Choral Ethics: A Code of Choral Ethics and the Choral Professional

“Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring – an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.” John Updike

I have struggled for a long time with what I have perceived as a lack of professionalism in the choral world. Then it occurred to me it is not a lack of professionalism but a lack of some sort of accepted ethical guidelines within our profession. There are things we should not be doing, of course, and we all think we know what they are.  But do we?

Being the spouse of a physician, I have mentioned many times here in this space that physicians take an oath—the Hippocratic Oath–as they graduate from medical school and are awarded their M.D.s. They swear to “do no harm.”  Perhaps we should be required to do the same.  We must do no harm to our singers, both physically and emotionally, by using our knowledge of the human voice to prevent injury and by not emotionally abusing them by our behavior inside rehearsals and out.  We must do no harm to our colleagues by not bad mouthing or undermining them in public to singers or audience members or the community at large. We must do no harm to our profession as a whole by upholding ourselves to as high a musical standard as possible within our scope of expertise and by respecting the rights of the composers we perform. Many believe it is also important to choose repertoire not in conflict with their own belief system, whether because of a composer’s behavior or a composition’s message.

Each of us needs to think about our own personal code of choral ethics, ideally beginning to develop our code while in training. Those working with young conductors can begin the process by being a good example first and sharing their personal codes with students. I find my own teachers and the conductors I have worked with influencing my own ethical code, whether positively or negatively.

There are plenty of people, both musicians and “civilians,” who give conductors and singers a pass for bad behavior simply because they are so high strung and talented and artistic and so concerned with perfection they are driven by their musical standards.  They reason, since the Maestro/Maestra is so talented, they must be justified in behaving like four-year-olds and the rest of us must not be as talented because we don’t behave that way.  Somewhere along the line, it’s become acceptable and even preferable within our profession to be prickly in the name of music.  Bad behaviors can range from nastiness, bullying and crabby impatience in rehearsals, making impossible demands with little notice, blatant partiality in auditioning soloists, slighting of singers/colleagues in public, gossiping, treating accompanists and fellow musicians poorly, judging and criticizing —aloud—other organizations/ schools/universities choral programs while they are performing and making cutting personal remarks about others.

When we accept outrageous behaviors in others, we can be sure to be treated to another round of something new and even more outrageous from them. Once a month, if not more, a celebrity is outed in the media as being difficult to work with, abusive in some way or lacking morality. The classical music world is far from immune from similar accusations, as witnessed to events last summer.

My own personal choral ethics code is a work in progress but has three main parts.  I try to treat my singers and accompanists as I would want to be treated.  I try to always say something good about my colleagues if at all possible and if I am not able, to keep my mouth shut. And I try to keep my own skills as good as in my capability. This does not mean I expect less from my singers, accompanist or myself; I just try to be nice about it. Sometimes being nice is the most important part of being ethical.