More than 200 years have passed since twenty-six ladies and gentlemen of Frankfurt society who were willing to sing met in the private house of the opera tenor Johann Nepomuk Schelble in the summer of 1818. The choir, which owes its name to St. Cecilia, patron saint of church music, has since developed from a cultural initiative into a cultural institution in Frankfurt and far beyond its borders, and is Germany's second oldest concert choir. One of the conductors of the first hour was Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who as a young composer dedicated his oratorio »Paulus« to the choir and praised it and its way of singing with the now famous sentence »The people sing with so much fire and so together that it is a joy«. Other conductors were Hans Pfitzner, Hermann Scherchen, Clemens Krauß, Bruno Vondenhoff and Kurt Thomas, who later became Thomaskantor in Leipzig, as well as Theodor Egel and Enoch zu Guttenberg. Since 1988, Christian Kabitz has been artistic director of the Cäcilienchor, devoting himself not only to the beloved oratorios and passions of Johann Sebastian Bach, but also performing rarely given works of choral music, for example Edward Elgar's »The Dream of Gerontius«, Paul McCartney's »Liverpool Oratorio« or works by the Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt. In 2007, the church opera »Augustinus« by Winfried Hiller was performed for the first time in Frankfurt. In addition to early music by Schütz and Monteverdi, the Cäcilienchor also performs Romantic a cappella literature with works by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Bruckner. In addition, the choir regularly performs at the traditional museum concerts at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, where it has performed under conductors such as Kurt Masur, Gerd Albrecht, Michael Gielen, Nicola Luisotti, Paolo Carignani and Sebastian Weigle. In 2000, the Cäcilienchor was awarded the Binding Culture Prize.