Choral bucket lists

During my recent posts on music- I'm too lazy to link, just scroll down a little- I mentioned some pieces I want to sing in choir before I die, a choral bucket list if you will.  It started me thinking what other pieces I would like to do, at some point.  I came up with a fair few, although the list is rather bland in some ways.  Here's the top five, most of which i have already mentioned:

5: Tallis, Spem in Alium
4. Palestrina:  Missa Papae Marcelli (These two are the most difficult and least likely I will ever sing, yet hope springs.)
3.Allegri's Miserere
2. Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus
1. (really cliched, now) Franck's Panis Angelicus.  I suppose. in the end, I dream of being a soloist.

The odd part is that this is all solid Catholic music, all written for Mass or Divine Office, yet it is rare to hear any of it at a normal Mass, though it is fairly common to hear the last two at funerals and weddings- you know, places where people pick their own music, music they actually like.  But they are fairly common at concerts and recitals, you know, where people pay money to go and hear music they actually like.

What the average congregation is more likely to hear, and the average choir more likely to sing, and why I left choral singing, is songs like these, which I call my "Anti Bucket List" (trademark pending):  the reverse of the bucket list, in that I hope I die before I ever get stuck singing this stuff again:

5: Gather Us In
4. You Are Near
3. You are mine
2. City of God
1. Hosea

I didn't start off hating all these songs, but choral singing is a strange beast.  When I joined the choir at my old parish, years ago, I had a list in my head of some songs I liked, and a few I didn't like.  Most other songs I was more or less indifferent to.  But things changed as the years rolled by, and our repertoire became repetitive.  The list of hymns I liked stayed about the same length, but the list of songs I didn 't like was growing rapidly.  We sang many songs over, and over, and over.  I wouldn't want to sing something I liked as often as I sang many of these pieces to which I was originally indifferent, and so the indifference slowly became deepest loathing. I cringed when the choir director announced that these, and many others, were on menu for the four hymn sandwich that week.

So, at any rate, there is my bucket list and my anti bucket list.  If anyone reading this wishes to add their own in the combox, or consider it a meme, please do.