Estonian Song Festival
music festival in Estonia, held every five years
The Estonian National Song Festival or Estonian Song Celebration (Estonian: Eesti Üldlaulupidu, lit. 'Estonia-wide singing party'), commonly called Laulupidu, held since 1869, is one of the largest choral events in the world, a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Since 1923, it has been typically staged every five years in June or July, and since 1928 always in the same purpose-built venue: the Song Festival Grounds in the Kadriorg district of the capital city Tallinn. The joint choir has comprised more than 30,000 singers performing to an audience of 80,000.
History
The tradition of the song festivals (laulupidu, Sängerfest) was born along with Estonian national awakening. The first Estonia-wide laulupidu was held in Tartu in the summer of 1869. One of the organisers of the first song festival was Johann Voldemar Jannsen. In the first three events only men's choirs and brass orchestras participated. 822 singers and 56 brass players participated in the first. Starting with the fourth, mixed choirs were also participating. Starting with the sixth in 1896, the celebration tradition moved to Tallinn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q633506. VIAF identifies the subject as 306386469. The Library of Congress control number is no2014017798. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869, 1923, 1928 and 1896.
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This entry incorporates text from “Estonian Song Festival” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.