Word: ngerknaben
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With 21 other Wiener Sängerknaben (Singing Boys of Vienna), small Wilhelm Herp, 12, was riding along in a special Pullman car between Three Rivers and Quebec one day last month, rehearsing for the next concert. Suddenly, to the dismay of Wilhelm Herp & friends but as it must to most young males, adolescence came to Wilhelm Herp. In the midst of a note his clear young alto voice sharply, ludicrously "broke." Obviously he could sing no more on the Wiener Sängerknaben 's U. S. tour (TIME, Nov. 14). There were 30-odd concerts still to come...
...prowl through the rooms which belonged to Archduke Rudolf, Franz Josef's son who died mysteriously at his hunting lodge at Mayerling. Rudolf's rooms have not been preserved as a museum for tragic memories. They are occupied by 40 lively boys, the Wiener Sängerknaben (Singing Boys of Vienna), a choir which Maximilian I founded in 1498 to supply music for his chapel...
Without the Habsburgs to subsidize them, the Wiener Sängerknaben have had to do what they could toward supporting themselves and last week 22 of the boys ranging from 9 to 12 arrived in the U. S. for a transcontinental tour. On the pier at Hoboken, N. J. they stood solemnly to be photographed in their sailor pants and reefers. They romped and spun tops while customs officials skimmed through their 22 valises in each of which bathrobe, towel, comb and handkerchiefs were packed exactly alike. Then, after sight-seeing Manhattan, the boys set out for Washington where...
Mozart was never one of the Wiener Sängerknaben but Haydn and Schubert had their first musical training in the choir school as did Clemens Krauss, natural son of an Archduke and a ballet dancer, who now directs the Vienna Opera. Haydn and Schubert had to leave the choir when their voices broke. The Habsburgs would not have their boy sopranos castrated although that was common practice elsewhere in 17th and 18th Century Europe. With the fall of the Habsburgs the choir disbanded, but six years later Father Josef Schnitt, a priest at the Former Imperial Chapel, reorganized...
Most boy choirs existed because the Catholic Church would not permit women to sing in the sanctuary. The Wiener Sängerknaben sang nothing but ecclesiastical music until 1926 when Father Schnitt's savings were gone and they went out giving concerts with an eye to the boxoffice. The blue-&-white sailor costumes which the boys are wearing for the U. S. concerts are symbolic of the secular turn their programs have taken. (In Washington last week they sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Dixie.") Proceeds from their U. S. tour, to be taken in a bus labeled "Wiener...