Photos by Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

The 28-member choir at St. John's Episcopal Church in Roanoke sings on Sundays and also at special events.

"I don't turn anybody down, because if you really want to sing that's the important thing," says Rose Ann Burgess, director of music at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salem. Burgess says she has ways to deal with weak singers.

The worst nightmare of church choir directors, besides their Sunday soloist coming down with laryngitis, is the new choral candidate who can't sing.

"They're faithful people, and their heart is in the right place. You don't want to break it," said Rose Ann Burgess, minister of music at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salem.

But for the sake of those in the pews and the morale of other choir members, something must be done to mute the hymn-happy hopefuls who are possessed of pathetic pitch.

That's easier said than sung. "My philosophy is that in a church choir, you can't exclude anyone," said Burgess, who has been directing in sanctuary lofts for 50 years and taught music in Roanoke public schools for three decades.

Still, she has ways. When a perpetually off-key soprano volunteered for duty in the choir at a church where Burgess taught several years ago, she bided her time. Then one Wednesday night, the new woman missed choir practice. Burgess took aside the other sopranos and instructed them that in the future whenever she signaled them "to sing softly, it doesn't mean you."

Having missed Burgess' directive, the sour soprano was effectively silenced.

The task of tactfully dealing with those whose warbling probably shouldn't be heard outside the shower is a familiar one among leaders of the nation's roughly 200,000 church choirs. "We all fight the dilemma of being democratic organizations, but when you get down to it, the scriptures don't suggest that everyone is good at everything," said Tim Sharp, executive director of the American Choral Directors Association in Oklahoma City.

Besides concerns about music quality, choir directors risk running afoul of internal church politics. Some leaders, such as Burgess, are employees, and she said that a church once offered her a contract requiring her to notify the pastor "before you throw anyone out of the choir." She turned down the job.

But choir directors who renounce someone on purely musical grounds may be offending a church member known to fill the offering plate or live next door to a deacon. Said Sharp, "You say no to the wrong person and you'll get fired. Being careful is an unwritten survival rule."

Sharp said Burgess' tactic of muffling a chorister is well known in his profession. "You can absolutely bury someone who can't sing."

The choir directors' euphemism for suppressing such songbirds is "vocal placement," said Sharp. "You can place people advantageously to their best point of acoustic contribution." That usually means in the choir's back row. He added, "It's really no different than hearing a jackhammer across the street or three miles away. The farther the better."

But modern technology can make poor singing seem all too near. Amy Smith, minister of music at Church Alive International in Northwest Roanoke, is usually delighted that each member of her choir, called "The Praise Team," is equipped with a hand-held microphone. But occasionally, on Sunday mornings when a team member's performance is subpar, "I have had to tell the technician to turn their mike off."

Such subterfuge was the story line on "The Andy Griffith Show" in a 1962 episode when Deputy Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts, volunteered for the church choir. But the group's director, Fife's girlfriend Thelma Lou, played by Betty Lynn, discovers that Barney can't sing "a lick." So she sets him up with what she describes as a supersensitive microphone -- into which he's told to barely whisper. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Barney, a colleague backstage sings his part.

Yet sometimes the inharmonious truth must be told. The Rev. Vannie Harrell at Church Alive International said she leveled with a young woman whose private audition, singing "Amazing Grace," proved her to be tone deaf. Harrell played the piano during the tryout; she recalled, "On every note I hit she wasn't even close."

Harrell's tact: "I told her that God gives us different gifts. Maybe she could find her special way to contribute to the church doing something else. She wasn't offended, and she ended up volunteering for years in the church nursery."

Church choirs are essential to worship, Harrell says, and shouldn't be marred by what she calls "those who are not gifted with a singing voice." She reasons that "some families have been through hell during the week and they need to hear something beautiful on Sunday morning."

The value of music to the soul is storied in scripture, said Harrell, who cited a passage in the Book of Samuel in which King Saul of the Israelites calls for a "skilled musician" to lighten his mood. A talented harpist, David, is summoned, and hearing his serenade, Saul "was refreshed" and "an evil spirit departed" from him, according to the testament.

"If you had someone come in who had just picked up a harp and play for Saul, that wouldn't have done anything," said Harrell.

Maybe, but the essence of scriptural lyricism, the Book of Psalms, contains a passage stating the importance of enthusiasm in worship music, without mentioning excellence: "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth; make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise."

In fact, high standards for the church choir could backfire, said the Rev. Tim Harvey at Central Church of the Brethren in downtown Roanoke. "If the choir is perceived to be really good, some people won't even try to join."

Moreover, said Anita Wilson, a choir director at Sweet Union Baptist Church, "You have to work with what you have and try to develop a person's ability. That's a ministry."

But there are limits, and some choral candidates seem to be seeking celebrity more than a way to serve the Lord, said Smith, at Church Alive. Making matters worse, a few have been misguided by others about their talent. "They're like the contestants on 'American Idol.' Someone has lied to them all their life and told them they could sing."