UPCS at the Vienna Choral Festival, 1979
by Dennis T. Bautista
We were invited to join a “Musikalischer Sommer in Wien” (“Musical Summer in Vienna”) in August of 1979, a World Youth Festival for Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna which included a choral competition. The definition of youth for the participating choir members was anyone below thirty years of age and most of the choirs age range was in the late teens through the twenties. Our choir was one of the youngest and, in fact, there was only one other choir with a similar age range as us from below ten to teens, and that was the choir from Odawara, Japan.
Mass choir at the 1979 Musical Summer in Vienna. Four UPCS members are in the front row, third to sixth from the right, alongside members of the choir from Odawara, Japan.
Our repertoire for the Festival contest included three songs: Ramon P. Santos’ “Aleluya,’ Felipe de Leon’s “Payapang Daigdig” arranged by Lucio D. San Pedro, and a Bach cantata.
And there was a contest piece, and what a piece it was: the chorale portion of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy”).
Mom Rivera (Mom was how we called our founder and director Flora Zarco-Rivera, and that’s the name that was printed on the back her UPCS T-shirt) sent a letter (the paper, envelope and stamp version) to the organizers asking if it was absolutely necessary to sing this for the contest piece, it being a piece for full orchestra and choir. If they had said yes, Mom would have had it arranged for our SSA choir. However, they did not respond, and we replaced the contest piece with what was the third song of our repertoire, J.S. Bach’s Cantata 78 “Wir Eilen mit Schwachen doch Emsigen Schritten.” (Don’t ask me for the translation, I never bothered to find out, but we could pronounce the German lyrics perfectly thanks to our foreign language coach Tito Reli Estanislao who had a unique way of teaching us how to pronounce umlauts, a little graphic perhaps but effective and ingrained in our minds forever.)
The contest was on August 6, 1979 at 2 pm at the Sofiensaal in Vienna. Afterwards, in the evening, we learned (through an Odawara choir chaperone equivalent of our “dean of discipline” Tito Romy Tech) that we won a special prize. We received the news with mixed feelings as most of us were thinking that it was some kind of consolation prize.
Having learned of this, Mom Rivera went out the next day and bought scores of “An Die Freude” (not loose sheets but actual music books of the whole work) which we started to learn as we knew that the prize winners were to sing this piece with full orchestra at the awarding ceremony. We were already digging our heels (or lunging our larynxes?) into it when Mom was informed that we did not have to sing it at the awarding. So, we shelved it. Sayang, this was one of the songs some of us would sing on the side, in German of course, and it would have been a chance to sing it full chorale with orchestra. (We have unusual selections for on the side songs: from a parodied version of Sesame Street’s “Here in the Middle of Imagination” to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” but I digress.)
The Awarding day was on August 10th. Third prize to a choir from Romania, Second prize to a choir from Cuba, and First prize to a girls’ choir from Norway. Then, one of the judges spoke. It went something like this (I am paraphrasing from memory):
“There is one choir that we just couldn’t let go home without giving a prize, and that is the choir from the Philippines, the UP Cherubim and Seraphim, and so we give them this Special Prize for Originality.”
Mom went up to receive our trophy and, lo and behold, the trophy was the same size as, if not a little taller than, the First Prize trophy! It was of a gold-tinged hue, quite distinctive from the silver hue of the other trophies, and our prize was announced last, a position of honor, making the award truly special.
Special Prize for Originality awarded to the UPCS at the Musikalischer Sommer in Wien, 1979
Of course, we sang well which was a given for our choir by this time, but our distinctive mark in performance, since practically none of the other choirs exhibit this, relates to the final instruction Mom Rivera gives us before the curtain goes up: “Smile !”
And what greets the audience even before the first note is sung is a smiling UP Cherubim and Seraphim. And as we performed I recall the judges putting their pens down just to listen (as we weren’t a contest participant and they had no need to evaluate and score us) and by the end of it, especially during our rendition of Bach’s “Wir Eilen,” they were smiling, too.
Special and Original, indeed.
But I was not entirely correct, in one of the documents we found in Mom Rivera’s scrapbook about this competition, there was a scoresheet of one of the judges, a Dr. Track, who apparently decided to give us a score, it was 60 points, and he had given the first place choir 27 points.
Amazing.
Combined choirs and orchestra at the 1979 Musikalischer Sommer in Wien. UPCS members can be seen in the front row in light-colored blazers.
Further diminishing my being entirely correct, I must explain the picture above where we were with the combined choirs and orchestra. Some of my co-UPCS alumni of the Erste Stimmen (First Voices) batch recall that we did get to sing the “An die Freude” at the finale and were probably only told within the day before the performance. The picture is of the rehearsal for the finale that would be held later in the evening leaving us only a few hours to learn the vocal parts. And so, in the true tradition of students of the University of the Philippines, we crammed the chorale parts of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and pulled off a resounding finish to our Musical Summer in Vienna.
Special and Original, indeed.
Acknowledgements
Memory assist thanks to Erste Stimmen members:
Mark H. Zarco (V3), Ricky H. Zarco (V3), Mylene Aguilar-Benedicto (V2), Nico Gapuz (V2), and Leny Silverio (V2)
Elena (Lennette) Rivera-Mirano, Choir Director, Alle Stimmen von UPCS
Cissy Mirano-Romero, Tochter des Choir Director
