Swiss Choir Association

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The Swiss Choir Association (SCV; French Union Suisse des Chorales (USC), Italian Unione Svizzera dei Cori (USC), Rhaeto-Romanic Uniun svizra dals cors (USC)) is the umbrella organization of the cantonal and regional choral associations and thus the Swiss choirs with a secular orientation. It is the largest national choir association in Switzerland and as such a member of the Swiss Music Council , Europa Cantat and the International Federation for Choral Music .

The SCV has existed in its current form since 1977, when the Federal Singers' Association merged with the Association of Swiss Women's and Daughter Choirs and the Swiss Association of Mixed Choirs . As the direct successor organization to the Swiss Federal Choir Association founded in 1842, the SCV is the oldest national choir association in the world. According to their own information, almost 1,500 choirs are currently members of the SCV through the cantonal associations, including over 42,000 members in choirs of all genres.

history

Development of the Swiss choir

The origins of choral singing on Swiss territory can be found in the monasteries in the Middle Ages; Above all Einsiedeln and St. Gallen had well-known singing schools. Polyphonic singing was privately cultivated in collegia musica , choirs and carolers until the 17th century . In 1754, the Wetzik pastor Johannes Schmidlin founded the world's first popular choral society, to which around 200 men and women belonged - a good 40 years before the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin was founded as the oldest choral society still active today. In 1764 Schmidlin published a collection of Swiss songs and thus founded popular song composition in Switzerland. His students Johann Heinrich Egli and Johann Jakob Walder ( Wetziker School ) continued his work.

The real “father of a singer” is Hans Georg Nägeli , who founded the Zürcherisches Sing-Institut in 1805, initially with 30 members, a children's choir soon followed, and in 1810 the world's first male choir - unlike the Berlin Liedertafel founded the previous year, freely accessible to all citizens. This Nägeli came in 1811 at the Diet on. Throughout his life, Nägeli propagated folk singing throughout German-speaking Switzerland and in southern Germany near the border, which resulted in numerous choral societies being founded. His fellow campaigners included u. a. Franz Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee , Ferdinand Huber , Johann Heinrich Tobler and Samuel Weishaupt .

On Weishaupt's initiative, the Appenzeller Landgesang, the first cantonal choir association, was founded in the winter of 1823/1824 . On August 4, 1825, he carried out the world's first song festival in Speicher . In the following years, further cantonal associations were established in Zurich (1825), Glarus (1826), Aargau (1827), Thurgau (1828), Bern (1828) and Basel (1831). The efforts of the Swiss pioneers Nägeli and Schnyder von Wartensee in southern Germany led to the first song festivals in Germany: in 1827 the Württemberg song festival in Plochingen and in 1838 the first German song festival in Frankfurt am Main .

Foundation of the Federal Singers' Association

As early as 1835, the Aargau government councilor Joseph Fidel Wieland suggested the establishment of a federal association. When guest choirs from other cantons (Basel, Bern, Lucerne, Solothurn and Zurich) were invited for the first time in 1842 in the run-up to the annual festival of the Aargau Cantonal Association, Wieland, together with his government secretary Karl Häfelin (also president of the hosting men's choir), took the initiative and invited them the evening before the Fests, June 4, 1842, to found the Federal Singers' Association. The annual festival went down in history as the “Founding Singers Festival ” and was intended to be an important prelude to the first Federal Singers Festival in 1843 in Zurich.

Association organ

In 1861 the Swiss Singers' Association emerged from the Cantonal Bernese singers' association , and from 1879 onwards it was published as the Swiss music newspaper and singers' paper . In 1937 the singer sheet was split off, and the Swiss music newspaper was now published in German and French (as Revue Musicale Suisse ) by the Tonkünstlerverein . The new Eidgenössische Sängerblatt was published independently again, renamed the Swiss Choir Newspaper in 1977 and Chorus-Magazin in 2002 . The print edition was discontinued in 2013 and has only existed as an email bulletin since then.

Cantonal sections

Web links