A shortage of tenors
economist.com
economist.com
Moved to the west coast (this was great lakes area) and something about the air is different, and while I stayed in choir for a few years, eventually lost the top octave entirely and am now a horrible singer (I used to be ok and could, for example, easily sing Livin' on a Prayer - I can't come close to it now). If I go back to the great lakes area, after a week, my singing voice has improved tremendously, only to lose it when I return. I do miss being able to sing better, but not enough to move back..
If you watch reaction videos from vocal coaches hearing singers for the first time, you will find that they get nervous about the ways singers are tackling parts of their songs, because there are ways to sing that you can do for twenty years, and ways that you can do it that are good for six. Less if you start doing full concerts instead of bar sets or opening act work.
To be clear, we're talking about 60+. Before that, the pitch usually is on a decline.
But tenors have been in short supply for decades and decades. Every single time I've tried out for a choir, when the choral director hears how high I can sing, I can see some sort of "tell" on his or her face. A smile, a widening of the eyes... I can sightread, too, so I know I'm a shoo-in for any choir (well, any amateur choir at least: I'm not a music professional and wouldn't be able to devote 20+ hours a week to a choir). But I suspect that even if I couldn't sightread at all and had to have my hand held for any new piece, choir directors would grab me anyway, just because of how high my voice can reach if I haven't been abusing it.
If you’re male and you can sing anything or play a pipe organ, you are worth your weight in gold to the right church.
Some of my favorite vocalists are female contraltos, because I can sing in their range.
Choral work is the most demanding volunteer job I ever had. It’s also exhilarating, highly social, and rewarding. No regrets!
In any event, you can play organ with a community choir, especially if you can also play piano. We pay our accompanists.
1. i.e. no longer Christian
Some of the very old very large ones have some strength+endurance requirements.
Much newer ones with electronic actions and whatnot don't have any such problems.
Majority of organists are men (in the US at least).
My wife plays the organ; it looks like dark voodoo magic, with two hands and two feet flying at the same time and so many different types of sounds coming out. She sticks entirely to electric organs.
If someone plays the guitar they can purchase their own guitar, maintain it and carry it wherever they play. Same for a violin or flute or any typical instrument. Piano skills are also fungible because anyone can buy a synth keyboard or an upright and practice at home just fine. While large, even a grand piano can be wheeled in and out of a building if necessary.
But a pipe organ is part of the building. More properly, the building is an inseperable part of the pipe organ. When an organ company builds a pipe organ, they put an Opus number on it because they're going to be unique to fit the space and needs of the community. They're going to last for decades or hundreds of years and they are not going anywhere. The community has come together to install it and commit to its maintenance.
I attended a church with a modestly-sized electronic (non-pipe) organ built in 1980. There was a praise band with drums, guitar, bass, and a very shiny grand piano. The organ had fallen into disuse and it was unclear whether it could be played. We limped along with that lovely piano for a long time, but the organ was finally rescued. Another church had installed a very lovely "theater" style pipe organ, that was also modestly small, and had chronic problems due to the climate environment in the loft. So eventually, it was retired, and a very impressive MIDI organ was also placed in the loft, while they were not really able to remove the previous one. Unfortunately, the leadership and the music ministers cycled rapidly, and they appear to have abandoned the loft entirely...
So, with an investment like that, a church cannot afford to be without an organist. Some are happy just to have someone who knows how to play. Often, an organist may have other roles, such as directing, singing, composing, or administrative. But the organ is the primary and lead instrument. They are always going to be the focal point of the music program. Male and female alike.
I once got roped into trying to fix an electronic organ that was about the same age, in a church. Some of the notes had stopped playing, or were the wrong pitch, so the organist had to work around them. It was a really interesting piece of analog electronics, with a bunch of separate circuit boards for each note, with an analog circuit on each one to generate the tone. IIRC, I found that some capacitors' values had drifted due to age, so I replaced a bunch of them with new ones; the organist was so happy she could now use those notes again.
I'm sure they'll figure something out.
In all seriousness, SATB is mostly a constraint because of how choral composers write their music, not because good music demands it. You can produce beautiful music without all four voice parts being equally represented.
It's not clear what the evidence is that the problem is getting worse though? Or why it would be?
I don't know how much this is a factor, but...
Damn those big-voiced basses — they're stealing all our love interests :p
I liked choir and stayed in it for all four years, but I was never particularly good at it so what the hell did I know anyway.
Amateur-level choirs tend to have a lot more basses than tenors because it is easier to sing bass without effort spent on vocal training.
FTA:
> When men do join singing groups, they often avoid the tenor section. The tenor voice is “a cultivated sound”, says John Potter, author of a book on the subject. A man with no vocal training is more likely to have the range of a baritone (a high bass). It does not help that the tenor voice is associated with operatic stars such as Luciano Pavarotti, who could powerfully sing high notes that no amateur can easily reach. And the tenor line in classical choral music can be difficult, with many unexpected notes and alarming leaps.
surely a real bass is rarer? I just assume, as someone completely musically inept, based on listening to the vocal groups on the radio, that a bass contributes less, and can be omitted more easily?
Finally, there are a lot of bad teachers. They are so interested in winning competition and teaching perfection - but for most music will never be anything other than a fun hobby and so they are getting the wrong teaching which turns many students off. I've seen a lot of award winning school choirs, and the next town over with the same number of students has twice the students in choir despite not winning awards - communities need to pick and often don't realize this.
In church, a lector could prepare for 30 minutes and have a 5 minute speaking part at the Mass. The ushers and EMHCs also have part-time gigs. While altar servers are on duty for the entire service, they do not need to rehearse every single week. A church choir may serve for one or more weekend services, plus the 90-120 minute weekly rehearsals, and that's not counting holy days, Easter, Christmas. If you take a role as cantor, director, or piano/organ, expect to become indispensable! Some families just found it easier to join en masse so they could stay together.
Some chorus members are also secretly voice coaches, so if you protest "but I can't sing tenor" they may lovingly tackle you and sell you a package of private lessons.
I found it difficult to serve in any other ministry alongside choir, and you may find it difficult to hold down a job and/or family alongside a secular chorus role. As I said, high demand/great rewards.
The shape of the distribution has a much longer tail for women than men, on the high pitch side.
When plotted in a log scale for the X axis, the distributions look correct.
In my part of the world, it's definitely declining church attendance. If you don't have a huge population of young boys and girls trained in those choirs, and instead the population were self-selecting into voice training, I would definitely expect a serious sex imbalance.
I've found some excellent vocal groups from parts of Asia not known for being especially Christian, but it seems that choral/a cappella music is very connected to Christianity there too.
I believe church attendance is getting more gendered too, with a shortage of men.
But yeah tenors right -- matches my experience.
There are not many tasks that can be cut-and-dried as universally "easy"/"hard". "The Star Spangled Banner" is a more challenging melody because of its wide range. Also, because it's often sung solo, with minimal accompaniment, to huge crowds.
If I were singing falsetto notes, I could probably launch into the range, but could I match pitch and harmonize without AutoTune?
I guess I could be biased because I find it easy and not everyone finds reinforced falsetto easy. But for example Bohemian's Rhapsody famous falsetto high note is Bb5, a full half-octave higher.
If a woman sings in a high voice with a girly-girl image, she will tend to attract men.
A singer or group with great falsetto/whistle register, or female tenor/contralto, ambiguous or hetero lyrics, and androgynous image or radio-only can effectively draw in a broadly mixed-gender audience.
See new wave, synth pop, hair metal, David Bowie, Concrete Blonde, Janis Joplin, Alison Moyet, et. al.
If a performer lands on the far side of the spectrum, the producers will inevitably hire backup dancers and singers to broaden their appeal.
"If a handsome crooner with a deep voice sings sweet love songs, their fans will consist of hetero women." Maybe, but male tenors will get that and more, and it's been that way since I was a young man non-tenor in a choir.
From a '96 Royko column:
"Then there are their voices. Clinton's voice is high-pitched. Dole's is much deeper. Does that matter? You bet it does. Clinton has a voice for today. Just listen to popular rock music. All of the singers have high- pitched, eunuch-like voices. It's almost impossible to tell the men from the women, if there is any difference. There was a long-gone time when a baritone such as Perry Como or a bass such as Vaughn Monroe topped the hit charts; when a deep-voiced singer would bellow: "Old Man River, that Old Man River... he don't plant taters, he don't plant cotton." But today, the lyrics would have to be changed to "Old Person River, that Old Person River... he or she does not plant potatoes or cotton because the work is demeaning."
And today's deep-voiced singers are found only in the country music field, self-pitying losers groaning about their two-timing women going honky-tonkying and leaving them with a sink full of dishes and not one beer in the fridge. Their fans will be too"
Also that Royko column (I assume Mike Royko, journalist?) He doesn't take into account other genres. How many rappers have gruff or menacing deep voices to go along with rattling basslines? How about death metal singers who sing in the signature "death growl"? Plenty of goth, industrial, No Wave vocalists pulled it off too, such as Andrew Eldritch, Sascha Konietzko, Michael Gira, Lux Interior. Baritone/bass vocals were not uncommon, but they were definitely drowned out by the radio and MTV.
Though conversely I’ve also seen a male countertenor paired with a female alto, so maybe it’s just generally “who’s available for this performance” rather than an issue with a general shortage.