Vienna Boys Choir Performs Tuesday At BU

The Vienna Boys Choir — a tradition spanning more than 500 years — will return to the region Tuesday night for a holiday performance in the Osterhout Concert Theater at Binghamton University's Anderson Center. The concert is presented by the Binghamton Philharmonic.Music historians trace the origins of the choir to 1498, when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I moved his court from Innsbruck to Vienna. He gave specific instructions that there were to be six boys among his court musicians. Until 1918, the choir sang exclusively for the imperial court, at Mass, at private concerts and functions and on state occasions.
Among those who worked with or were members of the choir were such classical music superstars as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri, Anton Bruckner, Franz Schubert, and brothers Joseph and Michael Haydn.In 1918, after the breakdown of the Habsburg Empire, the Austrian government took over the court's adult musicians but not the choir boys. The Wiener S*ngerknaben — as the choir is known in German — owes its survival to the initiative of Josef Schnitt, who became dean of the Imperial Chapel in 1921 and established the boys' choir as a private institution. 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. Soon, word spread and the choir was performing around the world.
Today, there are around 100 choristers between the ages of 10 and 14, 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 11 weeks of the school year on tour. They visit virtually all European countries as well as Asia, Australia and the Americas.
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. In the 1970s, the choir started to perform a cappella arrangements of songs by The Beatles. In 2002, the boys recorded a pop CD, including songs by Celine Dion, Madonna and Robbie Williams. The choir has contributed to a number of film soundtracks.