VIENNA BOYS' CHOIR

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21639, 25 November 1935, Page 5

VIENNA BOYS' CHOIR

AN HISTORIC INSTITUTION Plans will, be opened to-morrow morning at the D.I.C. for the series of concerts to be given by the farfamed Vienna Boys'-Choir in the Theatre Royal, beginning next Saturday at the matinee. The season will be limited to five nights, with matinees on Saturday and Wednesday. The choir, which is tburjng Australia and New Zealand under the aegis of Messrs J. and N. Tait, has many claims to be considered the oldest organisation of its kind now extant It was founded about the year 1426, and. was already more than 70 years old when, in 1498, the Emperor Maximilian I. appointed it to be the choir of the Imperial A Chapel at Vienna. For nearly 500 years it was maintained by an Imperial endowment, and grew to be one of the most cherished institutions of the cultured city of Vienna, long regarded as the musical capital of the world. As boys in this choir, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Hans Richter, Felix Mottl, and scores of other*famous musicians received their first lessons in harmony. Since the fall of the Austrian monarchy in 1919, the choir, lacking the former endowment, has turned its attention, in part; to secular music, and has given concerts In most of the European countries, the United States, end recently in Australia. In fact it has gone to the extreme of recording a number of Schubert lieder in a film to be released in New Zealand early next year by a Hollywood producing company. The repertoire of the choir includes sacred music, some examples of which date back to the fifteenth century, Austrian folk-music, modern songs, and the characteristically Viennese waltz songs of Johann &trauss, and a selection of classical one-act operettas by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Lortzing.