Social music, participation in a smaller or larger, instrumental and/or singing community has played an important and prominent role in music education for centuries. Besides the experience of active music-making, researchers have shown several benefits, that had developed as a result of music learning and choral singing. Significant part of music pedagogy, music psychology and music sociology research on choral singing has focused on mental and physiological benefits of choir singing.

In our research, we examined the relationship between choral singing and health, well-being (Gick 2011) and physical health (Clift and Hancox 2001; Clift et al. 2009), furthermore the social and psychological benefits of singing (Welch 2011). However, in this presentation, we focused on a less researched area. We wanted to know, whether the members of adult choirs sang in a choir as children, or not. In addition to developing musical skills, the way of experiencing school communities in childhood establishes our need for communities, provides a model for the functioning of adult communities, and will be a determining factor in social participation. (Utasi 2013) Therefore, we consider it important for children to have the opportunity to sing in a choir as early as primary school. 

Participating in a choir is a prominently priority area also in several music educators’ (for example Justine Bayard Ward, Edgar Willems, Zoltán Kodály) method. The concept of the excellent Hungarian music educator, Zoltán Kodály, is vocal-based. In the music lessons in primary school, the polyphonic singing joins early the monophonic by singing quodlibets, canons and bicinias. Depending on the possibilities of the school and the abilities and professional competence of the singing-music teacher, there are choirs in many schools, which can form the basis of the later choral society. In a previous study (Sz. Fodor, A. & Kerekes, R. 2020), we found that 55% of the interviewed teachers had already participated in the art classes they taught at the time of the interview as children. This confirms our above statement and the relevance of our research question.

After an overview of relevant literature, we developed our own online questionnaire for our empirical research. In our research, we asked choir members of seven city choirs from different areas of Hungary to answer open-ended and closed questions. We examined the age of the choir members (n = 251), their childhood music studies, and whether they sang in a choir during their childhood. We were also curious about what motivated them as adults in choir choice, how important the conductor's personality and professional knowledge was. From the data collected by the questionnaire, we analysed those that are related to our presentation. We also examined twentieth and twenty-first century Hungarian primary school curricula in relation to the rules for music training.

The results of the processed literature prove that active participation in a music community appears as a positive resource in many areas of life. Our own results show that music community participation established in schools is sure to become a popular form of community even in adulthood. The vast majority of choir members sang in children’s choirs. Among the responding choir members, the youngest singer was 16 and the oldest was 86 years old. The question immediately arises: what other community has such a wide age-range as a choir? Interestingly, the conductor's person played a lesser role in adult choir selection. What was more important was the professional competence of the conductor and the friendly atmosphere of the choir. Several choir members described living alone and having a great pleasure to belong to a community where members help and strengthen each other. The positive effects of music education in choirs have a beneficial effect on each generation. Our results show the need for this form of community. In order for the choirs to continue to function, it is necessary for the children to get to know the beauties of singing in the choir at the earliest possible age, so that there will be a supply in the choirs that have been operating for many years.

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