Sullivan
    Posts: 355
    Long ago, I was in a choir with a non-Catholic, professional singer who used to read novels during the sermon-discreetly tucked in the music folder, so the decorum was there for the congregation. It still bothered me, but I never said anything. I was delighted to be invited a couple of years later to a Confirmation, validation of marriage, and reception into the Church. You never know what's happening in another soul.

    And yes, there is a need to maintain good decorum in choir and in church. In fact, I think the decorum and respect--kneeling, genuflecting, etc--we practice devoutly and even require can be an evangelical tool. But there are people attending Mass who might not be otherwise. I know others who have come into the Church via choirs.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    When I was a kid, my home parish had a lovely spacious choir and organ loft, right up against the big stained glass angel window. You probably could have stashed a good 70 people up there if you crowded them, although I'm pretty sure that would have broken the fire code or the weight limit. It had long shallow wooden levels strong enough to hold pews and kneeler fronts, which were installed up there when the church was built. We never had to fumble for hymnbooks or folders, because we could keep them either in the pew's hymnal holder or on our seats. The pews never rocked or scooted or fell over (though occasionally a kneeler would bang, of course). We usually sang kneeling parts kneeling, and that was no problem. The only thing that was disconcerting was that certain areas of the loft were a bit vertiginous, so it would be kinda scary when you got up from kneeling. The place was built in the early 60's.

    (Before anyone asks -- my home parish needed more space, so ten years ago they built an entirely new, unoriented, overly expensive, round, ugly church next door that had no organ loft, horrible acoustics, and no real area for musicians to work, and wreckovated the old church into a wedding chapel which is also disoriented, for whatever bizarre reason. This in spite of the fact that the new church was in the side of the hill and had a two story gathering space in the back, where it would have been very simple to add a choir loft, or at least some musician areas in front that weren't quite so ad hoc and crammed in.)

    My current parish has a tiny hot cramped loft with no windows, and even with the tiny size of our choir, abundance of trailing wires and smallness of risers would make it difficult and dangerous to kneel, for most of us. (Also, practically the only acoustics our flat-ceilinged church has is provided by our boom microphones, so there's a bit of difficulty being heard if you kneel and sing into the back of the organ.) (It's a good organ, though.) If you built new wooden risers instead of the barely chair-deep ones we've got, and made them wide enough to accommodate both kneeling in front of the chairs and the bell choir's tables, you'd take up most of the floor space but it would probably pay off. I don't think it's likely to happen, though. And anyway, if you shift position, there's a lot of creaking and squeaking from the floor that the microphones pick up, so kneeling on the floor is something that really takes consideration. I'm fairly sure the loft isn't sturdy enough for pews, if you could even get them up there.

    (It's not really all that bad, because we're used to it. But it certainly has its limitations.)
  • Rebecca Bridget C-
    Posts: 79
    I'm pleasantly surprised by how many choirs manage to kneel. I should have expected folks here would have found a way to make something that can be challenging, practical :-)

    Different from what others report, I've had more luck kneeling while singing from the loft than from any other location, exactly because of being slightly more "removed from the action." In the transept and from other positions up front, the up-down-up-down was perceived as distracting (especially if hymnals/sheet music had to be put down or moved), and we were encouraged to stand for the duration, bowing profoundly during the consecration at the same time that the celebrant kneels. In the loft, we were less on display, and so could concentrate on thinking/doing/praying, rather than on appearing, and a little extra, quiet, shuffling was okay.

    I'm sure that as usual, reverence is the key thing, regardless of particular postures, and standing serves us just as well. But I certainly can use all the bodily 'helps' I can get.

    Maureen, I very much sympathize about your new loft! One place I am singing now feels as though it were intentionally designed to shrink the size of the choir. We manage to crash into each other at least twice per Mass. This past week, I successfully avoided the moving bass, but hit the chimes instead (eek!)
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