5 ms·

Why is choral music harder to appreciate?

41 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

rectang 1y ago
Carmina Burana, which used to be ubiquitous in video games and medieval movies, says it ain’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQXehmVDLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQXehmVDLc (trad) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE01DAATf6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE01DAATf6s (remix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4qcbzKWeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4qcbzKWeY (deodorant ad)
- samplatt 1y ago
  I mean it's backed up by some of the most bombastic drums and strings that the entire era produced, but sure, it's notable. Even the softer track "Ecce Gratum" still has regular organ interludes to set the tone.
evrennetwork 1y ago
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recallingmemory 1y ago
"Miserere mei, Deus" is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard and I'm not religious nor do I understand the language it's written in. I've never thought of those as prerequisites to enjoying a piece of music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwFXR5ett6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwFXR5ett6U
- dolefulcreature 1y ago
  Honestly? Join a community choir and you will very quickly learn to appreciate all forms of choral music. Choral music is about groups of humans acting in an extremely organized and coordinated way. It's a kind of collabarative effort that requires full engagement of the senses: you have to LISTEN and FEEL and EXPRESS all in rhythmic time while also WATCHING each other and your director. It takes concerted effort and everyone has to be locked in or it all falls apart....but when you check all those boxes? Absolute transcendence.
- arduanika 1y ago
  A classic! The Allegri Miserere gets used whenever a movie soundtrack needs some sacred choral music. That floating soprano line between the sections is something else.
- ics 1y ago
  John Browne (1453-1490) - O Regina Mundi Clara (Tallis Scholars Ensemble) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y28FW6JBd7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y28FW6JBd7w
- sombragris 1y ago
  For me, the Kyrie from Tomás Luis de Victoria's Officium Defunctorum (1605) is the best piece of music ever written, period. And I say this after having listened to a lot of music of various styles. Here's the piece with two great performers: - The Sixteen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-C_zC6KiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-C_zC6KiQ - The Tallis Scholars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOko0MqkNcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOko0MqkNcc Enjoy!
noddybear 1y ago
"Spem in Alium" is the most beautiful piece of music in existence for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-ZAAi4UQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-ZAAi4UQQ At 40 distinct melodies, it is certainly the 'grandest' piece in early English church music.
- arduanika 1y ago
  Yes! I had a chance to sing in this once. But it definitely suffers from every one of the reasons for obscurity listed in TFA, on steroids.
- dhosek 1y ago
  As I recently commented on Bluesky, I want to write a contemporary choral setting of Spem in Alium (hope in another) but write the title Spem in Allium (hope in garlic) and see if it can make it to publication before anyone notices).
ludston 1y ago
It seems like the author is referring specifically to the style of choral music found in churches, although the same thing can be said about other choral genres like barbershop. However, Backstreet Boys or many of the Korean idol groups do music that could be classified as choral that's highly accessible. The main difference is drums. Music without drums or some rhythmic equivalent is less accessible. The other main difference is not in accessibility, but economics. Is cheaper and easier to make a band with only one featured vocalist, so most professional bands do this. It's what people hear, and therefore what they identify with and therefore what they go out of their way to listen to.
- masonlynass 1y ago
  [dead]
- dhosek 1y ago
  There is, actually, a not insignificant repertoire of secular choral music although it’s lost a lot of its popularity. The liner notes for one collection of Aaron Copland’s music made a comment about how it was strange that Copland had written very little choral music given its indigenous popularity in the US in the first half of the twentieth century. But yes, solo vocalists have been the primary mode of vocal music in English-speaking culture which presented a challenge in creating post-Vatican II liturgical music which was intended to echo the local culture (something that Dennis Day noted in his book, Why Catholics Can’t Sing). Folk and rock both tend not to work well as a format for congregational music although the former works better in my opinion. Certainly, I don’t buy Day’s argument that the obvious liturgical choice is old-school hymnody (I lean more towards incorporating more of Black gospel instead). I wouldn’t call the various harmony-based groups like Backstreet Boys or K-Pop as choral music. What makes choral music choral is the fact that there are multiple voices singing each part in the piece.
  - djmips 1y ago
    What about groups like the aforementioned Pentatonix and The Harvard Opportunes. They are quite literally multiple voices singing each part in the piece.
dietrichepp 1y ago
I listen to a fair amount of choral music, from plainchant and organum up through modern and contemporary works. I think the short answer is missing, which is that most choral music just isn’t that exciting. The Wikipedia article for the Motet has an interesting quote which echoes the sentiment here: > [the motet is] not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts. This quote is attributed to Johannes de Grocheio in the 1200s! That means that people have been saying that choral music is hard to appreciate for more than seven hundred years.
- bobbiechen 1y ago
  I totally agree - I've sung in a few choirs myself but even I myself hesitate to attend choral events sometimes. It takes effort to appreciate the depth involved, even with modern choral music (think Eric Whitacre) or even gospel choir, compared to other forms of entertainment. I also agree with the article that understanding the blend of voices is best "when you are singing in the midst of the action" rather than on a recording. But also, that means it's hard to gain familiarity with specific songs or genre-specific styles, which is another barrier to entry.
  - dhosek 1y ago
    I think there’s a big issue with the recording style used for choral music. It tends to be recorded with a far mic in an echoey room which gives the experience of hearing it in church, but I think close micing the individual sections would give more of a sense of being in the choir and really help make everything more distinct. I don’t know any choral music recorded this way, but I know that one of Tony Banks’ (keyboard player for Genesis) orchestral suites was recorded this way which I think worked well.
    - simonask 1y ago
      There's lots of choir music recorded this way. Check out Caroline Shaw's "Partita for 8 voices", for example.
djmips 1y ago
I love choral music. Maybe partially due to growing up going to church. I love hearing it in modern settings like the video games. It feels like Enya falls squarely into the 'choral' sound despite them being 'solo'. (lots of overdubs I imagine) And then there's African choir. Popular example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AGtd2-jv0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AGtd2-jv0U
Almondsetat 1y ago
It's not harder to appreciate. Opera has swept the floor regarding popular sung music from the 1700s onwards, and has created quite a barren landscape. We have to thank England and Germany for having kept the repertoire alive enough during the last 3 centuries. It's merely a cultural thing.
- deleted 1y ago
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- omnicognate 1y ago
  Yeah, I reject the premise. My enjoyment of choral music predates and led to my participation in it, not the other way round. The key moment was getting a set of Tallis Scholars CDs as a kid. I fell in love as soon as I pressed play. There's nothing "harder to appreciate" about a group of voices vs any other way of making music.
antognini 1y ago
One thing that stands out to me about choral music is how much smoother it makes dissonance sound. Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular living composers of choral music and he routinely uses huge tone clusters in his works. When sung by a choir, his pieces sound dreamy and atmospheric, but if you were to play them on the piano they would be much more challenging to listen to. I have a theory that choral music tends to be sidelined by more "serious" classical music for precisely this reason. As an addendum, for anyone interested in choral music I highly recommend listening to Caroline Shaw. She is among the most interesting new voices in the genre. Her piece Partita for 8 Voices [1] won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back. For a somewhat more accessible piece I also really like Its Motion Keeps [2]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDVMtnaB28E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDVMtnaB28E [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT1PqR97urc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT1PqR97urc
- lucyjojo 1y ago
  dissonance is a function of the instrument (and the notes -- and other stuff), not only the notes. so notes that are dissonant on piano are not necessarily dissonant with human voices. a big reason for that is apparently overtone matching (and i guess that because of formants/resonant cavities of the human vocal tract, there must be a lot of matching overtones in more cases, maybe? i wonder if there is a youtube vid about that, there must be...)
  - lucyjojo 1y ago
    tldr: big chances it does not make dissonance "smoother", but that the sound is less dissonant in the first place.
    - kepeko 1y ago
      I wonder if human singer instinctively chooses another note, that is not 100% same frequency as in piano. You know, there are always imperfections in piano tuning even if it's done in today's standard way(all intervals are not perfect). I'm not a piano tuner but this is my understanding. Possibly trained singers can sing in a better harmony somewhere where piano gets it (very) slightly wrong?
1123581321 1y ago
My coworker from years ago said it best. I’d had us listening to King’s College, Giovanni Gabrielli, etc. during Christmas. One day the station was switched to contemporary Christmas. My coworker said, “I’m really sorry, I tried to like it, but I’ll go insane if we have one more day of music without a beat.”
leviathant 1y ago
My wife is a successful Australian-American choral composer, and riding shotgun as her career has taken off, if I were to make a few observations right before I turn in for the night: "Choral music is harder to appreciate than say either symphonies or chamber music" - unlike orchestras and smaller string ensembles, choirs are champions of new music. The end of the article cites opera's growing popularity (an idea I'm not sure I buy into) but opera companies are famously stuck in rep from 100-300 year old, because that's what the donor class wants to hear. The perspective painted by this article isn't all that different from the boomer who thinks there hasn't been good rock n' roll since the Beatles and the Stones. It's out there, all around you - you're just not looking in the right places. Choir music has a built-in network effect; when one choir sings a piece that goes over well, often times there are members who are in one or two other choirs, or are even choir directors themselves. There's a very dynamic scene, not even touching on religious choirs. And to people who think it's not that exciting, again I think you might just not be going to the right concerts. I've seen a choir reduce an entire audience to tears, and I've heard choral pieces that send the hair up on the back of my neck. I say this as someone who normally listens to Nine Inch Nails, Fever Ray, Queens of the Stone Age, Autechre, Aphex Twin... Some of my favorite choral works have very catchy rhythms, others border on math rock. Choral organizations could do with better marketing; it's hard to compete in today's media landscape. One of my favorite groups, the St Louis Chamber Chorus, performs new and old works, and makes it a point to perform in unique spaces all around the St Louis area - part of the attraction to a concert is getting to go into that church you've always wondered about, or an old theater that's been brought back to life by the community. The Mid-Columbia Master Singers have performed in the Hanford B reactor site in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state. Or even seeing The King's Singers perform with Voces8 in an old mainstay like Royal Albert Hall, it's a sensory experience that can't be replicated. And again, it's a community thing. You meet other people who appreciate this stuff when you go to the concerts and stay for the receptions. If you feel like you could make things better, become a subscriber, a major donor, join the board of one of these things. It's incredibly rewarding. Back to marketing: outside of a few long-running groups like Chanticleer, Cantus, Voces8, the King's Singers, and so on, it's really challenging to build a brand around choral music. The industry's just not there for it. But seek out local choral concerts, talk to some strangers there, and you'll find a whole ecosystem that operates is more typically consumed live and in person, than it is via recording. Going back to the title of the article, I suppose that does make it harder to appreciate than something you've heard in movie trailers and can stream from Spotify.
p0w3n3d 1y ago
For choral music listeners I strongly recommend works of contemporary Polish composers Paweł Bębenek and Piotr Pałka. Some of their pieces are really innovative I'd say, without breaking the classics rules. Also their works has recently been translated quite often to other languages
ipsum2 1y ago
Acapella is quite popular, with lots of different groups hitting >10 million views on YouTube. Pentatonix is the obvious example, but even relatively 'unknown' groups (eg university acapella) get many listens.
vintermann 1y ago
I think it's a lot about economics, too. Choirs of any significant size have to be amateur. It's hard enough to do a 4 person band playing popular music full-time, with 20-30 people performing more niche music it just doesn't happen. Small group a capella is slightly more viable, but it's very "amateur coded": even very good a capella groups perform a lot of covers, and rarely stick with one genre. They perform whatever they want, which is often also things with commercial appeal, but isn't ideal for long-term musical identity building. Take Rajaton for instance. Extremely technically brilliant, but their own compositions are a relatively small part of their repertoire (and still more than most a capella groups!). Pop music covers and Christmas music are obviously a big part of what makes them commercially viable, in addition they perform commissioned work from acknowledged choral composers (Mia Marakoff, Michael McGlynn). When they do the occasional album with good stylistic coherence and their own compositions (like 2016 Salaisuus) it doesn't look like a commerical success.
- ginko 1y ago
  >I think it's a lot about economics, too. Choirs of any significant size have to be amateur. It's hard enough to do a 4 person band playing popular music full-time, with 20-30 people performing more niche music it just doesn't happen. That really depends where you live. In Vienna you definitely get all-professional choirs of that size for instance.
  - vintermann 1y ago
    Really? I only know opera choirs as professional choirs of that size, and they kind of don't count, since the members are also actors and opera singers (just without a main role in that particular production). When I think about it, maybe there are also choirs were members are paid, but are only very part-time employees/freelancers?
8bitsrule 1y ago
Some music is only 'exciting' for performers ... and that's OK! Watch a performance of a late Schubert string quintet or Beethoven string quartet for example ... see how much fun they're having. My high-school chorus teacher put together a group to sing madrigals; it sure was fun, and whether there was an audience made no matter.
zoeey 1y ago
I once heard a live a cappella performance in a church, and the moment the voices began, it felt like the whole space wrapped around me in silence. That was when I really understood the beauty of choral music. It is not just about the melody but about how the sound blends in the room and resonates with the air. It is something you simply cannot feel through headphones.
kazinator 1y ago
The author misses this: Choral music is boring because the tempos tend to be slow. The instruments used are generally incapable of fast passages in which notes have a sharp, clear attack. Not just fast passages, but interesting passages. Choral melodies tend to be uninteresting, because they have to be singable. If there are too many awkward leaps, only some rare genius with a perfect ear and vocal control can pull it off; yet the same melody would be nothing to a violinist, pianist, or flutist, at twice the tempo, who would have all the notes crisply articulated with good intonation and a quick attack. In a nutshell, some people like their Western Art music when it shreds. Otherwise, not so much. Which is not to say that vocals as such are unexciting; far from it. The problem is that choral works often just have too many people singing. Exciting vocals mainly have one vocalist, or at most a very small number, doing something powerful with their voices, not just hitting the notes in a score. I'd rather listen to a good barbershop quartet than some Baroque chorale---even if it's by Bach! However, if the latter were reduced to an ensemble of just four people, it could work a lot better. E.g. this actually sound pretty cool: five ladies singing the Toccata and Fugue in Dm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKI9VThPB4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKI9VThPB4w Much more fun than any random Bach chorale, sorry J. S. But still, only to a point. Though they are hitting the notes and the harmonies are crisp, there is a lot of portamento (gliding from note to note). The attack of an instrument isn't there. In terms of vocal power, it's a joke compared to swing, blues, rock.
- aworks 1y ago
  In another adjacent example, I'd rather listen to art song rather than choral music. More emotional impact, usually easier to comprehend, and the singer's personality comes through.
heihieih 1y ago
Some are amazing, others are just bland. I don't sing in chorus very often; it's not the type of music I like.
agys 1y ago
One of my favorite is “Deo gratias” by Johannes Ockeghem: a 36 parts canon! The textures emerging from the the overlapping voices is just amazing… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZJQMEa9_2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZJQMEa9_2I
cturner 1y ago
Summary: The mainstream ear has changed. As a result, traditional choral compositions have become less accessible to mainstream audiences, but the form of choral music remains accessible. People who participate in choral music train themselves into a traditional taste as a side-effect of participation. Sung pentatonic music seems to be accessible to everyone from a young age. For most things beyond that, our brains need exposure to the form to be able to appreciate it. This affects rhythm, melody and instruments. My three-year-old hates the sound of guitar distortion. I am confident he will acclimatise to it. Accessibility of traditional choral music will be influenced by what the audience knows. People who grew up with sung carols on at Christmas will be more open to it than people who have grown up with post-war pop Christmas. Everyone now living in the developed world has been exposed to beat-backed major/minor easy-listening music by television, films, car radio and shopping centres. This is recent. People a hundred years ago did not have the same ear. The large choral work Elijah was easy-listening to audiences who had heard sung mass hundreds of times. In 2025, a church music director wanting a twentieth century composer would schedule Rutter easily - Rutter writes music that suits the ear of pop Christmas. They would prefer Howells if they thought the congregation had a more traditional ear. They would schedule Messiaen only for a particular occasion. The OP wrote - "It has struck me that most recommenders and lovers of choral music [are] themselves singers (or conductors) of choral music." It is easy to get involved, so many people who are curious get involved. Once involved, people will find their tastes becoming traditional as a side-effect of exposure to the repertoire. This creates a running division between people who participate and the mainstream. Note that before seventy years ago, almost everyone who loved music would have participated in it, even if only singing to young children or helping out at church. Outside royal circles, the practice of loving music yet being a pure consumer is a recent phenomenon. Some forms of choral music will have a different relationship with pop than high-church music. For example - Gospel, accompaniment to rock songs like /Under the Bridge/ or /You can't always get what you want/. The Beatles were a mainstay of post-war pop, but /Because/ on Abbey Road has the character of a Renaissance choral work - George Martin was classically trained. The mainstream ear may be making another shift now to more sophisticated beats with closer melodies (smaller pitch jumps) and simpler chords. If it happens, we will see evidence of it in popular Christmas music. As far as I know there has not been a new addition to that repertoire since /All I want for Christmas is You/ which is c20 pop.
skylurk 1y ago
What's hard to appreciate about this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMLkrTJ9BZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMLkrTJ9BZI Sure, the HALO track has instrumental sections too but music is all about contrast. Frankly a lot of purely monastic stuff was boring on purpose, that was the whole point. They also wore the same garb every day for decades.
M95D 1y ago
I think the article missed the elephant in the room: It's slow and has almost no rhythm. No rhythm = not music.
sombragris 1y ago
I'm in a choir. We just performed Mendelssohn's Elijah (translated into Spanish). Last year we performed Brahms' Deutsches Requiem in its original language. Both were exhilarating experiences. The article is a great set of talking points for discussion, although I might not agree with all of them. Some counterpoints which might be more or less effective in rebutting the article's assertions: - Languages are different, but in our context, many choral pieces are in Latin which is very close to Spanish, and there's also the Roman Catholic liturgical tradition; Masses were said in Latin until not that long ago. Thus, for many works and in our particular context, the language gap is not as wide as one might think. - About the context of the works themselves, a good set of program notes or a small, brief talk prior to performance could be quite helpful. - Why something serious should have less appeal? There's a place for everything, and the serious stuff has a place under the sun, too. - If we "go to church less", well. We should go more often to church, then. - Several points attest to this general idea: the best way to enjoy a choral performance is by being a choir member and perform the work itself. The second best way is to attend a live choral performance in a suitable venue. Still, there are very good choral recordings. For example, Carus is a label with outstanding recordings, such as Rilling and the Gächinger Kantorei rendition of Brahms' Deutsches Requiem.
deleted 1y ago
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41 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

Carmina Burana, which used to be ubiquitous in video games and medieval movies, says it ain’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQXehmVDLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aQXehmVDLc (trad) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE01DAATf6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE01DAATf6s (remix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4qcbzKWeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4qcbzKWeY (deodorant ad)

samplatt 1y ago
I mean it's backed up by some of the most bombastic drums and strings that the entire era produced, but sure, it's notable. Even the softer track "Ecce Gratum" still has regular organ interludes to set the tone.

evrennetwork 1y ago

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recallingmemory 1y ago

"Miserere mei, Deus" is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard and I'm not religious nor do I understand the language it's written in. I've never thought of those as prerequisites to enjoying a piece of music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwFXR5ett6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwFXR5ett6U

dolefulcreature 1y ago
Honestly? Join a community choir and you will very quickly learn to appreciate all forms of choral music. Choral music is about groups of humans acting in an extremely organized and coordinated way. It's a kind of collabarative effort that requires full engagement of the senses: you have to LISTEN and FEEL and EXPRESS all in rhythmic time while also WATCHING each other and your director. It takes concerted effort and everyone has to be locked in or it all falls apart....but when you check all those boxes? Absolute transcendence.
arduanika 1y ago
A classic! The Allegri Miserere gets used whenever a movie soundtrack needs some sacred choral music. That floating soprano line between the sections is something else.
ics 1y ago
John Browne (1453-1490) - O Regina Mundi Clara (Tallis Scholars Ensemble) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y28FW6JBd7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y28FW6JBd7w
sombragris 1y ago
For me, the Kyrie from Tomás Luis de Victoria's Officium Defunctorum (1605) is the best piece of music ever written, period. And I say this after having listened to a lot of music of various styles. Here's the piece with two great performers: - The Sixteen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-C_zC6KiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO-C_zC6KiQ - The Tallis Scholars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOko0MqkNcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOko0MqkNcc Enjoy!

noddybear 1y ago

"Spem in Alium" is the most beautiful piece of music in existence for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-ZAAi4UQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT-ZAAi4UQQ At 40 distinct melodies, it is certainly the 'grandest' piece in early English church music.

arduanika 1y ago
Yes! I had a chance to sing in this once. But it definitely suffers from every one of the reasons for obscurity listed in TFA, on steroids.
dhosek 1y ago
As I recently commented on Bluesky, I want to write a contemporary choral setting of Spem in Alium (hope in another) but write the title Spem in Allium (hope in garlic) and see if it can make it to publication before anyone notices).

ludston 1y ago

It seems like the author is referring specifically to the style of choral music found in churches, although the same thing can be said about other choral genres like barbershop. However, Backstreet Boys or many of the Korean idol groups do music that could be classified as choral that's highly accessible. The main difference is drums. Music without drums or some rhythmic equivalent is less accessible. The other main difference is not in accessibility, but economics. Is cheaper and easier to make a band with only one featured vocalist, so most professional bands do this. It's what people hear, and therefore what they identify with and therefore what they go out of their way to listen to.

masonlynass 1y ago
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dhosek 1y ago
There is, actually, a not insignificant repertoire of secular choral music although it’s lost a lot of its popularity. The liner notes for one collection of Aaron Copland’s music made a comment about how it was strange that Copland had written very little choral music given its indigenous popularity in the US in the first half of the twentieth century. But yes, solo vocalists have been the primary mode of vocal music in English-speaking culture which presented a challenge in creating post-Vatican II liturgical music which was intended to echo the local culture (something that Dennis Day noted in his book, Why Catholics Can’t Sing). Folk and rock both tend not to work well as a format for congregational music although the former works better in my opinion. Certainly, I don’t buy Day’s argument that the obvious liturgical choice is old-school hymnody (I lean more towards incorporating more of Black gospel instead). I wouldn’t call the various harmony-based groups like Backstreet Boys or K-Pop as choral music. What makes choral music choral is the fact that there are multiple voices singing each part in the piece.
- djmips 1y ago
  What about groups like the aforementioned Pentatonix and The Harvard Opportunes. They are quite literally multiple voices singing each part in the piece.

dietrichepp 1y ago

I listen to a fair amount of choral music, from plainchant and organum up through modern and contemporary works. I think the short answer is missing, which is that most choral music just isn’t that exciting. The Wikipedia article for the Motet has an interesting quote which echoes the sentiment here: > [the motet is] not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts. This quote is attributed to Johannes de Grocheio in the 1200s! That means that people have been saying that choral music is hard to appreciate for more than seven hundred years.

bobbiechen 1y ago
I totally agree - I've sung in a few choirs myself but even I myself hesitate to attend choral events sometimes. It takes effort to appreciate the depth involved, even with modern choral music (think Eric Whitacre) or even gospel choir, compared to other forms of entertainment. I also agree with the article that understanding the blend of voices is best "when you are singing in the midst of the action" rather than on a recording. But also, that means it's hard to gain familiarity with specific songs or genre-specific styles, which is another barrier to entry.
- dhosek 1y ago
  I think there’s a big issue with the recording style used for choral music. It tends to be recorded with a far mic in an echoey room which gives the experience of hearing it in church, but I think close micing the individual sections would give more of a sense of being in the choir and really help make everything more distinct. I don’t know any choral music recorded this way, but I know that one of Tony Banks’ (keyboard player for Genesis) orchestral suites was recorded this way which I think worked well.
  - simonask 1y ago
    There's lots of choir music recorded this way. Check out Caroline Shaw's "Partita for 8 voices", for example.

djmips 1y ago

I love choral music. Maybe partially due to growing up going to church. I love hearing it in modern settings like the video games. It feels like Enya falls squarely into the 'choral' sound despite them being 'solo'. (lots of overdubs I imagine) And then there's African choir. Popular example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AGtd2-jv0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AGtd2-jv0U

Almondsetat 1y ago

It's not harder to appreciate. Opera has swept the floor regarding popular sung music from the 1700s onwards, and has created quite a barren landscape. We have to thank England and Germany for having kept the repertoire alive enough during the last 3 centuries. It's merely a cultural thing.

deleted 1y ago
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omnicognate 1y ago
Yeah, I reject the premise. My enjoyment of choral music predates and led to my participation in it, not the other way round. The key moment was getting a set of Tallis Scholars CDs as a kid. I fell in love as soon as I pressed play. There's nothing "harder to appreciate" about a group of voices vs any other way of making music.

antognini 1y ago

One thing that stands out to me about choral music is how much smoother it makes dissonance sound. Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular living composers of choral music and he routinely uses huge tone clusters in his works. When sung by a choir, his pieces sound dreamy and atmospheric, but if you were to play them on the piano they would be much more challenging to listen to. I have a theory that choral music tends to be sidelined by more "serious" classical music for precisely this reason. As an addendum, for anyone interested in choral music I highly recommend listening to Caroline Shaw. She is among the most interesting new voices in the genre. Her piece Partita for 8 Voices [1] won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back. For a somewhat more accessible piece I also really like Its Motion Keeps [2]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDVMtnaB28E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDVMtnaB28E [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT1PqR97urc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT1PqR97urc

lucyjojo 1y ago
dissonance is a function of the instrument (and the notes -- and other stuff), not only the notes. so notes that are dissonant on piano are not necessarily dissonant with human voices. a big reason for that is apparently overtone matching (and i guess that because of formants/resonant cavities of the human vocal tract, there must be a lot of matching overtones in more cases, maybe? i wonder if there is a youtube vid about that, there must be...)
- lucyjojo 1y ago
  tldr: big chances it does not make dissonance "smoother", but that the sound is less dissonant in the first place.
  - kepeko 1y ago
    I wonder if human singer instinctively chooses another note, that is not 100% same frequency as in piano. You know, there are always imperfections in piano tuning even if it's done in today's standard way(all intervals are not perfect). I'm not a piano tuner but this is my understanding. Possibly trained singers can sing in a better harmony somewhere where piano gets it (very) slightly wrong?

1123581321 1y ago

My coworker from years ago said it best. I’d had us listening to King’s College, Giovanni Gabrielli, etc. during Christmas. One day the station was switched to contemporary Christmas. My coworker said, “I’m really sorry, I tried to like it, but I’ll go insane if we have one more day of music without a beat.”

leviathant 1y ago

My wife is a successful Australian-American choral composer, and riding shotgun as her career has taken off, if I were to make a few observations right before I turn in for the night: "Choral music is harder to appreciate than say either symphonies or chamber music" - unlike orchestras and smaller string ensembles, choirs are champions of new music. The end of the article cites opera's growing popularity (an idea I'm not sure I buy into) but opera companies are famously stuck in rep from 100-300 year old, because that's what the donor class wants to hear. The perspective painted by this article isn't all that different from the boomer who thinks there hasn't been good rock n' roll since the Beatles and the Stones. It's out there, all around you - you're just not looking in the right places. Choir music has a built-in network effect; when one choir sings a piece that goes over well, often times there are members who are in one or two other choirs, or are even choir directors themselves. There's a very dynamic scene, not even touching on religious choirs. And to people who think it's not that exciting, again I think you might just not be going to the right concerts. I've seen a choir reduce an entire audience to tears, and I've heard choral pieces that send the hair up on the back of my neck. I say this as someone who normally listens to Nine Inch Nails, Fever Ray, Queens of the Stone Age, Autechre, Aphex Twin... Some of my favorite choral works have very catchy rhythms, others border on math rock. Choral organizations could do with better marketing; it's hard to compete in today's media landscape. One of my favorite groups, the St Louis Chamber Chorus, performs new and old works, and makes it a point to perform in unique spaces all around the St Louis area - part of the attraction to a concert is getting to go into that church you've always wondered about, or an old theater that's been brought back to life by the community. The Mid-Columbia Master Singers have performed in the Hanford B reactor site in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state. Or even seeing The King's Singers perform with Voces8 in an old mainstay like Royal Albert Hall, it's a sensory experience that can't be replicated. And again, it's a community thing. You meet other people who appreciate this stuff when you go to the concerts and stay for the receptions. If you feel like you could make things better, become a subscriber, a major donor, join the board of one of these things. It's incredibly rewarding. Back to marketing: outside of a few long-running groups like Chanticleer, Cantus, Voces8, the King's Singers, and so on, it's really challenging to build a brand around choral music. The industry's just not there for it. But seek out local choral concerts, talk to some strangers there, and you'll find a whole ecosystem that operates is more typically consumed live and in person, than it is via recording. Going back to the title of the article, I suppose that does make it harder to appreciate than something you've heard in movie trailers and can stream from Spotify.

p0w3n3d 1y ago

For choral music listeners I strongly recommend works of contemporary Polish composers Paweł Bębenek and Piotr Pałka. Some of their pieces are really innovative I'd say, without breaking the classics rules. Also their works has recently been translated quite often to other languages

ipsum2 1y ago

Acapella is quite popular, with lots of different groups hitting >10 million views on YouTube. Pentatonix is the obvious example, but even relatively 'unknown' groups (eg university acapella) get many listens.

vintermann 1y ago

I think it's a lot about economics, too. Choirs of any significant size have to be amateur. It's hard enough to do a 4 person band playing popular music full-time, with 20-30 people performing more niche music it just doesn't happen. Small group a capella is slightly more viable, but it's very "amateur coded": even very good a capella groups perform a lot of covers, and rarely stick with one genre. They perform whatever they want, which is often also things with commercial appeal, but isn't ideal for long-term musical identity building. Take Rajaton for instance. Extremely technically brilliant, but their own compositions are a relatively small part of their repertoire (and still more than most a capella groups!). Pop music covers and Christmas music are obviously a big part of what makes them commercially viable, in addition they perform commissioned work from acknowledged choral composers (Mia Marakoff, Michael McGlynn). When they do the occasional album with good stylistic coherence and their own compositions (like 2016 Salaisuus) it doesn't look like a commerical success.

ginko 1y ago
>I think it's a lot about economics, too. Choirs of any significant size have to be amateur. It's hard enough to do a 4 person band playing popular music full-time, with 20-30 people performing more niche music it just doesn't happen. That really depends where you live. In Vienna you definitely get all-professional choirs of that size for instance.
- vintermann 1y ago
  Really? I only know opera choirs as professional choirs of that size, and they kind of don't count, since the members are also actors and opera singers (just without a main role in that particular production). When I think about it, maybe there are also choirs were members are paid, but are only very part-time employees/freelancers?

8bitsrule 1y ago

Some music is only 'exciting' for performers ... and that's OK! Watch a performance of a late Schubert string quintet or Beethoven string quartet for example ... see how much fun they're having. My high-school chorus teacher put together a group to sing madrigals; it sure was fun, and whether there was an audience made no matter.

zoeey 1y ago

I once heard a live a cappella performance in a church, and the moment the voices began, it felt like the whole space wrapped around me in silence. That was when I really understood the beauty of choral music. It is not just about the melody but about how the sound blends in the room and resonates with the air. It is something you simply cannot feel through headphones.

kazinator 1y ago

The author misses this: Choral music is boring because the tempos tend to be slow. The instruments used are generally incapable of fast passages in which notes have a sharp, clear attack. Not just fast passages, but interesting passages. Choral melodies tend to be uninteresting, because they have to be singable. If there are too many awkward leaps, only some rare genius with a perfect ear and vocal control can pull it off; yet the same melody would be nothing to a violinist, pianist, or flutist, at twice the tempo, who would have all the notes crisply articulated with good intonation and a quick attack. In a nutshell, some people like their Western Art music when it shreds. Otherwise, not so much. Which is not to say that vocals as such are unexciting; far from it. The problem is that choral works often just have too many people singing. Exciting vocals mainly have one vocalist, or at most a very small number, doing something powerful with their voices, not just hitting the notes in a score. I'd rather listen to a good barbershop quartet than some Baroque chorale---even if it's by Bach! However, if the latter were reduced to an ensemble of just four people, it could work a lot better. E.g. this actually sound pretty cool: five ladies singing the Toccata and Fugue in Dm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKI9VThPB4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKI9VThPB4w Much more fun than any random Bach chorale, sorry J. S. But still, only to a point. Though they are hitting the notes and the harmonies are crisp, there is a lot of portamento (gliding from note to note). The attack of an instrument isn't there. In terms of vocal power, it's a joke compared to swing, blues, rock.

aworks 1y ago
In another adjacent example, I'd rather listen to art song rather than choral music. More emotional impact, usually easier to comprehend, and the singer's personality comes through.

heihieih 1y ago

Some are amazing, others are just bland. I don't sing in chorus very often; it's not the type of music I like.

agys 1y ago

One of my favorite is “Deo gratias” by Johannes Ockeghem: a 36 parts canon! The textures emerging from the the overlapping voices is just amazing… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZJQMEa9_2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZJQMEa9_2I

cturner 1y ago

Summary: The mainstream ear has changed. As a result, traditional choral compositions have become less accessible to mainstream audiences, but the form of choral music remains accessible. People who participate in choral music train themselves into a traditional taste as a side-effect of participation. Sung pentatonic music seems to be accessible to everyone from a young age. For most things beyond that, our brains need exposure to the form to be able to appreciate it. This affects rhythm, melody and instruments. My three-year-old hates the sound of guitar distortion. I am confident he will acclimatise to it. Accessibility of traditional choral music will be influenced by what the audience knows. People who grew up with sung carols on at Christmas will be more open to it than people who have grown up with post-war pop Christmas. Everyone now living in the developed world has been exposed to beat-backed major/minor easy-listening music by television, films, car radio and shopping centres. This is recent. People a hundred years ago did not have the same ear. The large choral work Elijah was easy-listening to audiences who had heard sung mass hundreds of times. In 2025, a church music director wanting a twentieth century composer would schedule Rutter easily - Rutter writes music that suits the ear of pop Christmas. They would prefer Howells if they thought the congregation had a more traditional ear. They would schedule Messiaen only for a particular occasion. The OP wrote - "It has struck me that most recommenders and lovers of choral music [are] themselves singers (or conductors) of choral music." It is easy to get involved, so many people who are curious get involved. Once involved, people will find their tastes becoming traditional as a side-effect of exposure to the repertoire. This creates a running division between people who participate and the mainstream. Note that before seventy years ago, almost everyone who loved music would have participated in it, even if only singing to young children or helping out at church. Outside royal circles, the practice of loving music yet being a pure consumer is a recent phenomenon. Some forms of choral music will have a different relationship with pop than high-church music. For example - Gospel, accompaniment to rock songs like /Under the Bridge/ or /You can't always get what you want/. The Beatles were a mainstay of post-war pop, but /Because/ on Abbey Road has the character of a Renaissance choral work - George Martin was classically trained. The mainstream ear may be making another shift now to more sophisticated beats with closer melodies (smaller pitch jumps) and simpler chords. If it happens, we will see evidence of it in popular Christmas music. As far as I know there has not been a new addition to that repertoire since /All I want for Christmas is You/ which is c20 pop.

skylurk 1y ago

What's hard to appreciate about this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMLkrTJ9BZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMLkrTJ9BZI Sure, the HALO track has instrumental sections too but music is all about contrast. Frankly a lot of purely monastic stuff was boring on purpose, that was the whole point. They also wore the same garb every day for decades.

M95D 1y ago

I think the article missed the elephant in the room: It's slow and has almost no rhythm. No rhythm = not music.

sombragris 1y ago

I'm in a choir. We just performed Mendelssohn's Elijah (translated into Spanish). Last year we performed Brahms' Deutsches Requiem in its original language. Both were exhilarating experiences. The article is a great set of talking points for discussion, although I might not agree with all of them. Some counterpoints which might be more or less effective in rebutting the article's assertions: - Languages are different, but in our context, many choral pieces are in Latin which is very close to Spanish, and there's also the Roman Catholic liturgical tradition; Masses were said in Latin until not that long ago. Thus, for many works and in our particular context, the language gap is not as wide as one might think. - About the context of the works themselves, a good set of program notes or a small, brief talk prior to performance could be quite helpful. - Why something serious should have less appeal? There's a place for everything, and the serious stuff has a place under the sun, too. - If we "go to church less", well. We should go more often to church, then. - Several points attest to this general idea: the best way to enjoy a choral performance is by being a choir member and perform the work itself. The second best way is to attend a live choral performance in a suitable venue. Still, there are very good choral recordings. For example, Carus is a label with outstanding recordings, such as Rilling and the Gächinger Kantorei rendition of Brahms' Deutsches Requiem.

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