Austin Kleon recently wrote:
If you give the same book to 100 people, they’ll read 100 different books.
The same is true for music. If there are 14 different people in your choir…or 40…or 100…they will each sing a different piece while holding the same octavo.
They will bring their own life experience, perspective, current challenges, opinions, musical understanding, and so on, to their performance of the piece.
Is it any wonder it takes a while to shape a piece into something cohesive? We need to find unanimity in the face of vastly different readings of the same text.