12-07-2022

A quiet whisper: What consequences the pandemic continues to have for choral music

A study conducted last year that was led by Prof. Dr. Kathrin Schlemmer (Professorship of Musicology at the KU) painted a devastating picture of the pandemic’s impact on choral music in German-speaking countries. In order to find out how the choirs are doing a year later, the survey has now been repeated this spring. As the evaluation shows, the situation in terms of membership and finances has stabilized somewhat, but this part of the music culture also suffers from Long Covid to a certain extent.

Every fifth choir still has not taken up its rehearsals again. In addition, in the area of young talent, it is often necessary to rebuild ensembles that were unable to win children and young people as members due to the pandemic. The results of the new online survey have now been published in the current issue of the magazine "Neue Musikzeitung" (nmz). As in the last survey, co-authors of the study are church music director Tobias Brommann (dramaturge of the Europa Chor Akademie Görlitz), Prof. Jan Schumacher (university music director, Goethe University Frankfurt/Main) and Ester Petri and Dr. Johannes Graulich, who head the Stuttgart-based Carus publishing house, a leader in the field of choral music. New to the survey team is Susanne Lotter (KU student in the Bachelor’s program in "Applied Musicology and Music Education").

Declining membership, financial worries and problems in finding young members – these were the central findings of the first wave of the survey for the ChoCo study ("Choirs in corona times") dated March 2021. At the time, Professor Schlemmer and her co-authors were particularly concerned about the junior members because this group is subject to a greater fluctuation than choirs with adults anyway. "In terms of membership numbers, we witness a slight stabilization in that fewer choirs than in 2021 reported having no members left at all. This also applies to children's and youth choirs, although their situation in the second year of the pandemic is worse than that of all the choirs surveyed", explains Professor Schlemmer. However, this finding was subject to the reservation that choirs that are still without members in the second year of the pandemic may not have participated in the survey again. While there were more than 4,600 responses to the survey in 2021, the researchers counted about 1,000 participants this time. Professor Schlemmer explains: "On the one hand, this could be because media coverage in the spring of 2022 was less focused on corona in light of the Ukraine war, but on the other hand, it could also be an effect of repetition, since the main problems were already named in the first survey."

Prof. Dr. Kathrin Schlemmer, musicologist at the KU, led the two studies on the situation of choral music in corona times. (Photo: Christian Klenk)

In addition, among respondents in the spring of 2022, just under a quarter of otherwise active chorus members were inactive, equaling the numbers in 2021, which means that most choruses have not yet regained their original membership levels. The forecast for membership numbers after the pandemic is somewhat more optimistic in 2022 than it was a year earlier, she said, although there remains a proportion of eight percent of choirs that expect a permanent and significant loss of members.

"The data from our second survey indicate a tentative recovery, but not in the sense that everything is like it was before the pandemic. We see this across almost all areas: In terms of membership numbers, the situation has improved somewhat, but is still not good. When it comes to financial issues, the choirs are somewhat more optimistic, but the situation is still precarious in many cases, so that some can no longer pay their freelance choir directors”, says Professor Schlemmer.

A positive result of the follow-up study was the improved musical and mental well-being of the choir members. Apparently, there was great relief that the lockdowns, which were perceived as an absolute exception, were over for the time being and that singing together was allowed again. Now, she said, in particular children's and youth choirs needed to be promoted and supported, as in many cases they needed to be completely reconstructed. With this in mind, a large proportion of respondents called for singing to be promoted in the classroom to give a taste for more. However, the lack of appropriately trained teachers and the focus on catching up in the main subjects could prove to be a bottleneck here. Good news, Schlemmer said, was that the Federal Government will continue to provide financial support for amateur music.

A detailed article on the ChoCo study has been published in the magazine “Neue Musikzeitung” (nmz) and is available (in German) at www.nmz.de/choco.