Tenor Richard Flewitt write about the value of singing with others…
Why do thousands of people all over the world choose to gather together every week to sing in a choir? From the outside it could look a little crazy – these groups of singers repeating the same songs and phrases over and over in a room where nobody else can see or hear them. What’s the point? And why go to the bother of travelling to sing with a group when the voice is the one instrument that can be brilliant and beautiful on its own, any time, any place, anywhere – even in the bath?
Pondering this question on a cold, rainy drive home from a recent Nottingham Chamber Singers rehearsal, I was reminded of an interview with composer Eric Whitacre, in which he says:
“There are so many good things about choral music that it’s kind of stunning that it’s not a requirement in education.” He goes on to list some of the benefits of singing together: “You learn compassion, you learn empathy, you learn discipline, you learn languages, you learn history, you learn focus. All of these things are essential for every other part of your life.”
I have been singing in choirs since the age of seven. We typically think of rehearsals as a means to an end – to perform together in concert – and of course the satisfaction of a successful performance to a sell-out, appreciative audience cannot be denied. For many years, that was what singing was all about for me: the end result. But over recent years I have come to consciously appreciate the benefits of the rehearsals themselves.
After a busy working day, I would often feel too exhausted to face two hours of singing, but commitment to a choir like NCS means attending every week, so I would drag myself into the car and go. And I began to notice that afterwards I had forgotten the tiredness entirely – I felt better, even energised.
Lockdown brought this into sharp focus. I hadn’t fully appreciated how much the simple act of coming together to sing meant to me until we were finally permitted to do it again – even if that meant standing two metres apart. I clearly remember our first gathering in the garden of a church hall in Wollaton. We made a wonderful sound, and there was a palpable, collective sense of euphoric gratitude at being back together.
Whitacre explains the science behind that feeling: “Study after study shows the health and well-being benefits of singing. We know now that singing together in a group reduces the stress hormone cortisol, releases endorphins, causes a sense of joy and euphoria, and creates a physiological, chemical bonding between the people in the room” – or the garden, in our case.
So perhaps the question isn’t why so many people choose to sing in a choir, but why more of us don’t. If you’ve ever been curious about what it feels like to be part of something like this – to lose the day’s worries in two hours of music-making, to leave a rehearsal feeling lighter than when you arrived, and to be part of a community bound together by something genuinely joyful – then we’d love to hear from you. The Nottingham Chamber Singers are always keen to welcome new voices. Come and find out for yourself what all the fuss is about.
Here is one of the papers Whitacre references: Singing and social bonding: changes in connectivity and pain threshold as a function of group size – ScienceDirect
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