1800 - 1832

Carl Friedrich Zelter (11 December 1758 - 15 May 1832), who had been supporting his sickly teacher Fasch from the beginning, became his successor, leading the choir into the new century.

He consolidated the Sing-Akademie, and in 1817 ensured, on the basis of the first constitution, that the Sing-Akaddemie was incorporated by the interior ministry, and anchored the Sing-Akademie firmly in a system of Prussian music making and maintaining a musical tradition, a system which he built up. He maintained it in times of war, added an orchestral school in 1807, from which he developed a "Liedertafel", a round table for poets, singers, and composers. Zelter, a bricklayer and architect by training, had Carl Theodor Ottmer build a domicile (following a design by Schinkel) for the choir in the little chestnut forest Unter den Linden. Here, the choir henceforth gave public concerts. The building was finished early in 1827, and here, in Berlin's first concert hall, with its amazing acoustics, outstanding artists were to perform, including Niccolò Paganini, Franz Liszt, Clara und Robert Schumann, Anton Grigorjevitsch Rubinstein, and Johannes Brahms. This is where, on 11 March 1829, the legendary performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion took place, conducted by the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, which inaugurated a very broad and wide-ranging Bach renaissance. The continuous study and performance of Bach's works by Mendelssohn's teacher Zelter laid the foundation for this.

Zelter died in 1832, the same year as his friend Goethe, who had close links to the Sing-Akademie.