It is difficult to gain an overview of choral music videos without engaging in seemingly haphazard clicking. Choirs share their videos on their own channels, and as far as I know there is no centrally compiled information on music videos released by Finnish choirs. However, an odyssey of nearly ten hours exploring the channels of numerous choirs pays off in the sense that my gut feeling is proven correct: since the end of the Covid pandemic, production of choral music videos has been booming.
The marriage of choral music and moving image is by no means a self-evident match. Barring a handful of exceptions, Finnish choirs are amateur choirs, and for a group of private individuals to make a music video represents a huge investment. I was interested in finding out why choirs had decided to undertake video projects, and why now in particular. This was followed by a nagging suspicion: are music videos displacing albums in the ecological niche of Finnish choral music publications?
Intriguing examples
Because no overall statistics are available, I will illustrate the choral music video boom of recent years by describing five completely subjective favourites from recent years. I discuss these in order of their release, not in order of preference.
Lain Huuto, a choir of lawyers and law students, released a video of the Christmas song Maa on niin kaunis [‘The earth is so beautiful’, also known as ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’] in December 2020. For me, this video carries special significance, because it was recorded under strict Covid distancing regulations at Uspenski Cathedral in Helsinki, where the choir was to have held its Christmas concert. The second pandemic lockdown had discontinued all choral activities only a few weeks before the start of the Christmas concert season.
Maa on niin kaunis – a music video by Lain Huuto.
Change is coming, a video released by the Tapiola Choir in March 2021, hit hard at first sight: this is a video where children call adults out for maintaining an ecologically unsustainable lifestyle. Tim Cain’s challenging composition is a setting of the speech given by Greta Thunberg at the UN, containing a direct accusation: “How dare you!” The video also features three prominent Finnish actors.
Male choirs seem to have embraced humorous videos illustrating pop songs; as examples, we might mention Kahvia ja pullaa [‘Coffee and buns’] by Tampereen Laulajat and Pohjois-Karjala [‘North Karelia’] by the YL Male Choir. The latter was even featured on national TV.
My most recent example is Jag talar till mina vuxna barns änglar [‘I talk to the angels of my adult child’] by the Jyväskylä Women’s Choir, a piece about the sometimes painful feelings of a mother whose child is leaving the nest. The piece is by Kirsti Rasehorn and is the winner of the first P.J. Hannikainen Composition Competition in 2022.
Change is coming – a video by the Tapiola Choir.
Making a video is a challenge
I met with choir conductor Paavo Hyökki in the café at the Music Centre in Helsinki. In November 2024, he was appointed artistic director of Sulasol (the Finnish Amateur Musicians’ Association) for a two-year period. Sulasol is one of the largest amateur music associations in Finland. I also had a video chat with choir conductor Rita Varonen, Lecturer in Choir Conducting at the Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. Both Hyökki and Varonen conduct choirs that have made multiple choral music videos. Also, videos by both of them were nominated for ‘Music Video of the Year’ at the Sulasol Choir Gala in 2024. (The award went to Stormskärs Maja [Maja of Stormy Rock] by the Chamber Choir of the Sibelius Upper Secondary School.)
As the talk turned to what music videos mean for a choir, both conductors independently of one another used the same word. “I issued the choir a challenge,” Hyökki described his most recent music video project, the music for which is Ave Regina by Belgian composer Rudi Tas. “I told the singers that the composer himself considers this the most difficult of his pieces. Framing the project as a challenge was an excellent trigger,” he explains with a laugh.
“Any project is a challenge. Competitions are challenges. A choir must always have challenges and goals,” says Varonen, as I ask about her motivation in making music videos with her choirs.
Stormskärs Maja, performed by the Chamber Choir of the Sibelius Upper Secondary School.
The role of the conductor
One might say that Hyökki and Varonen represent two extremes in how they see their own role in the process of creating a music video. Hyökki wants to distance himself from the visual design and delivery of the video. “They do what they do. My job is to make sure that the audio is ok,” he recalls telling the team of the Ave Regina video. In shooting the video, Hyökki prefers to be one of the people being directed. “I show up and do what I’m told. I’m fine with that. I’m not a visual thinker where music is concerned, so I’m fine with not getting involved in the visual side of things.”
Varonen, by contrast, becomes visibly excited when she begins to talk about combining audio and video. “My grandfather had an 8 mm film camera. We edited film using scissors and tape. You had to literally glue the bits together and then see what came out.” These home movies of her childhood had no sound, but editing prompted her interest in how music and image can work together. “I’m interested in things like [Ennio] Morricone. He saw the film and then wrote the music. None of the scenes would be the same without the music. But if the music and image don’t match, then the result is artificial.”
Varonen notes that, in her experience, making a music video for a classical choral work requires a particular set of skills. “It is easier to pace the images in rhythm music. This is a challenge for the video director in particular. The visual world must not be intrusive; the images have to be in symbiosis with the world of the music.” She says that she corrected one particular edit in an earlier video because “the conductor can’t be waving their arms around like mad when the music just has one long note.”
Videos lower the threshold for recording
Does the rising popularity of video productions mean that CDs, audio albums, are on the way out in choral music? Neither of the two conductors I talked to would want to see this happen, even though both acknowledge it as a possible future scenario. “I have 800 CDs. Other people have cupboards full of clothes, I have sheet music and CDs,” says Varonen with amusement and continues: “But these days it’s about digital albums. Suddenly we’ve come to a place where laptops don’t have CD drives any more. I’d love to record stuff, but the market for physical discs of choral music is really tiny.”
Hyökki agrees. “I want to make records. They have to be the primary vehicle for storing musical heritage for posterity.” Having said that, he does not see music videos exclusively as a threat. “There are many choirs and choral singers who have no idea what a recording session is like. Recording a single piece can be an easy way of introducing them to the process.”
The same goes for the technical side of things. “Many fledgling producers have been undone by the sheer number of things that you have to do and bring together to make an entire album. Making a music video is also an easier way of learning how to produce choral music,” Hyökki notes.
Video projects are also particularly significant for individual singers. “A video leaves a mark on a singer’s mind. Choral singers are amateurs, but on a video they are legitimate performing artists,” Hyökki explains. “The videos never disappear; they build up into a library documenting the activities of the choir.”
Pandemic forced digital leap
How is it that numerous choirs came up with the idea of tackling a novel challenge in music videos at pretty much the same time? “It must be because of the digital leap that we were forced to take because of the pandemic,” Hyökki observes. “Covid was a massive blow psychologically and financially.” The lockdown restrictions struck at the very heart of choral music, prohibiting the gathering of people at weekly rehearsals and at concerts culminating the season. Initially, making videos was about maintaining at least some sort of contact with audiences. “We wanted to remind people that we were still there,” says Hyökki, referring particularly to the Lain Huuto Christmas video from 2020.
Zoom-based rehearsals and streamed concerts lowered the threshold for choirs to get into all kinds of technology. “I suppose it was just that no one knew to miss videos before the pandemic. Although we’ve now returned to normal with concerts and such, the videos have stayed,” says Hyökki. However, videos are a financially problematic art form. “There’s no way you can break even,” he states bluntly.
Varonen points to the disappearance of the market for physical choral discs as the principal reason for the proliferation of videos. In this transition, already precarious choral finances have become even more dire. Although videos do provide choirs a new kind of exposure, the problem is that exposure does not pay the bills. “It used to be the case that choirs made discs and sold them, and that was an important source of income. Videos don’t make any money, because they go on YouTube. It’s not good business,” she says.
Despite these financial misgivings, both conductors feel that videos have come to stay and play an essential part in the lives of choirs going forward. “There are many ways to develop how choral music and images could work together. Is it going to be just the choir members performing, or could we use actors more?” asks Varonen, recalling what a special moment it was to shoot the final image for the video Jag talar till mina vuxna barns änglar: “We wanted a sunrise, so there we were with people who have day jobs coming to the shore of Lake Päijänne at four in the morning just for that.”
Produced in collaboration with Sulasol, the Finnish Amateur Musicians’ Association.
Featured photo: A collage from music videos mentioned in the “Intriguing examples” section
Translation: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
