1791 - 1800

Sing-Akademie zu Berlin is the oldest mixed choral association in the world. It was founded in 1791 by Frederick the Great's court harpsichordist Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch  (18 November 1736 - 3 August 1800).

This foundation is an example for the transition from a court-based musical culture to a bourgeois commitment to music. The first work to be rehearsed was a Mass for sixteen voices composed by Fasch. In 1794 Fasch, who had grown into the Berlin Bach tradition, started to rehearse, apart from his own works, also the motets by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Despite the Sing-Akademie's rather exclusive character - initially there were no public performances - its reputation quickly spread far beyond Berlin. In June 1796, the twenty-six-year-old Beethoven visited Berlin from Vienna. A new sound had entered the world, produced by this mixed a-cappella choral singing, which fascinated people and suited the musical sensibilities of early Romanticism: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, a student of Fasch's, described this sound as the 'language of angels'.

When Fasch died on 3 August 1800, the Sing-Akademie already had nearly 100 members.