Since this is my first article, I'm going to give a little background here. When dealing with planning liturgies, you should plan music around several things:
- Christ focused
- Relevant to the action of the liturgical rite
- Relevant to the teaching / readings of the day
- Full, active, and conscious participation
This article will pertain specifically to the last point: full, active and conscious participation. A lot of the parameters going into making a decision about how to approach this will depend greatly on the collective state of the assembly you serve. Therefore the tips below may serve as a guide, but only you and your liturgical ministry can determine their relevance to your liturgy.
Let's consider a song I think is one of the more common offenders when it comes to conventional congregational vocal range: "Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble" by Martin Smith. I've heard LIFE TEEN and worship bands do this song, and they tend to perform it well, and the people do enjoy the song. When I ask those who were there if they could sing with it, they almost universally respond, "Not really, but I like to listen." If you look at the song as written, the range of the song easily exceeds the range of the congregation, soaring all the way to an "F#" an octave above middle "C"! Martin Smith has a lovely tenor voice that can really soar beautifully with this song, but this becomes hard, if not impossible to follow for the less vocally trained.
Unfortunately this misses the point of a full, active and conscious participatory liturgy. It is not enough for the music ministers to act on behalf of the community, but rather the congregation must participate, as mandated by the Catechism –
Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy, and to which the Christian people, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people," have a right and an obligation by reason of their Baptism.1
We, as music ministers, must choose songs that enable all to participate in their role in the mass, not just observers, but holy participants in union with the Holy Spirit. Our job is to support the assembly, not supplant it with just superior musicianship.
Vocal Range of the Assembly
I will assume here that the reader is dealing with a Catholic congregation. Some congregations can get behind songs with a wide mantissa (vocal range from low to high notes), but in general Catholic assemblies have a more narrow range that our Protestant brethren in Christ. I follow a few simple guidelines when selecting music or adjusting the key of a particular song, enabling all, not just your congregational tenors and sopranos to sing! 
In practice, I've found my congregation's range is limited to what you see above – a "B" below middle "C", to a "D" one octave above middle "C". You'll notice, this is a very narrow range. Most every singer has a range of at least an octave and a half, with some, more gifted singers sporting over three octaves. I can sometimes get away with an "Eb" or a low "A", but if those notes are sustained at least one person will let me know they had difficulty after mass.
In Protestant congregations, it is not uncommon to find a wider range – "A" below middle "C" to an "E" an octave above, with some select songs as high as an "F".
This totally reminds me of my role in "Brigadoon" back in high school. I played the part of "Charlie Dalrymple", the local boy about to get married. The song "I'll Go Home with Bonnie Jean", has one note that was a "G" an octave above middle "C". (If you've heard the song, you know the note on the key lyric, "I'll… "). After having sung baritone for three years, I had to exercise my newly discovered tenor voice to hit that note. As it turned out, I was really a tenor 1 in hiding, and after some work, this was no longer a problem.
Your congregation does not have the same luxury of vocal lessons, practice and patience. We as music ministers need to engage them here and now, and to do that, we can't exclude them and their perceptively lazy voices through our selection of music.
This means picking songs that fit the range of the congregation (sometimes at the exclusion of other, otherwise good songs), adjusting the keys of songs we love to sing, and making sure we lead where the congregation actually sings.
It goes without saying that when leading an assembly, it is best to lead in the range they are expected to sing in. This means your altos and lower tenors will get more exercise leading in church since they tend to represent the average assembly singer's range. A soprano leading the congregation may be sometimes more difficult. I'll cover things like this in future articles, but include as little vibrato as you tastefully can. It encourages participation rather than passive listening.
Conclusion
There is a lot that can be said about leading the assembly, and if you'll allow my long-winded explanations to continue, I'll write more on this in the future. The basic idea is lead them where you want them to go, and where they can be lead. We should not be passive in our worship, just as no other of our brethren present, acting in unity with the Body of Christ, should remain silent in worship.
Thank you for reading, and God bless you.
References
1 Catholic Catechism, 1141
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