REVIVING THE “Golden Age” LEGACY

Centuries before the first orchestra played a single note or the idea of opera even dreamed of, the boy choir was a fixture of musical life throughout most of Europe.

The 16th to the 19th century can be thought of as the Golden Age of the boy choir. From Vienna to Munich, Flanders to Spain and the British Isles, the boy choir was the backbone of musical performance.   In eastern Germany, extraordinary music was being written first by Heinrich Schutz   for the Kreutzchor in Dresden and later JS Bach with the Thomanerchor (St. Thomas church choir) in Leipzig. Today Schutz and Bach are towering figures commanding intense enthusiasm among audiences and scholars.

Almost all of the boy choir music tradition was liturgical and thrived in small chapels, though of course, Europe's great cathedrals supported important choirs of many voices. Music from the Renaissance and Baroque tended to be chamber sized sometimes with only one voice on a line. Bach's music was certainly performed with small forces, with, at most, three on a part.

Doing justice to this legacy requires boys who are intensively trained, not only musically and artistically, but first and foremost they must be virtuoso singers. In the Baroque era boys were taught to sing arias on equal par with the most dazzling artistry and technique of superstar voices heard in Europe's opera houses.

Today, such forces, indeed are quite rare.

Perhaps only the famed Tolzer Knabenchor in Munich, led by Dr. Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, can adequately assay the Golden Age repertoire of centuries past.

But now a new boy choir project -- The KnabenChor Virtuosi-- has been launched from Vienna positioned to sing the great masterworks of centuries past on the scale and sensitivity required.

Celebrating the Golden Age boy choir repertoire is, indeed, the central artistic mission of the KnabenChor Virtuosi/ Wien, led by their extraordinary Artistic Director, Madame Sylvia Purcar.