InterVarsity Choral Festival

(Australia)

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 typically two combined concerts. The festival is hosted by all AICSA choirs in a particular city on a rotational basis, the roster maintained by AICSA. In 2007, IVCF was hosted by the Queensland University Musical Society in Brisbane, and gave the Australian premiere of Carl Orff's cantata trilogy Trionfi.

History

The InterVarsity Choral Festival was founded in 1950 by SUMS (the Sydney University Musical Society) and MUCS (the Melbourne University Choral Society) as a largely social event with some combined singing. Other university choirs joined over the years, all capitals (except that of the Northern Territory, Darwin) 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 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^[1] to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Antonín Dvořák by performing his Stabat Mater with the Prague Chamber Orchestra^[2] under Australian conductor Graham Abbott.

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).

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.