Choir Quotes

“O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude...”
― George Eliot, O May I Join the Choir Invisible! And Other Favourite Poems

“A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists.

Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and also mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song.

O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Go to church to learn about forgiveness; come back to become a forgiver! Go to church and learn about kindness; come back to become a kind person! If things go like that, you will be a true image of Christ after going to church only 10 times on 10 Sundays!”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Then all the winds of Heaven ran to join hands and bend a shoulder, to bring down to me the sound of a noble hymn that was heavy with the perfume of Time That Has Gone.

The glittering multitudes were singing most mightily, and my heart was in blood to hear a Voice that I knew.

The Men of the Valley were marching again.

My Fathers were singing up there.

Loud, triumphant, the anthem rose, and I knew, in some deep place within, that in the royal music was a prayer to lift up my spirit, to be of good cheer, to keep the faith, that Death was only an end to the things that are made of clay, and to fight, without heed of wounds, all that brings death to the Spirit, with Glory to the Eternal Father, forever, Amen.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“I was fired ignominiously from the Junior School Choir for being so off tune that the choir mistress declared she couldn't even bear to have me mime.”
― Sara Sheridan

“ She remembers rehearsals. Wrong notes turning to right ones, dissonance becoming harmony. She remembers “O Holy Night” sounding so perfect, in the end, her voice wrapping itself around Jonah’s like they were created just for this. She remembers his smile at her from across their shared mic.
She remembers getting asked to reprise her duet with Jonah a year later. Just after everything happened with Luke. But then Mr. Boyden took her aside. Told her that Jonah had backed out. He’d said he was too busy for extra rehearsals, but she knew: it was because of her. She saw it in Jonah’s face, in the way he avoided her eyes. She saw it in everyone else’s faces too. She was a bullet he’d just dodged.
She remembers standing up for the solo she was given instead—her last performance before she quit choir. She remembers opening her mouth, nothing coming out. She’d cleared her throat, tried again. Her voice emerged, but all wrong: small and shaky and sharp. With everyone looking at her, with the rumors still swirling, she felt exposed. She felt small and shaky and sharp. Vulnerable, but made of angles and thorns. ”
― Kathryn Holmes

“O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.”
― Fred Allen

“It was in that semifloating state--that transition between the blissful suspension of awareness and the depths of total unconsciousness--that I first encountered the transparent weave of creature voices not only as a choir but as a cohesive sonic event. No longer a cacophony, it became a partitioned collection of vocal organisms--a highly orchestrated acoustic arrangement of insects, spotted hyenas, eagle-owls, African wood-owls, elephants, tree hyrax, distant lions, and several knots of tree frogs and toads. Every distinct voice seemed to fit within its own acoustic bandwidth.”
― Bernie Krause, Le Grand Orchestre des Animaux - The Great Animal Orchestra

“Choir actually changed my life and taught me how to dedicate myself to a collective and settle for nothing less than excellence.”
― Lindy West, Shrill

“The choir is silent when the audience isn't listening.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“I have found that my tiny church, St. Andrew Presbyterian, has given me a shape to work against--a darning egg--for the last thirty years, what with all these holes. We have a choir of eight people who open their mouths, and a huge sound comes out, a mix of joy, pain, faith and conversational exposition. Spirit rises and falls in the voices, the choir's and ours.

The singing is full-throated and clear, like the sound your finger makes when you run it around the rim of a crystal glass. It is like African singing where people call from various spots and create one sound. Twenty minutes after the first cave children started kicking around the first improvised balls, people started singing. Half an hour later, they found harmonies.

Even with a couple of exceptional singers in the choir, you hear a solid spirit of song, rather than how individuals personally embellish it. The rising and falling is like all of us leaning forward together, then leaning backward on our heels, then coming forward together again. Spirit flows, and the sounds keep stirring that spirit, as the breezes from the high open windows above us keep stirring the air.

Sometimes the pianist hits a few false notes, or the soloist warbles, and some of us sing along enthusiastically in the wrong key and the old people's voices dim. But we all keep singing, a mix of magnificence and plainsong that is beautiful, and the hymn plays on.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott

“The first breath a choir, orchestra or band takes together, a breath filled with focus, intention and emotion, a breath unified for no other reason than to make something beautiful together...that is the reason we do what we do.”
― Eric Whitacre