10 Reasons to Sing in a Choir

Like brass bands, mills and fish and chips, choral singing has a rich and illustrious history in Yorkshire. "All muck and Messiah" is a famous description of the Yorkshire town of Huddersfield, but it could just as easily refer to all the other great industrial conurbations of Yorkshire. We the Bradford Festival Choral Society have just celebrated our 150th anniversary and, like other big choirs of Yorkshire - can look back on a vital and impressive history enriching the lives of generations of ordinary people. But singing goes much further back than that.

Organised choral singing has been known for at least 3000 years, since it is mentioned in Homer's Illiad. Singing is thought to pre-date speaking. In other words, thousands of years ago, people did not speak, they sang to one another. Thus to sing is to tap into mankind's primordial heritage as well as a more recent Yorkshire one.

We live in a world which seems increasingly obsessed with money and selfishness. We are employed in work which seems to demand more and more of us. For many, civic duty, putting something back remain important aspirations, but where is the time? What was for earlier generations the very lifeblood of civic life, the glue of community cohesion seems increasingly hard to sustain. What do most people do beyond giving a few pounds to charity via direct debit? It's not easy to see where you can fit it all in.

Choral singing offers one simple and powerful remedy to all that. Choral singing is an opportunity to work with people from all walks of life and discriminates not on the basis of age, gender, race, sexuality, disability or social class, only sound.

Performing to a similarly wide-ranging audience, making the best music ever written available to their community is at the heart of any good choir. Increasingly forward thinking choirs see the value in reaching out far into their communities affording opportunities to the young or the disadvantaged for instance or being a vocal part of civic celebrations and festivals. A good choir is truly a social enterprise all its members and the wider community have a stake in. The community that sings in harmony, lives in harmony.

Whether it's developing your voice, widening your understanding and deepening your appreciation of music, or experiencing the thrill of public performance, you stand to gain a great deal.

Singing some of the best music ever written, alongside experienced singers, you will sing under the direction of musical experts working with foremost soloists, orchestras and conductors. Singing in a choir affords you the opportunity learning to follow, understand and interpret written manuscripts - for a fraction of the cost of private music classes. Whatever your musical aspirations or background - even if you're a complete beginner or haven't sung since you were at school - you will develop.

Ask yourself why you love listening to music, whatever the type. Does it energise or console you? Does it resonate with anything within you? Joy? Misery? Energy? Yearning? Passion? Regret? How do you experience the music? In community? In isolation? What do particular pieces of music evoke in you? All of those things? None of those things? Some of those things? It's not easy to put what is important about music into words.

Ask any musician why they do what they do and the chances are they'll struggle to put it into words too. They may agree that of the two performing - and specifically performing to a listening audience - is a far more rewarding experience than appreciation. Yet most of us, most of the time, must be content with appreciation alone (if we discount singing in the bath or playing the air guitar that is). Or rather we would be, if it weren't for choral singing.

Choral singing allows ordinary people to access what is increasingly the paid musician's preserve: the joy of performing to a good standard to an appreciative audience. As generations of ordinary people who have sung with us or other choirs will attest, no amount of singing in the bath or playing the air guitar can make up for that. Hence why generations of ordinary people who tried it subsequently became hooked.

Several studies have found that singing enhances immunity and well-being. One study, conducted at the University of Frankfurt in Germany, found that choral members had higher levels of immunoglobin A and cortisol - markers of enhanced immunity - after they sang Mozart's "Requiem" than before. Just listening to the music did not have this effect. In another study, members of a choir filled out questionnaires to report their physical and psychological reactions to singing. The choristers reported:

  - improved lung capacity;

  - high energy;

  - relieved asthma;

  -better posture;

  - enhanced feelings of relaxation, mood and confidence

Many people with very stressful jobs find choral singing so relaxing precisely because rehearsals demand complete commitment, effort and concentration thus filtering out the endless internal noise of work and life stress.

What is truly magical about choral singing is its capacity to bring people together from all walks of life and through common endeavour unite them. To experience the one or two fleeting moments when every voice is together, every mind seems to be focused and every singer's emotions seem in complete accord is at the heart of what makes choral singing so profoundly satisfying. For a moment you feel like you have escaped the ordinary and the everyday. It's as if a mystical bond joins you to the rest of the choir, to the audience, perhaps to those generations of voices stretching back through time who have likewise sung perhaps in that same spot, singing the same piece of music, and - who knows? - experiencing similar feelings you are now. Does all this sound far fetched? Perhaps it is. Try it and experience it for yourself.

Barbirolli, Malcolm Sargent, Elgar, Sir David Willcocks, John Rutter, Gareth Gates...

Looking back at the names associated with Bradford Festival Choral Society for instance, reads like a who's who of classical music over the last 150 years. Singing with a large choir gives you the chance to work with and learn from consummate artists and musicians at the very top of their game.

Bach, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Britten, Maxwell-Davies

Singing in a choir allows you to study the best music ever written by the foremost composers of the European classical music canon.