Senior Choral Group Competition: What It Is, Where It’s Run and How It’s Judged

A choir of young singers performs one prepared programme together, judged as a single ensemble on tone, intonation, blend and musical direction.

A senior choral group is a choir entered as one team. The singers stand together, usually in sections, and perform their music as a single voice under a conductor. Unlike a solo or a duet, nobody is judged on their own: the adjudicator listens to the sound of the whole group and decides how well it hangs together.

A round begins with the choir walking on and settling into position, then a note from a pitch pipe or an accompanist if the event allows one. The group sings its piece or short programme, which might be unison, two-part, three-part or four-part, with or without piano. The adjudicator listens first for pitch and tuning, then for blend between the sections, clear words, and whether the dynamics and phrasing are shaped by the choir rather than left to chance.

On paper an entry is one named choir with a list of singers and the pieces it intends to sing. The British template that carries this class sets a single open team group with a ten-minute limit counted per head of the performance, marks out of 100, boys and girls together, and the choir drawn from singers aged 18 and under. The template prints no separate criteria, so organisers using it should tell choirs in advance what the panel weighs.

Organisers like the class because it gives school and community choirs a stage that is not a solo, and because a well-prepared choir is usually the most rewarding item of a music session to listen to. It also rewards teaching: a choir that sings in tune and together on the day has clearly been rehearsed well.

Where Senior Choral Group is run

Senior Choral Group appears on one eTalenter template, a British music, speech and drama eisteddfod, in its vocal and group section beside the junior choir class. Choral classes are common at competitive music festivals in general, but this page records only the template listed here.

• United Kingdom

Key facts

• Team entry, open to boys and girls together
• One open team group on the template, with performers aged 18 and under
• Time limit on the template is 10 minutes, counted per head of the performance
• Marked out of 100; the template prints no separate criteria
• The source syllabus lets an entrant appear only once in a given class, so a singer cannot sing in two senior choral groups in the same festival
• Separate from the junior choir class, which is for singers aged 11 and under

On eTalenter, Senior Choral Group is filed under Music and typically scored with Marks. It appears in 1 ready-made event templates — each one can adjust its time limit, age-group assignment and scoring setup independently.

Across the templates that use it, Senior Choral Group is most often entered as an Team competition, typically scored out of 100, commonly time-limited to around 10 minutes where a limit is set.

What judges look at in Senior Choral Group

What a Senior Choral Group panel is actually weighing up, and where the marks are usually won or lost:

• Intonation: the choir stays on pitch throughout, including in unaccompanied passages and at the end of long phrases
• Blend and balance: sections sound like one voice, with no single singer or section standing out
• Diction: words are clear and together, so a listener at the back can follow the text
• Rhythm and unity: entries, cut-offs and tempo changes happen together and follow the conductor
• Dynamics and expression: the choir shapes loud and soft, and the mood of the piece is clear
• Choice of music: a programme the singers can manage well earns more than one that is too hard for them
• Stage presence: a calm walk-on, steady posture and a composed finish

Treat these as the judging focus, not a fixed rubric: publish your own weighted criteria for Senior Choral Group under Scoring Setup, or start from how judge scoring and tabulation works in eTalenter.

How to prepare for Senior Choral Group

How entrants and their teachers usually get Senior Choral Group right on the day:

• Pick music that suits the weakest section, not only the strongest, and check every part is singable in the choir’s range
• Rehearse the whole choir together every week; learning parts in sections is useful, but blend only comes from singing as a group
• Warm up with tuning exercises before every session so the ear is trained to hold pitch
• Record a rehearsal and play it back; singers rarely hear balance problems from inside the choir
• Practise the walk-on, the first note and the finish, because these are where marks slip first
• Time the whole programme with the walk-on included so you finish inside the ten-minute limit
• Work on words separately, speaking the text in rhythm before singing it, so diction is clear
• Perform to an audience of parents or another class before the day to get used to singing with listeners present

Frequently asked questions

Is Senior Choral Group judged individually or as a team?

Across eTalenter’s templates it’s most often run as an Team entry, though an organiser can set either participation type when assigning the item to an age group.

How many singers make a senior choral group?

The template does not fix a number; it is a team entry. The source syllabus sets its own size rules for choirs, so check the event’s documents for the minimum and maximum.

How long can a senior choral group perform?

On the British template the limit is 10 minutes, counted per head of the performance, so walk-on and settling time should be planned inside it.

Is a senior choral group the same as a junior choir?

No. The junior choir class on the same template is for singers aged 11 and under and has a shorter limit; the senior choral group is the open team class for performers aged 18 and under.

Is the choir judged as a team or are singers marked individually?

As a team. One mark out of 100 is given to the whole choir, so blend and unity matter more than any single voice.

Want the full judging picture? Read how judge scoring and tabulation works in eTalenter, or browse every music competition item.