Sing-Akademie zu Berlin

The origins of the Singakademie are difficult to discern because the group was initially intended as a private gathering of music lovers and only later became a public institution.

Carl Friedrich Zelter describes them as rather informal meetings: "One gathered in the evening, drank tea, spoke, talked, in short entertained oneself; and the matter itself was only secondary.

By the time of Fasch's death on 3 August 1800 the Akademie had about 100 members, and had received many notable visitors keen to experience its unique sound, including Beethoven who came in June 1796.

On 11 March 1829, the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn, who was himself a pupil of Zelter, conducted here his famous revival of Bach's St Matthew Passion, a major milestone in re-establishing its composer's reputation as a founding father of European musical traditions.

From November 1827 to April 1828, Alexander von Humboldt, Prussia's most famous naturalist and scholar, gave sixteen public lectures about nature's 'cosmos' at the Singakademie and earned much praise across social classes for his performance.

[5] In 1832 on the death of Zelter, Mendelssohn had some hopes of succeeding him, but in the event the post went to the older, mediocre, but 'safe pair of hands' of Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen (1778–1851).