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Caecilia Chortage 2001 - the Days of Choral Singing in Limburg

Lindelzholzhausen, Německo

The German town Limburg (Hessen) was a witness of first run of the Masaryk University in Brno choir GAUDEAMUS in international singing competition scene.

Between 18th and 27th of May 2001 there was helding international chorus competition named "Caecilia Chortage 2001". The event was running to jubilee occassion of 100 year from founding of the internationally well-known and reputable male choir CAECILIA Lindenholzhausen, that periodically organizes choir contests on national and international level.

The competition was joined by 62 choirs from 21 countries from entire the world. It was contested in 8 categories, the GAUDEAMUS choir took part in the mixed choir category. Among its opponents in this category belonged for example one of the best Slovak choirs COMENIUS from Bratislava, the choir OREYA from Zhitomir, Ukraine, or Portland State University Chamber Choir from the USA. There was evaluated a main winner in each category and according to points was awarded gold, silver and bronze medals.

The GAUDEAMUS choir had been preparing to its international competitive début very properly - on behalf of mention worths its Advent concert at the Czech Embassy in Vienna, the taking part on international festival of choirs in Polish town Poznań in April or the common concert with Vienna University choir at occassion of Dies academicus brunensis 2001. Thanks to invitation of its German friends the choir had been spending several last days before the competition in the Staffelstein town and every free time had been payed to preperation upon the contest. By its concerts the choir won hearts of warm local listeners, but also the critique, that appreciated the variety of the repertoire, the high quality of performance and the singing enthusiasm of the young collective.

How was the competition saw by Zdeněk Matula, one of the choir singers?

"It is hard to go to the stage and to know that all our work and pain depend upon only one entrance now. But to tell the truth it wasn't so fearful - we had a concert every day, so that was possible to get the stagefright under, only we had opportunity to acquaint with concert-hall in advance, to practise coming and outgoing, to make the most elegant disposition, to sing several tones, and moreover there was an excellent weather! Thanks to the ordinal number 13 we got on the order only about three o'clock afternoon, till then we relaxed and had to mediatelly desribed the entrances of our rivals. When about 10 minutes before our entrance we gathered on the place, from thaht we should to enter to the competitive stage, we catched spontaneously by arms and supplied ourselves a courage and a calm. There a terrible heat and close was expecting to us on the stage, but with first tones of "Crucifix" that all went away. We started slightly shy, but with every next piece we were stronger and stronger. The final piece "Prší, prší" we all enjoyed. Remotely I would not say, that the whole entrance spanned twenty minutes. Sweating, but happy we were coming away from the stage. We felt ourselves, that we could be proud of our performance. The other was up to the jury."

And really - our singers didn't failed with their feelings - the jury valued competitive performace of our choir by total sum of 91 points, that reflected to the Gold Certificate in the caregory of mixed choirs. From the competition songs obtained the highest score (94,5 points from maximum possible of 100 points) the folk song "Prší, prší" in arrangement of M. Hronek and A. Vacek. The winner of the category became the Ukrainian choir OREYA, which had been until the end of 1999 led by choirmaster and conductor of the GAUDEAMUS choir Alexander Vacek.

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