Name: Vienna Boys Choir
Start: 2025-12-09T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Corning Museum of Glass

The Vienna Boys Choir
Tuesday, December 9 - 7:30pm
The Vienna Boys Choir is one of the most famous choirs in the world, and one of its oldest. Boys have been singing at Vienna’s Imperial Chapel since 1296. In 1498, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I established a Court Chapel in Vienna and gave specific instructions that there were to be boys among the singers. Like their modern successors, the early choir spent much time on the road, following their imperial employer to sing at the Holy Roman Empire’s parliamentary meetings, coronations, weddings, state processions, and feasts.
Over the centuries, the Viennese Court attracted musical geniuses like Heinrich Isaac, Johann Joseph Fux, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Composers Joseph Haydn, Michael Haydn, and Franz Schubert sang as boys with the choir. Anton Bruckner instructed choir members in singing and piano.
Today, the former imperial ensemble has grown into an entire campus. The modern Vienna Boys Choir is a private, non-profit organization that funds itself chiefly through income generated from concerts and touring, as well as donations and sponsorship deals. The Vienna Boys Choir maintains a primary school and a grammar school whose syllabi focus on choral music and singing. In total, 330 boys and girls between the ages of six and nineteen attend the schools on campus. Each student receives individual voice lessons and sings in one of the choirs. There are four choirs for boys, one for girls aged 10 to 14, and two mixed choirs—one for the 4th grade and one for the high school. The Vienna Boys Choir’s education program is listed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, and it is open to all, regardless of origin, gender, nationality, or religion.
Currently 90 active boy choristers are divided into the four boys’ choirs, which each perform as the “Vienna Boys Choir.” The four choirs share concerts, tours, sound recordings and filming equally. Between them, they perform almost 300 concerts per year, with nearly half a million people attending. Since 1924, the choirs have completed more than 1,000 tours in 100 different countries.
On Sundays, the choirs take turns singing mass in Vienna’s Imperial Chapel, joining forces with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the men’s chorus of the Vienna State Opera. They frequently participate in large-scale symphonic concerts, performing under conductors like Joana Mallwitz, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Christian Thielemann, Simone Young, and Franz Welser-Möst. Other highlights in the choirs’ calendars are appearances at the Salzburg Festival and at the New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic.