Catholic church choir lofts

[LibraryMark]

Last night I had a rehearsal with a quintet in choir loft at a local Catholic church. Liked to kill me getting my bulk and my horn up and down the narrow two flights of stairs to get to this tiny little space. I am glad that I decided to go with a smaller tuba (that has a Miraphone gig bag with decent shoulder straps) for this gig - I think if I had brought my usual horn we would have had to rope it up over the front railing.

This is the second Catholic church that I have played in and the first one was the same deal. Why on earth do they do that to their organist and choir members? A person in a wheel chair could never be in the choir. Does not the ADA apply here? The church doesn't even have a bathroom - they are in a separate nearby building. So weird.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

[bloke]

Episcopal is the same. The 5'8" guy drags his three timpani up there, I drag a couple of different tubas up there. There are one-holer restrooms on either side of the main doors to the sanctuary. The brass quintet is always broken up on either side of the organ console. No, there is no elevator.

They are nice folks - and routinely I pick up a couple of grand off of that place annually, so I'm not planning any class action suits against them on principle.

[Mary Ann]

As someone who grew up Catholic -- how old was that church? If they were built way back, people were smaller then, and those dimensions were normal. I even remember that, having taken piano lessons from a nun in a choir loft WAY back in the mid 1950s, and the church was far from new at that point. It's still there and is one of those glorious stone arched buildings.

[hubert]

Apparently the way to heaven is a small one......
Hubert

[hrender]

I think they built them that way for acoustics and ambience (i.e. the music "came down from the heavens"). I played in one along with an Easter service as part of a small wind ensemble accompanying a Gigout piece ("Grand Choeur dialogue" I think), and I was told we sounded great to the folks below. I remember it being tight quarters, but it was a long time ago and I was more spry then.

[bort2.0]

It's something like this:
* Putting the singers way up high lets their voices more easily carry throughout the entire church, because they aren't singing into anything except for air and a parabolic or at least curved ceiling.
* Even in the way back, musicians (even church musicians) were known to screw around and not pay attention.
* But, before electricity, live music was IT, and the church still needed them.
* Stick 'em in the back of the church, up and out of the way.
* ^And in plain/direct sight of the priest
* Joke's on you, though, we're going to make that loft as small as we can and only as big as absolutely necessary.
* There's no space to be wasted on lofts in this church (*please to ignore the enormous amounts of space in the rest of the church)

As far as ADA and elevators and all that... the rules for brand new buildings can't be mandated in the same way for existing buildings. There are requirements and there are non-negotiable things... but I think they call it "reasonable accommodations," in that it can't be an undue hardship to make something be in complete compliance (largely depends on what that "something" is, and all that).

For example, in a 1950s church with a tiny spiral staircase to get to the choir loft... no, a wheelchair isn't going to fit up there. And the church doesn't have to do anything to accommodate that, because it would require a complete rebuild of that part of the church. Not reasonable.

But if the church said "sorry, you can't be in the choir because you're in a wheelchair," then they've got some ADA problems to resolve. But they could (and should) have wheelchair access to the church building, and they should just move the choir out of the loft or whatever.

Sidebar -- my college dorm in 1999 was a large 8-story building built in the.... 60s? When I was there, they were JUST THEN IN 1999 building a wheelchair ramp to get into the building. I asked someone why it never existed before, they just gave a stupid answer like "residents who use wheelchairs have until now been housed in other better-accessible buildings on campus." That's nice... but as if they don't have friends in these other buildings. The year before that, I lived in a 4-story building built probably in the 30s. No elevators, so 100% inaccessible. But what could they do, besides rebuild the building?

ADA is great and I'm truly glad it exists. But it can't do everything for everyone.

[Three Valves]

If you were meant to be in the loft, God would miracle your ass up there.

Now wouldn't he?

I always have to step in and introduce irrefutable logic into every argument.

Oh well.

[bloke]

Most of those cathedranctuaries have plenty of fancy stuff - up front - already, without having to show off their pipe organ and fancy new green and gold choir robes.

[Mark]

Are we going to discuss trying to tune to the 80-year old organ?

[arpthark]

Are we going to discuss trying to tune to the 80-year old organ?

Leave granddad's liver out of this!

[LibraryMark]

Episcopal is the same. The 5'8" guy drags his three timpani up there, I drag a couple of different tubas up there. There are one-holer restrooms on either side of the main doors to the sanctuary. The brass quintet is always broken up on either side of the organ console. No, there is no elevator.

They are nice folks - and routinely I pick up a couple of grand off of that place annually, so I'm not planning any class action suits against them on principle.

Well I didn't have any intention of a class action suit - I am just surprised that they do that to themselves. This particular church is really old so I would imagine that retrofitting a decent stairway or an elevator would be out of the question. I do wonder, however, how they got their brand-new electronic organ (that sounds amazingly like a pipe organ) up there, as well as a little digital piano. This gig is to show off the new organ and their new fresh-from-Germany young organist.

I have to give them credit - they pay pretty well. And the sound in the place is amazing - it rings for a really long time. Covers up a lot of sins.

If you were meant to be in the loft, God would miracle your ass up there.

That must be what happened, because I was thinking as I was looking up the stairs from the bottom that it will be a miracle if I don't hurt myself somehow getting up there.

And speaking of places hard to get to - When I was a student at Western Michigan University, the old music building had the flute studio on the first floor, and the tuba studio in a little hole in the wall on the third floor and there was no elevator. So not fair. At least the stairway was nice and wide. And it was a lot easier as a normal-sized freshman to manhandle the horn up the stairs than it is for that same guy now!

[Rick Denney]

I've always preferred the troubles getting to the choir loft in Roman Catholic churches compared to the relative ease of performing in, say, Baptist churches.

Because the Roman Catholics pay.

Rick "there for the music more than the theology" Denney

[Bob Kolada]

Episcopal is the same. The 5'8" guy drags his three timpani up there, I drag a couple of different tubas up there. There are one-holer restrooms on either side of the main doors to the sanctuary. The brass quintet is always broken up on either side of the organ console. No, there is no elevator.

They are nice folks - and routinely I pick up a couple of grand off of that place annually, so I'm not planning any class action suits against them on principle.

I knew a percussion player years ago whose solution to this was just own a bunch of stuff. He was a really nice guy and was always mentoring high school drummers so I helped him load his stuff up after concerts. He told me he had, iirc, around 100 timpani scattered around all the churches and places he played. A lot of them were vintage instruments, I think he said some of them were old enough to be made of 'hush hush' materials.
I'm kinda glad I was a bass trombone/tuba doubler; dragging a tuba and and the chainsaw around was a lot easier than 2 or 3 tubas. Although, I do remember taking both on the bus once to an audition, it was so bad I got off and walked the rest of the way home.

[Three Valves]

Are there no 1/2 tympani like 3/4 tubas?

[bloke]

Are there no 1/2 tympani like 3/4 tubas?

[bloke]

Again, though there are small restrooms on either side of the grand entrance into the narthex, the Episcopal place - where I'm grateful to be hired to play Christmas, Easter, two or three additional times each year. - is much as was described.

If I get fidgety or sleepy during homilies, I'm grateful to be out of sight of the communicants, and - if it gets really bad - I can step off into one of the two circular stairwells (as I'm always right next to one or the other) on either side and sit on a step ( or just go all the way down back to the narthex) where the choir itself can't see me nodding off or getting out my phone or something like that. At a typical church (up front, in sight of everyone, or worst of all: televised), I would have to use toothpicks to prop my eyes open or contact cement to hold my hands in my lap.

[MikeS]

Because the Roman Catholics pay.

I played for a service a few months back at a church with an eleven-word name. A little voice in my head said, “Uh, oh,” when I saw a full immersion baptism tank above and behind the altar. The pastor handed us envelopes as we left. Monday, as I was getting ready to head to the bank, I opened the envelope. Inside was a note saying, “A donation of $150 has been made in your name to the church’s missionary outreach fund.”

[bloke]

wow

That's even worse than those restaurant "tips" with the fake edge of the dollar bill and then the quasi-religious talk beginning with something like "Here's a really good tip for you..." (I can't think of a better way to encourage restaurant wait staff to hate religious people.)

I can't remember the last time I played a church gig where I didn't know exactly what I was going to be paid - including cartage. If the preacher gets paid, the office secretary gets paid, the janitor gets paid, the organist gets paid, and the guys with the orange jackets stopping traffic (for the communicants to race off to get to the Sunday lunch buffets first) get paid, I get paid.

Every once in a while, I play in a church with a bathtub up high, but I think they rent the sanctuary to the orchestra for the classical concerts when a pipe organ is required or the classical concerts where there's space needed for a chorus, such as the Mozart Requiem I just did - which was performed there.

[Three Valves]

I would have to use toothpicks to prop my eyes open or contact cement to hold my hands in my lap.

or C.

[bloke]

from a webpage on "how to sleep in class"
(novelty store glasses)