| Vienna Boys' Choir | |
| Alias: | Vienna Choir Boys |
| Origin: | Vienna, Austria |
| Music Director: | Gerald Wirth |
| Headquarters: | Palais Augarten Vienna, Austria |
The Vienna Boys' Choir (German: '''Wiener Sängerknaben''') is a choir of boy sopranos and altos based in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the best known boys' choirs in the world. The boys are selected mainly from Austria, but also from many other countries.
The choir is a private, non-profit organization. There are approximately 100 choristers between the ages of nine and fourteen. The boys are divided into four touring choirs, named after Austrian composers Bruckner, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, which combined perform about 300 concerts each year before almost 500,000 people. Each group tours for about nine to eleven weeks. Some pieces include "Good Morning" and "Merry Christmas from Vienna Boys".
The choir is the modern-day descendant of the boys' choirs of the Viennese Court, dating back to the late Middle Ages. The Wiener Hofmusikkapelle was established by a letter from Emperor Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire on 30 June 1498, instructing court officials to employ a singing master, two basses and six boys. George Slatkonia became the director of the ensemble. The role of the choir (numbering between 24 and 26) was to provide musical accompaniment for the church mass. Additionally, the Haydn brothers were members of the St. Stephen's Cathedral choir, directed at the time by Georg Reutter II, who used this choir in his duties for the imperial court, which at the time had no boy choristers of its own.
Over the centuries, the choir has worked with many composers, including Heinrich Isaac, Hofhaimer, Biber, Fux, Caldara, Gluck, Salieri, Mozart, Franz Schubert and Bruckner.[1]
In 1920, following the fall of the Austrian Empire, the Hofkapelle (court orchestra) was disbanded. However, the rector at the time, Josef Schnitt, sought a continuation of the tradition. In 1924, the Vienna Boys' Choir was officially founded, and it has evolved into a professional music group. The choir adopted the now-famous blue-and-white sailor suit, replacing the imperial military cadet uniform that included a dagger.[2] The composer HK Gruber is one of the graduates of the reformed choir.[3]
Since 1948, Palais Augarten has served as the rehearsal venue and boarding school, which goes from kindergarten level up to middle school level.
In 1961, Walt Disney filmed Almost Angels, a fictional drama about (and starring) the Vienna Boys' Choir, set and filmed in the Palais Augarten. It was Disney who, for cinematographic reasons, persuaded the Austrian government to allow the boys to legally wear the Austrian national emblem on the breast of their uniform, a tradition that continues to this day.
Gerald Wirth became the choir's artistic director in 2001. However, since then, the choir has come under pressure to modernize and has faced criticism of their musical standards, leading to a split with the Vienna State Opera. The choir has for the first time had to advertise for recruits after a rival choir school was established by Ioan Holender, director of the opera company. He complained of both falling standards and poor communication with the choir. He said that the State Opera sometimes trained boys for particular stage roles, only to find out on the day of performance that they were unavailable as they had gone on tour with the choir. Some boys were attracted to the rival choir school by the prospect of a more relaxed atmosphere and of performance fees being paid directly to them.[4]
The Vienna Boys' Choir has sought to update its image, recording pop music selections and adopting an alternative uniform to the sailor suits used since the 1920s, allowing the boys to dance as they sing.[5] After Eugen Jesser died in May 2008, Walter Nettig became the choir's president. Gerald Wirth has been the artistic director since 2001, and he also became the choir's president in 2013. The current President is Erich Arthold, who started serving this position in Dec 2022.
The Vienna Boys Choir Music Academy (VBCMA) is the official music academy of the Vienna Boys Choir (VBC) with its headquarters located in Hong Kong. VBCMA carries on with the pedagogical traditions of the Vienna Boy Choir, offering year-round music programmes with songs from different cultures and in different languages. Classes are conducted from September every year to July next year in schools, community venues and online.[6]
The Vienna Boys Choir Music Academy Foundation (VBCMAF) is a registered charitable organization under the Section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance in Hong Kong. The 'Hong Kong - Vienna Music Festival' was set up by the Foundation in 2016, promoting the exchange of musicians from both places and presenting joint performances by them, such as the 'Mahler Symphony No 8' and the 'Beethoven from Day to Night - Piano Sonatas Marathon". The Festival also presented the 'Summer Music Academy' every year (except the pandemic years in 2020-2022), where a team of international conductors leads a weekly music camp for students from 7–25 years old.[7]
In 2010, following sexual abuse allegations from two former choristers stemming from the late 1960s and early 1980s, the Vienna Boys' Choir opened a confidential phone and e-mail hotline to allow others to come forward. Eight possible victims came forward saying they were abused, either by staff or other choir members.[8]
Carmina Burana (with André Previn and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) (1994)
The Vienna Boys' Choir performed the song "The Little Drummer Boy" in the Rankin/Bass TV special of the same name.