Getting caught snacking by the glockenspiels was the luckiest break

Choosing choir practice over detention instilled Christine Manby with a lifelong love of singing and all the health benefits that come with it

What’s your favourite Christmas song? What gets you singing along? Are you a traditionalist, going with a carol like “Once in Royal David’s City” or “Ding Dong Merrily on High”? Or are you the type of sociopath who plays “Mistletoe and Wine” on a loop from 3 November? It’s fair to say that I am not in the least bit musical (though I do hate that Carey cover with a passion). When, after three years of weekly torture, I was allowed to give up lessons, my piano teacher told me: “You’ve not done badly for someone with no musical talent whatsoever.”

Needless to say, having heard that I didn’t expect to be sought out for the school choir. But that’s exactly what happened after I was caught in the music cupboard among the glockenspiels with a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps when I should have been in French. The music teacher offered me a stark choice: detention or choir? I chose choir, accepting that my lunchtimes were no longer my own in either case. At least I wouldn’t also be grounded by Mum and Dad.

I rocked up to my first choir practice a couple of days later full of seething resentment. My place in the school hierarchy was complicated. I was academic enough to be labelled a geek. I was socially aware enough to know that to avoid the tribulations that came with being a geek, I needed to ally myself with the mean girls (mostly by doing their homework). Being in the choir did not fit the image I was after. I took a chair at the back and resolved to mumble every note. I found it hard to believe that there were people in that room who had actively decided to be there.

Sheets of music were distributed and Mrs Harvey sat down at the piano. It was November. Time to start practising for the school carol concert, which would take place in the last week of the term. We began with “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. “Lame de la lame,” thought my 15-year-old self.

For the most part, the school choir sang the most basic tune. Our purpose was simply to make sure that at the school’s annual carol service in the local church, there would be at least some audible vocals to the hymns. We sang only one fancy variation and that was a descant to the chorus of “O Come All Ye Faithful”. The bit where they go “Glory to God, in the highest”.

Blimey. Those descant notes were high and I didn’t hit a single one but I left my first choir practice feeling uplifted. By the time I got back to the classroom, I was my usual foot-shuffling, wise-crack-mumbling self but secretly I was hooked on singing.

With good reason. Singing is good for us. It’s been proven in all manner of studies. When we sing, we breathe more deeply than usual, using muscle groups that wouldn’t otherwise be exercised. On a physical level, such deep breathing is relaxing. It’s also energising. The increased lung capacity that comes from regular singing practice has immune boosting effects and oxygenates the blood.

Of all my school memories, those Christmas concerts enjoyed from the choir stalls, with their distinctive scent of wood polish and dust, will always be my favourites

Singing is also a great workout for our brains. Teaching music to young children may enhance their learning ability in other areas, improving numeracy and literacy. The holistic benefits of school music lessons make it all the more tragic that over the past five years, state schools such as the one where I had so many musical opportunities in the 1980s, have seen their ability to provide musical education decrease by 21 per cent.

At the other end of the demographic scale, singing can benefit people with dementia. Singing for the Brain is a programme provided by the Alzheimer’s Society, bringing together people with Alzheimer’s and their carers to socialise in a way that fosters self-expression, friendships and confidence as well as exercising the vocal chords. Their webpage boasts, “100 per cent of people who go along to Singing for the Brain® sessions say they’ve improved their life in some way.”

Singing has many emotional and mental benefits, yet funding for music in schools has been cut by as much as 21 per cent (iStock)

It’s not an idle boast by any means. A 2016 study of the programme’s impact by researchers from the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham and the University of the Arts, London College of Fashion, concluded: “A musical activity such as Singing for the Brain has multiple health and well-being benefits for people with dementia and their carers ... the group-setting facilitates a sense of belonging and provides much needed social support. As well as improvements in mood which outlast the sessions, and enhanced relationships, the activity facilitated acceptance of the diagnosis of dementia which may help promote longer-term well-being for people with dementia and their carers and enable earlier access to appropriate support.”

Linda, who took part in the study, described the experience in conversation with the person with dementia for whom she was caring: “You can feel quite low, quite sad and then we’ve sat there and we’ve been singing and I’ve turned round and looked at you and you’ve had this big smile on your face and that’s what’s been the lovely thing for me, to see this difference and this weight being lifted just for that little bit of time and then it just seems to keep you going for a little bit afterwards.”

The social aspect of singing in a choir is particularly beneficial. A study by Oxford University researchers, Eiluned Pearce, Jacques Launay and Robin IM Dunbar, which compared choirs to craft and creative-writing classes, found that participating in a choir fostered “a greater increase in self-reported closeness to [the] group and positive affect” and that this closeness grew more quickly. They called it the “ice-breaker effect” and further concluded that it has an important part in human history.

“The capacity of singing to bond groups of relative strangers in humans may have played a crucial role in allowing modern humans to create and maintain much larger social networks than their evolutionary relatives, which in turn may have facilitated the colonisation of risky environments across the globe.” So it’s no coincidence that football and rugby stadia often burst into song. Singing as a means of bringing people together in common cause is as old as humanity.

For me, navigating the choppy waters of my teenage years, singing in the choir gave me a short break from the constant worry and introspection. For that half hour’s choir practice, I didn’t think about my spots. I didn’t worry about what so-and-so was saying about me behind my back. I did feel included and also protected. Getting caught snacking by the glockenspiels suddenly seemed like a lucky break.

Of all my school memories, those Christmas concerts enjoyed from the choir stalls, with their distinctive scent of wood polish and dust, will always be my favourites. I don’t think I added much to the quality of the choir’s overall sound but simply trying to keep up made me happier than I had ever imagined. Until the end of my time at school, I stayed in the choir of my own volition. Now 30 years on, if I hear “O Come All Ye Faithful”, I will always sing along. And even do the descant part if no one’s standing close enough to end up with an ear-bleed.