1. Start a children's choir.
2. Wait 20 years.


Since it's too late for that, I would talk to whoever holds the purse strings about hiring an apprentice. Do you have a school of music nearby?

I would start bring in people to your groups who might have an interest in taking over. Give them increasing responsibility over key responsibilities - to build their skills, and to help them get comfortable with the idea that they might move into your position at some point in the future.

At an appropriate time, have private conversations to let them know that you might be thinking of them as a future leader, you support their growth, and you need and value their contribution.

I talk as if you're doing this with several people at once, but you certainly could do this with just a single person. I prefer to do this with several people, though, because:
* It feels less to the group that you're grooming your successor and therefore locking others out from growth.
* When you start out, you might be quite surprised where the next leader comes from. Give several the chance to grow and learn.
* We need more passionate and engaged people in our music programs.
* Many times, multiple people might split up the tasks that you have now in a different way. Let it grow organically.

Carl

Great topic. I've been contemplating this for quite a few years as I've been at my gig nineteen. I've actually had conversations with my pastor about the subject, which indicates, at least between us, a mandate for consistent and progressive (in the non political sense) transfer of responsibility.
This should make for an interesting, point by point Cafe post. Stay tuned.

I agree with Matthew, if that is your situation.

Without any more details, I feel like we are taking shots in the dark.

I think it's really a lost cause. I know a few cathedral musicians, both of whom built up great, nationally recognized programs and watched them get torn down by successors. I worked very hard to build up my last program, and, given that the very supportive pastor left, I don't have high hopes for what it's like now.

I think it would be good to be in touch with a successor, and explain to them what you did, why you did it, any tips they may need. Build up camaraderie and such. But you really aren't in a position to boss them around and say "do it MY way!"

Honestly, my best advice, counsel I've given to myself as well as to my much more experienced colleagues, is to be glad of the work that you DID do, and the opportunities you had to make music. There's no sense in making an emotional investment in something over which you no longer have control.

We should be networking as much as possible as is, but one thing to add is that if you have a colleague who you know is doing good work, perhaps you can contact him/her and see if he/she is interested in the position. Also, making sure it's advertised on here is a good idea.

It is becoming, sadly, more and more apparent that music programs in the Catholic Church are, with very few exceptions, defined utterly at the whims of whoever the incumbent cleric (of whatever rank, parochial or diocesan) happens to be. Of course, fine music programs are not at all universal in the Anglican/Episcopal church; however, neither are they a rarity: it is not at all unusual that a cathedral or parish church has a history of choral and liturgical excellence which is beyond the potentially destructive hands of a new rector or dean. It is not unheard of that such choral establishments are endowed. That a trendy or artless new clerical appointee can without reference to previous tradition or the accomplishments and heritage of highly gifted scholar-musicians willfully and shamelessly erase or neglect such a benefaction is a calumny of astonishing proportions. The Church has not at all progressed beyond the patronage system of times past in which music, indeed all the arts, flowered or wilted according to the merest wish of this or that prince or bishop. The Church deserves more, as does her people, and as does God. Everyone, even the irreligious, knows church music and not-church-music when he or she hears it, and only the insincerely facetious would argue about it. Everyone in holy orders or not has an obligation to the Church, to Vatican II, and to every holy father since and before, to cultivate the Church's musical heritage.

So, how to ensure a worthy successor? Pray!
And, talk to your pastor about the expectations of VII and what you have accomplished. Try to enlist his sympathy for these things.
Try to convince him to undertake a search and discernment process which will garner a musician of genuine talent and scholarship equal to pastoral abilities.
Sow seeds of appreciation (and expectation) amongst your choristers and the congregation for the work you have accomplished, inherited, or continued.

The Lutherans have a very effective system of ensuring appropriate church music talent in their parishes. Their teachers' colleges also train organists and choirmasters who can then be 'called' by any church in need. This guarantees not only a talent for what is new, but an equal talent and preparation for continuing their musical and liturgical heritage. This is something that might bear study for adoption in the Catholic Church.

Very Sane advice for a very mature procedure from FNJ.
Just one consideration -
Choosing a specific person to groom for the succession and keeping the matter entirely 'in house', is rather unfair to numbers of qualified persons who have a right to expect participating in the process. Too many positions are swallowed up when favoriti were hastened into a never vacant position and no one had a chance. This is grossly unfair and does not guarantee that a parish will in fact obtain the best talent. This is incestuous. It is a form of nepotism. It is certainly 'cronyism'.
Specific choral and organ qualifications together with liturgical knowledge should be requisites, for which qualified persons my compete and unqualified persons will know better than to compete.

Not every DM has to be an organist. In the best of situations, you have a good choral person with a staff of good organists. I've never been personally satisfied as a choral singer with being led by someone who also has to focus on accompanying the group he/she is conducting.

Agreed. As a practical matter, this is true, but In the jobs I have had, I never played the organ. I've never been trained on the instrument. I've always had at least one good organist along with a few converted pianists. I'll turn this around and put on my flame retardant suit and say, that if a church has a good choral director, it only needs a competent organist, not a superb one. It's nice to have the latter, and in a perfect situation, you would have both, but as a chorister, I much prefer to have a conductor directing the choir during the performance. Volunteer choirs especially feel more secure with someone leading them with "both hands", so to speak.

When it comes to writing letters of recommendation for the "outgoing" organist, here is a story from autobiography of one of the greatest of pianists—Anton Rubinstein:

I made several other calls, having brought with me some ten or fifteen letters of introduction from ... the Russian Ambassador and his wife in Berlin. I made the calls and left the letters.... Silence was the sole response.... I was utterly at a loss. 'Let me look,' I thought, 'and see what is said about me in these letters of introduction', quite a pile of which still remained undelivered. I opened one of them, and what did I read! ... 'My dear Countess So and So, To the position which we, the Ambassador and his wife, occupy, is attached the tedious duty of patronizing and recommending our various compatriots in order to satisfy their oftentimes clamorous requests. Therefore we recommend to you the bearer of this letter, one Rubinstein.' The riddle was solved.

Thanks for the tip.