Why you should join a choir: it could change your life
Having always sung in choirs myself (see – there’s a picture of me, right, in Exeter Cathedral. Doesn’t everyone look enthralled?), I’ve rarely stopped to analyse it. So I find it all the more interesting when others do.
In an article entitled Why take prozac when you can sing Prokofiev?, Mary Ann Sieghart of The Times relates some research and personal experience about the effects of choral singing that I find truly fascinating.
Sieghart contends that singing – choral singing specifically – quite simply improves mood.
A survey (for the Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health) found that, of the choral singers questioned:
- 93 per cent said that singing made their mood more positive
- 89 per cent reported feeling happier;
- 79 per cent said it helped to reduce stress
- 78 per cent felt calmer.
- 74 per cent were more energetic
- 76 per cent more awake and alert.
- 74 per cent agreed that singing was “good for the soul”
Impressive! As Sieghart asks – who needs Prozac when you can sing Prokofiev? (I’m not sure that Prokofiev is famed esepcially for his choral writing, but let’s gloss over that)
More interesting is Sieghart’s personal testimony of music’s “added dimension” – that of singing in harmony.
When our voices blend and merge into one glorious sound, our egos dissolve too into a sense of oneness. Singing with others is a humbling experience: no voice should stand out from any other.
I recall when singing finally gained its true appeal — around the time my voice broke (well a few years after to be honest!), singing a different part but somehow becoming a part of a bigger, richer picture; a texture that would be incomplete without you, but equally would barely exist with you alone (for this reason I would add to Sieghart’s argument that enjoyment of singing is inversely proportional to the number singing – the fewer there are on your part, the more indispensable you become! – and so the reward grows).
Singing in harmony stretches us; it’s why we bother to trudge out to choir practice every week (or every day in some cases) on cold January evenings; it’s for that moment where it all fits together, the “yes!” moment of nailing it.
Add to this, singing is shown to develop a range of personal, practical and academic skills – not to mention enhance various soft skills like team working, punctuality, alcohol tolerance (is that just my choirs?).
No wonder most of the singers I know – professional and amateur – have such an air of confidence and wellbeing. It’s the singing! – but it might also be the alcohol.
