You can't always get what you want

Cache Valley Center for the Arts presents the internationally renowned Vienna Choir Boys at 7:30 p.m. March 8 and 9 at the Ellen Eccles Theater.

After six centuries, the famed Vienna Choir Boys continue to delight music lovers across the globe with their purity of tone, musical depth and distinctive charm. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer described the choir as “a superb musical ensemble … (with) clarion sound.”

The Vienna Choir Boys performed to a sell-out crowd in their first season at the Cache Valley Center for the Arts 10 years ago and again in 2001. After hundreds of sell-out performances, the choir will roll into Logan for another performance.

“The Vienna Choir Boys are known around the world for their beautiful voices and centuries of talent,” said Wally Bloss, executive director for the Cache Valley Center for the Arts. “They will perform a little bit of everything including classical, modern, folk and world music; the makings of a perfect evening.”

This year’s performance will feature baroque and sacred music, German and Austrian polkas and waltzes by Strauss and others, as well as a few Rogers & Hammerstein selections from “The Sound of Music” and some fun contemporary pieces.

Known throughout the world as Wiener SŠngerknaben-Vienna Boys’ Choir, but literally translated in English as Vienna Choir Boys, the group consists of 10- to14-year-olds in one of Austria’s oldest musical institutions. It dates back more than 500 years to Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, who moved his court from Innsbruck to Vienna and issued a decree that six singing boys would be part of his court at all times.

Since that pronouncement, “six singing boys” have developed into a world-famous organization that survived not only its ruler and founder, but the Holy Roman Empire. Until 1918, the choir sang exclusively for the court, at mass, at private concerts and functions on state occasions. Over the years, countless famous composers and conductors like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have worked with or have been choristers themselves, including Jacobus Gallus, Franz Schubert, and later the conductors Hans Richter, Felix Mottl and Clemens Krauss.

Currently, four groups of approximately 24 singers tour the world with a repertoire including everything from medieval to contemporary and experimental music. The four choirs perform about 300 concerts each year in front of nearly half a million people worldwide. Nine to 11 weeks of the school year are spent on tour, traveling all over Europe, as well as Asia, Australia and the Americas. The boys also still provide the music for the Mass in Vienna’s Imperial Chapel.