I forget exactly when but, a couple of years ago, I was asked to head up the church choir. This was a calling I was actually really excited about; I enjoy singing and looked forward to picking out songs and seeing what we could make happen. However, just 6 or 7 months in, they asked me to do another job. I won't lie, I was bummed; even for our regularly rotating system that was a quick turn-around. However, truth be told, they didn't actually fully release me from *all* my music duties.
Our ward building has been around a long, long time. And, as they are wont to do, things accumulate over time... especially in the church library. Simultaneous to my choir directing stint, new librarians had been called and they came in fresh and full of vigor, and decided to clean house. Unsurprisingly, this was an enormous and long-term project. As I was the resident music person, they asked me to sort through the musical materials, so I got to get a taste of the project and a sideline seat to observe the general proceedings.
Way back, when the musical reigns were being handed over to me, the previous person told me about the various tools and materials that would be at my disposal. She also mentioned a rumor that there was supposed to be a huge catalog of choir music available to be used... somewhere... in some closet. I asked around and went exploring in various closets, but I never found this magic cache of music or even anyone who could verify its existence. And, eventually, I concluded that it was just a mysterious legend.
However, our fearless librarians - in all their moving and shaking, unearthed this legendary treasure trove: Three filing cabinets holding more than 350 sets of songs were found, hiding in the back of the AV closet. And me, since I had already been working to sort through the couple shelves in the library and was familiar with the project (despite having moved on to a new job), I got the pleasure of sifting through all the things and determining what should be kept or donated/recycled.
It was a crazy collection; a mishmash of bunches of genres. No one seems to know where it all came from, but it reads like a collection from a long-time choir teacher that was bequeathed to the local church. Who's to say if there was a weeding-out process applied before the music came to rest in the depths of the AV closet, but there were a great number of things that seemed oddly suited to an LDS church setting.
The good news was that, somewhere along the line, someone had compiled a list of all the songs in all those file drawers. This made things much more manageable to sort through. For my first run through the list, I looked up unfamiliar titles on YouTube to see if I could find any recordings of the songs to help in the sorting process.
Not everything was on YouTube, but I managed to find a good number of them and give them a listen...
Some old, folksy songs (non-religious): like this, this, this, this and this, though this one's based on the bible..
Some fun ones that aren't exactly Sacrament meeting friendly: like this, this, this and this.
Sooo many show tunes: like this and this and this and this and this, and this, for just a taste.
Some old, sacred master works that aren't exactly suited to Sacrament meeting. Things like: this one, and this, this, this and this
Some gorgeous but insanely difficult things that, with the general approach to choir that the LDS church employs, would likely never be used. Some of my favorites: this, this, this and this
And so many, many more. It was an amazing collection!
Since I've been given sole ownership of this project, I get to make the unilateral decisions on everything. I'm still working through it. Now that the listening part is done, I'm going back through, slowly picking away at things in my spare time, but eventually I'll get it all sorted. Some is for keeping, but much of it is destined to be donated to the local public library in hopes that these vast collections of choral works would finally get to see the light of day and be put to good use.
A fascinating project; for sure my strangest church job yet. I doubt I'll see the likes of it again.
1 comment:
That sounds like an amazing collection! That picture has some antiques, some out of prints. Incredible! What a collection! I think there could be some tough decisions in there! Good luck!
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