About
Vienna Boys Choir
Vienna Boys Choir website: www.opus3artists.com/artists/vienna-boys-choirPast
In 1498, more than half a millennium ago, Emperor Maximilian I moved his court and his court musicians from
Innsbruck to Vienna. He gave specific instructions that there were to be six boys among his musicians. For want of a
foundation charter, historians have settled on 1498 as the official foundation date of the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle and -
in consequence - the Vienna Boys Choir. Until 1918, the choir sang exclusively for the imperial court, at mass, at
private concerts and functions and on state occasions.
Musicians like Heinrich Isaac, Paul Hofhaimer, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Johann Joseph Fux, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, Antonio Caldara, Antonio Salieri and Anton Bruckner worked with the choir. Composers Jacobus Gallus and
Franz Schubert, and the conductors Hans Richter, Felix Mottl and Clemens Krauss were themselves choristers.
Brothers Joseph and Michael Haydn were members of the choir of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and sang frequently with
the imperial boys’ choir.
In 1918, after the breakdown of the Habsburg Empire, the Austrian government took over the court opera (i.e. the
opera, its orchestra and the adult singers), but not the choir boys. The Wiener Sängerknaben owe their survival to the
initiative of Josef Schnitt, who became Dean of the Imperial Chapel in 1921. Schnitt established the boys’ choir as a
private institution: the former court choir boys became the Wiener Sängerknaben (in English: Vienna Boys Choir), the
imperial uniform was replaced by the sailor suit, then the height of boys’ fashion. Funding was not enough to pay for
the boys’ upkeep, and in 1926 the choir started to give concerts outside of the chapel, performing motets, secular
works, and - at the boys’ request – children’s operas. The impact was amazing: Within a year, the choir performed in
Berlin (where Erich Kleiber conducted them), Prague and Zurich. Athens and Riga (1928) followed, then Spain, France,
Denmark, Norway and Sweden (1929), the United States (1932), Australia (1934) and South America (1936).
Present
Today there are around 100 choristers between the ages of ten and fourteen, divided into four touring choirs. The four
choirs give around 300 concerts and performances each year in front of almost half a million people. Each group
spends nine to eleven weeks of the school year on tour. They visit virtually all European countries, and they are
frequent guests in Asia, Australia and the Americas.
Together with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, the Wiener
Sängerknaben maintain the tradition of the imperial musicians: as Hofmusikkapelle they provide the music for the
Sunday Mass in Vienna’s Imperial Chapel, as they have done since 1498. Gerald Wirth took over as the choir’s artistic
director in 2001.
The Wiener Sängerknaben recently completed principle photography for acclaimed director Curt Faudon’s newest
mixture of feature film and documentary tentatively titled Silk Road. Due for release during autumn 2008, the film
shows the choristers' normal nomadic tour life in Korea, Japan, Canada, the USA, Germany and on the Silk Road itself;
the soundtrack will offer everything from medieval chansons and Renaissance music to masses and lieder by
Schubert, and includes unexpected highlights from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, China and Mongolia. Though the
choir’s history in radio, television and film dates from the1930s to present, this marks their first feature appearance
since Disney’s 1962 classic Almost Angels.
Repertoire
The choir’s repertoire includes everything from medieval to contemporary and experimental music. Motets and lieder
for boys’ choir form the core of the touring repertoire, as do the choir’s own arrangements of waltzes and polkas by
Strauss.
Both the choir and the Hofmusikkapelle have a long tradition of commissioning new works. Austrian composers Heinz
Kratochwil, hk Gruber (himself a former chorister), Ernst Krenek and Balduin Sulzer have written works for the choir.
The Wiener Sängerknaben perform major choral and symphonic works, sometimes as part of the Hofmusikkapelle,
sometimes with other orchestras and men’s choirs. They are regularly asked to supply soloists for large choral and
orchestral works, such as Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied . In recent years, they have
performed with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic and the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Recent guest conductors include Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss
Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti (honorary member of the Hofmusikkapelle), Kent Nagano and Seiji Ozawa.
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Past Events
Field Arts & Events Hall
26
Feb
2008
16:00
