InterVarsity Choral Festival (Australia)

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The Australian Intervarsity Choral Festival (IVCF) is an annual event in which members of university choirs from all state capitals of Australia and the national capital Canberra meet for two weeks to rehearse, socialise and perform combined concerts. The Festival also serves as the annual conference of the member choirs of AICSA, the Australian Intervarsity Choral Societies Association.

The festival is hosted by the AICSA choirs in a particular city on a rotational basis, the roster being maintained by AICSA's governing body, the Australian Intervarsity Choral Council (AIVCC). In 2007, the IVCF was hosted by the Queensland University Musical Society in Brisbane, and gave the Australian premiere of Carl Orff's complete cantata trilogy Trionfi. In early 2008, IVCF will hosted by the Sydney University Musical Society in association with other university choirs including Macquarie University Singers and the Music Society of the University of Technology (Sydney), and will perform a concert of English works including Thomas Tallis' 40-part motet Spem in Alium and Ralph Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music^[1], and one of Australian works including a commission from Anne Boyd^[2] (see Promotion of Australian Composition below).

[edit] History

The first Australian Intervarsity Choral Festival took place in 1950 when the Sydney University Musical Society (SUMS) hosted the Melbourne University Choral Society (MUCS) for a week-long rehearsal camp culminating in a combined concert. Other university choirs joined over the years, with all State capitals (except Darwin in the Northern Territory) having at least one member choir by 1973. The IVCF has since become the largest regularly occurring choral festival in Australia.

From 1975 on, when the 26th IVCF performed Verdi's Requiem in the then recently opened Sydney Opera House, IVCFs have striven to perform large-scale works to high standards with professional orchestras where appropriate and available. The 37th IVCF (Brisbane, 1986) was the first to work with its state's professional orchestra, the then Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the major work on the program being Herbert Howells' Hymnus Paradisi. Two years later (1988), to celebrate Australia's bicentennial, the 39th IVCF collaborated with the Sydney Philharmonia and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Charles Dutoit to perform Mahler's massive "Symphony of a Thousand", again in the Sydney Opera House.

More recently, the 55th IVCF (Perth, 2004) took part in the Perth International Arts Festival^[3] to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Antonín Dvořák by performing his Stabat Mater with the Prague Chamber Orchestra^[4] under Australian conductor Graham Abbott.

[edit] Promotion of Australian Composition

IVCFs have a long if intermittent tradition of performance of works by Australian composers. Fifteen of these performances since 1962 have been of works commissioned by the festival, the most recent being in 2005 when David Cassat's "Flesh to Stone" for semichorus and divisi main chorus was commissioned by the 56th IVCF (Melbourne). The upcoming IVCF in Sydney will feature Missa Pacifica by Anne Boyd, for choir and brass ensemble.

Another seven performances have been premieres, the most recent being in 2007 when in collaboration with the Bonyi International Youth Festival IVCF premiered Paul Stanhope's "Pirramimma" for three choirs and string ensemble.