The Dangers of Us-and-Themness in Choirs

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It could be founder-members versus newcomers; it could be sight-readers versus ear-singers; it could be regular attenders versus intermittent attenders. The ‘problem’ behaviours complained about could be vocal (wobble in older voices, tuning issues), musical (slowness in learning their notes, rhythmic unreliability), performative (clumsiness in choreography, showing off), or extra-musical (arriving too late to help put the chairs out, never having a pencil). Differences in aspiration for the choir can also set up divisions: excellence versus sociability is a common debate in amateur choirs, and one that plays out in all kinds of areas of activity, from performance schedules to custom and practice in rehearsal.

One of the features of a charismatic group is a sense of the elect insiders being pitted against the infidels; part of the emotional energy that binds the groups together and fuels its expansion is a shared sense of being counter to something that’s wrong in the wider world. Charisma involves a critical engagement, righting a perceived wrong, and converting others to its cause in the process. But the division in these cases is between the righteous within the group and the great unwashed outside who need to be either rescued or overcome.

A sense of us-and-themness within a group, on the other hand, is problematic. Raymond Bradley (whose pioneering research into the social structures of charismatic groups has really informed my thinking on this) identifies one of the key requisites for communion - that euphoric merging of egos into the collective characteristic of the charismatic encounter - as a network of relationships whereby all members of the group have an affective bond with all other members. Groups with cliques are much less likely to become charismatic.

There are two layers to the problem, then. At the first level, the existence of allegiances to subsets of the choir can inhibit the free-flow of emotional energy that galvanises the ensemble into that exalted state where the voices ring and the hearts sing as one. This helps explain why divisions even along non-musical lines are experienced as counter-productive to the core mission of the choir. Directors know they can’t ignore choir politics and just make music, because the music isn’t so good when the politics are wonky.

At the second level, the stronger the intra-choir critique is, the more likely the group is to fracture. How this will play out depends on the structure of the fault-lines. If those who configure themselves as ‘us’ represent institutional power within the choir - members of the music team and/or executive - then the problem will be a quiet loss of members of the groups configured as ‘them’. Feeling both organisationally disempowered and under fire, they will lose their emotional attachment to the group through disappointment and disillusion. If the subset who are criticising others are not part of the established power-structure, or if not all those in authority agree, then the scene is set for a break-away group.

So, what can a director do to prevent us-and-themness, with all its dangers, developing in their choir? There are a number of strategies available, but I will deal with them in a follow-up post, this one being quite long enough for now.

Thanks for addressing this issue, which I have experienced as both "us" and "them"! I look forward to the follow-up.

This hits home all too well for me. In a previous choir, a new chairman was appointed with a very great sense of self-importance (Napolean Syndrome) - over the next ten months, the choir became 'cliquey' and we began bleeding members. His solution was that the committee should make more of an effort to be friendly with the choir, adamant that it was the committee that was the clique, nothing else. He began to run it as a business and when I flagged my concerns I was shouted down. Soon after, having blasted me in front of the singers, he had me removed from post and banned from the premises. The 'breakaway group' that you described discovered the truth and came with in support, but I lost a choir of 104 that I had founded two years previously.

Thank you for an excellent article, I look forward to reading more.

Well, sorry to hear quite how precisely this resonated with your experience, Kris, but thank you for sharing your tale. You have the sympathy of any other choral director who has been through a difficult patch (i.e. pretty much all of us).

Thanks, Liz - your article has given a broad insight into how better to handle the situation and to spot the signs early on!

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