So, is singing in the shower all we’ve got left now?
Lockdown easing offers little comfort for the millions of us who love joining others in song, says Rupert Christiansen
Slowly the rituals of ordinary social and cultural life can resume: the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday that from July 4, we can visit an art gallery or museum, sit in a cinema and borrow books from a library will come as welcome relief, even if an atmosphere of precaution and regulation will remove some of the pleasure from these experiences.
But there’s no comfort for those feeling the urge to join with other humans and sing. We can still make a horrible noise on our own, of course – I belted through Nessun dorma in the shower this morning – and, as the wonderful daily live concerts from the Wigmore Hall are showing, the great professionals can still perform as long as they are socially distanced from colleagues and there’s no live audience. Glyndebourne hopes to stage some small-scale opera in the open air in August; the future for West End musicals is less clear – Whitehall raised the possibility of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows going on without the singing. One can imagine his blunt response.
And as for the singing that’s simply about human togetherness – the chanting of fans on the terraces of Anfield or Wembley, the religious praise of church services, the uplifting oratorios that are the staple of some 40,000 amateur societies up and down the country, God Save the Queen and Happy Birthday – we will just have to wait.
Singing has always been known to be good for your health – good for the lungs, circulation and heart, never mind the glow of wellbeing it generates. “The exercise of singing is delightful to nature,” claimed the 16thcentury composer William Byrd. “It doth strengthen all parts of the breast and doth open the pipes.”
At the moment, however, the worry is that as a close-contact activity involving heavy breathing and projection of saliva, it can also function as an immediate source of infection. There is some alarming evidence of this. In early March, 102 of 130 members of a choir in the Netherlands went down with Covid-19 after a performance of Bach’s St John Passion: one elderly man subsequently died. A few weeks later, three members of a choir in Washington State were admitted to hospital and two of them died shortly after a rehearsal; and similar outbreaks have been reported in Germany. So by continuing the ban, our Government can’t be accused of being overly protective.
But recent research is also suggesting that saliva may not be the problem. Prof Christian Kähler, a fluid mechanics expert at the Military University, Munich, has made a special study of airflow during singing, and his belief is that the trajectory of droplets is only about 18 inches and that general sociability is the more likely source of blame. “Choir members probably greeted each other with hugs, and shared drinks during breaks and talked closely with each other,” was his view of the Netherlands outbreak. So might a choir that observed some protocol of social distancing, lined up rather than banked, satisfy the masters of Sage?
Meanwhile, inventive and determined minds try to find ways around the current ban. The nation’s favourite choirmaster Gareth Malone has a three-part series on BBC Two, Singing for Britain (which began last night), to which groups of NHS workers and GCSE students in their homes contribute via computer. “As soon as lockdown happened I knew I had to find a project,” Malone told Radio Times. “For years there’s been a passionate argument about the importance of music in mental health, and now this situation has brought it to the forefront.”
Yet even Malone – Mr Can-do, celebrated for his resourcefulness in the face of appalling obstacles – admits that what is on offer is secondbest, both in psychological terms and in terms of what can be achieved musically. “It’s impossible to do live singing with large numbers of people over the internet,” he admits. “You hit the wall of latency, producing choral garbage. Moreover, the delay varies from person to person. So when you’ve heard choirs or orchestral music made in lockdown, everyone’s part is recorded separately and they’re brought together in the postproduction edit.”
The fact that this relies on technology – there’s a software program that manufactures the synching – surely reduces the deepest satisfaction of choral singing, which is the organic and spontaneous creation of harmony. A true choir isn’t made up of isolated individuals making their own particular noises, it’s a community that unites its participants in purpose and emotion.
A virtual choir is a contradiction in terms: whether it’s a wedding or funeral, Christmas carols or a sing-song on the coach on the way home, it’s all about being there. How long before we can have that joy back?
‘Live singing with lots of people over the internet is impossible’