One of the oldest groups in the world is flying into town. Derek Lim takes a peek into the life of the venerable Vienna Boys’ Choir

What’s blue and white, flies but doesn’t have wings, sings in harmony and is older than the US of A? Why, the Vienna Boys’ Choir, of course. Coming to our shores again to display their sepulchral voices, they will sing a concert of Viennese music, as well as popular folk tunes from various countries. 

One of the cultural centres of the world, Vienna was home to some of the finest composers – Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven and Mahler chose to write music in Austria’s city by the River Danube. Its State Opera and pre-eminent orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, are both highly regarded, but in terms of seniority, all have to give way to the great-granddaddy of them all – the Vienna Boys’ Choir. 

How old is it exactly? Try 509 years. In 1498, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I of Habsburg, instructed his court officials to set up a boys’ choir, which would provide musical accompaniment to the church mass. (Women were banned from singing sacred music.) 

The 14- to 20-strong group lifted its angelic, collective voice for every Sunday mass at Vienna’s Imperial Chapel (a tradition they have supposedly kept unbroken), and sang only for private functions and court engagements. In return, they received a solid musical education. Fast-forward 400 years, when the dissolution of the Habsburg empire in 1918 leaves the Vienna Boys homeless. 

Josef Schnitt, who became Dean of the Imperial Chapel in 1921, came to the rescue. Due to insufficient funding for the little choristers, he privatised the choir, which then started to give concerts outside the chapel, including secular works and children’s operas. Within a year, they were performing under the great conductor Erich Kleiber in Berlin and travelling around the world, including Prague, Zurich, the US, Australia and South America. They quickly became the face of music in modern Austria. 

The choir now consists of four groups of about 25 choristers, each named after a great Viennese composer – Anton Bruckner, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Peter Schubert. Each has a choirmaster well-versed in vocal training, as well as in the Viennese tradition of phrasing. Their repertoire ranges from Bach to Spanish madrigals and everything in-between. 

Times have changed, but the modern-day choir school isn’t that different. ‘The boys are all ages ten to 14,’ says Dr Eugen Jesser, choir president. ‘They go to a boarding school in the Palais Augarten.’ A fitting home for a group that used to be in the employ of the emperor – the Palais was once a royal palace. 

A typical day in the life of the youngsters involves singing practice from 8am to 11am, followed by a full day of school. After that, it’s a free for all. ‘Many of our boys play soccer and other sports. It’s very important they recoup their strength. This is the reason why we have lots of opportunities for sports,’ Jesser says. 

So what about the cruel European practice in the 1700s that gave rise to legends such as Farinelli, who inspired the fi lm with the same name, which dealt with the ‘unmanning’ of talented boys before they had reached puberty to preserve their voices and prevent them from breaking? In its heyday, an estimated 4,000 boys were castrated each year in Italy in the name of music. ‘Maybe in the Baroque era or eighteenth century, but defi nitely not in recent times,’ Jesser says. 

‘Normally, at 13 or 14 the voice breaks,’ says Jesser. ‘After that, our school ends and the children have to go to a gymnasium [normal secondary school] outside for the rest of their education.’ 
Perhaps that’s why selection starts at an early age. Scouts scour Austria and beyond looking for new talent, who may arrive as early as kindergarten, or as late as primary school. Some may not even visit Austria – though as many as 80 per cent of the choir hails from Vienna and Austria, the rest come from countries as diverse as the ones they tour. The current roll call includes boys from the US, Japan, Australia, Hungary, Peru, Poland and Slovakia. 

When school term ends, the choir takes to the skies, performing an average of 300 concerts each year and touching half-a-million music lovers with their beautiful voices. Each group tours for about ten weeks. The boys fly strictly economy class on commercial flights and wear their adorable sailor costumes wherever they go. Two chaperones and a choirmaster in tow ensure the children are on their best behaviour, though that didn’t stop some in the last batch from climbing coconut trees when the concert organisers took them to Sentosa. Well, boys will be boys. 

But even the most traditional institution cannot remain unfazed in the face of modernity, and in 2002 the children recorded an album called Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop, with songs such as ‘My Heart Will Go On’, ‘Nothing Else Matters’ and ‘All You Need Is Love’. 

‘We wanted to make new music,’ says Jesser, ‘so we decided on a pop recording. Some people said it was wonderful. However others, mostly the elder ones, said it was the wrong way, and they didn’t want to hear the Vienna Boys’ Choir with pop, but with the music that made them well-known in the world.’ But we can be certain that the boys will continue to enchant and bring joy to those who hear them, whatever they sing. 

The Vienna Boys’ Choir performs at 7.30pm on 5 Nov at the Esplanade Concert Hall.

GROWING PAINS
Ever wondered where the boys go when they get too old? Check out our trivia on Austria’s oldest choir 

1. Endearing as their classic sailor uniforms are, the boys’ original costumes had an imperial look, as they were part of the court musicians. The group adopted the sailor uniforms – all the rage at that time – when it became private. The sailor costume tradition itself is said to have started with Queen Victoria, who dressed her children in it in the 1840s – a move cleverly designed to associate the monarchy, whose popularity was declining, with England’s most loved institution, the Royal Navy. 

2. The list of alumni of the Vienna Boys is long and illustrious. Some of the best known are Haydn – the ‘Father of the Symphony’, who was a chorister as a boy – and the great symphonist and Lieder (German art-song) composer Schubert. Others include the conductors Hans Richter (who premiered Richard Wagner’s massive opera-cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung), and Clemens Krauss, the great Strauss/Wagner conductor. Both conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. 

3. Vienna Boys don’t die – they just join the Chorus Viennensis, a choir for adult men made up entirely of ex-Vienna Boys. These men are versatile and comfortable in different styles of music. Select members within the Chorus Viennensis sing the Gregorian Chant during mass at the Imperial Chapel. DL