I've been DoM of a musically demanding church for almost a year and am far from sure that we pay our youngsters appropriately.

Based on two practices & two services per week (with a 50% uplift for full attendance) we have been paying as follows (per attendance):

Probationer £0.30 ie up to £1.80/week
Light Blue £0.40 ie up to £2.40
Dark Blue £0.50 ie up to £3.00
Red £0.60 ie up to £4.20
Head Chorister £1.00 ie up to £6.00 (and heaven help them if its less!!)

Teenagers £1.00 per time (plus £5 per session doing Medal work with the younger choristers). As we have boys & girls we've tied the rate to the HC rate so there's no difference either way.

Weddings at £5 each. (£10 for teeenagers)

These rates have been the same for a while and I think they may be rather low - what are you paying?

Thanks

Martin

The question doesn't arise for me, but the other day I was at a Bristol city centre church which pays each of its trebles £104 a term. I suspect, however, that the church is unusually well off. At any rate, it certainly was a quarter of a century ago, when its assets were netting it an annual income in six figures. The church does fully choral, BCP services (though possibly with chanted canticles in the evening).

We're not paying at present (though it is also a musically demanding place), and I have it on the my agenda for the next staff meeting.

This debate is therefore of great interest to me.

I sing there as a Bass!

I can assure readers that this Bristol Church is NOT St Mary Redcliffe Church (which has a reputation for being fairly wealthy too) but is the only other city centre church to have a boys/men choir (not counting Bristol Cathedral). I believe there are only a small number of boys at this other church. At Redcliffe the boys (we have 21 on the books at present) get termly pay of between £8 - £30 per term (3 times a year) depending on rankk. For weddings the boys only choir gets £123 and full choir (men and boys) £276 - this equates to £7-£12 per boys/wedding depending on rank and usually £20 per man (including teenagers). We have a separate girls choir too but they are not yet singing many weddings as their duties are much lighter.

Hope that helps!