My Mouth Shall Proclaim Your Praise

Here is a non-comprehensive list of practices I have found to make choir rehearsals more effective and efficient. I am not an efficiency expert by any means - the rehearsals at which I preside often side-track, but that's just my personal directing style . However, when the choir needs to buckle down and do some Hard Work, I have some cards up my sleeve. Find the right time of day . Schedules are a choir director's biggest challenge. If you are directing a parish choir of mostly adults or older students, you're almost certainly going to land on a weekday evening. Be sensitive to your singers' mental cutoff point - ours is 8:45. If your choir members stop processing after 9pm, you won't accomplish anything by pushing on to Just One More Time. For those big pre-Major-Feast rehearsals, make it a morning; twice a year I bribe my choir with coffee and donuts and sing for three hours on a Saturday morning, once before Christmas and once before Holy Week. Those are always ...

I had these prayers printed on the back of some St. Hildegard of Bingen holy cards from The Printery House (a Benedictine monastery in Missouri), and hand them out to my choir members. After the opening prayer I include a short litany: Our Lady, Queen of the Angels; St. Cecilia; St Sebastian (our parish patron); and St. Hildegard. Prayer before rehearsal V. O sing praises, sing praises to our God. R. Sing praises, sing praises to our King. Let us pray: O Lord God Almighty, whose glory the cherubim and seraphim and all the hosts of heaven with ceaseless voice proclaim, hear and accept, we humbly beseech Thee, the praises of Thy church below; and pour down upon those who serve Thee in choir such a spirit of faith, reverence, and joy as will lift both our hymns and our lives unto Thee; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Prayer after rehearsal V. Blessed are they who dwell in Thy house; R. They will be always praising Thee. Let us pray: O God, whom all the joyful companies of heaven la...