Leipzig – Travel guide for opera, classical music and culture

Bach’s appointment as Thomaskantor was rather bumpy. After the death of the previous cantor, the position was offered first to Telemann (as in Weimar) and then to another musician, both of whom declined. Thus Bach was only third choice, or as one councilman put it: “Since one cannot get the best-one must take the middle-one”. So Bach could leave Köthen.

During this time he was responsible for services and special church festivities of four churches. St. Nicholas Church and St. Thomas Church are still standing today, while two others fell victim to the Second World War. Bach’s main duties included the weekly performance of cantatas on Sundays and feast days. Bach put a lot of effort into this right at the beginning and wrote cantatas on a weekly basis. It is said that he composed five years of cantatas, of which three years (i.e. about 200 pieces) have survived. Already in 1724 he composed his most comprehensive work to date, the St. John Passion, and three years later the St. Matthew Passion. In 1730 a conflict arose with the council, since in Bach’s opinion the performance conditions had deteriorated. He now presented the council with his ideas of a “well-stocked church music,” thus handing down to posterity an important documentation of historical performance practice from the master’s hand.

Furthermore, he also had secular duties as music director. In Leipzig, a “Collegium musicum” had been formed (an orchestra of professional musicians and enthusiasts), which gave concerts in the hall and in the garden of a coffee house. For these concerts he wrote various works for orchestra, such as the harpsichord concertos.

The Leipzig period was overshadowed by private tragedies. Between 1726 and 1733, seven of Bach’s children died, in addition to the death of his last sibling, his sister Maria.

The late years of Bach still brought some great late works. These include, for example, “The Art of the Fugue”, the “Goldberg Variations” or the “Musical victims” (see “Bach in Berlin”). Soon thereafter, Bach’s health deteriorated. A severe eye disorder and disturbances in the arm of his writing hand hindered him so much that his creative work came to a virtual standstill. Bach subsequently underwent the famous eye operation performed by the passing controversial ophthalmologist Sir John Taylor in 1750. As with his professional colleague Handel, the result was a fiasco: although his eyesight improved briefly, he suffered a stroke a short time later and Johann Sebastian Bach died on July 28, 1750.

TO THE COMPLETE BACH BIOGRAPHY

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig as the ninth child, the house where he was born no longer stands. His father died a few months later and his mother married the poet and actor Ludwig Geyer a little later. It was long puzzled whether Ludwig, to whom Richard was very attached, was his biological father, which would have been very piquant because of his Jewish roots. Today it is assumed that this is not the case. After 2 years the family moved to Dresden.

At the age of 16, Wagner heard Fidelio with the Schröder-Devrient in Leipzig, which, according to him, was the deciding factor to become a professional musician. Two years later he began his musical studies at the University of Leipzig, composed his first works and became interested in politics. In 1833 he left Leipzig to gain professional experience.

LINK TO THE COMPLETE WAGNER BIOGRAPHY

Studies and piano training in Leipzig

Schumann, who grew up in nearby Zwickau, moved to Leipzig at the age of 18 to take up the unloved study of law. His mother wanted him to take up the studies, but Robert was mainly concerned with literature and music during this time. He stayed at the university for only one semester and then transferred to Heidelberg University for three semesters.

In 1831, the twenty-year-old returned to Leipzig to begin training as a piano virtuoso with Friedrich Wieck. Wieck had assured his mother that Robert had the talent if he would only practice diligently. However, the dexterity was not enough and Robert overused first his middle finger, then his whole right hand (possibly with a mechanical exercise device), so that he had to bury the dream of a piano virtuoso career.

In 1834, with Wieck, he founded an influential journal for music, which he directed for 10 years and for which he wrote numerous articles. Schumann had an extraordinary gift for language. He published many essays under pseudonyms, including Eusebius (the introverted Schumann) and Florestan (the passionate Schumann).

First psychoses and engagement

In 1833 he experienced his first psychoses. A doctor advised him to marry in order to overcome the crisis with a regulated life. Schumann became engaged to Ernestine von Fricken and memorialized her in his piano work Carneval (Estrella). However, the engagement was broken off again.

This mental illness probably stemmed from a bipolar disorder; occasionally a syphilis disease is mentioned as the cause. Against it speaks that Schumann’s father, one of his siblings and two of his children also had mental problems, which would speak for a genetic cause.

Engagement and marriage to Clara

Schumann had lived in Wieck’s house during his student years and met 9-year-old Clara. They became friends and the friendship turned to love when Clara was 15. At 18, the two became secretly engaged. Since their father was against the marriage, the two fought in court to get permission to marry and the wedding took place in 1840 at the Schönefelder Memorial Church. That year, the two moved into the apartment on Leipzig’s Inselstrasse, where they had an artist’s marriage and received artists such as Liszt and Mendelssohn. While Schumann wanted Clara to focus on her marriage and end her career as a pianist, he supported her in her work as a composer.  This year became one of Schumann’s most productive years, called his Liederjahr because of the abundance of Lieder.

In 1841 Schumann composed his first symphony, the Spring Symphony, which Felix Mendelssohn premiered at the old Gewandhaus. It was a great success and Wieck recognized the genius of his son-in-law and sent out conciliatory gestures. Robert, however, remained reserved toward his father-in-law.

In 1844 Schumann hoped to become Mendelssohn’s successor at the Gewandhaus. But their hopes were dashed and the Schumanns moved to Düsseldorf, where Robert had been offered the position of municipal music director.

The second Gewandhaus became a victim of the Second World War. Due to the severe damage, it was decided not to rebuild it and a building for the university was erected.

The third (new) Gewandhaus was built in GDR times. “The large hall with 1900 seats has excellent acoustics. During construction, the hall was occupied several times by soldiers of the NVA to test the acoustics at full capacity. In the fall of 1989, the Gewandhaus took on political significance. Kurt Masur opened the house for the so-called “Gewandhaus Talks,” public discussion rounds in which the reforms and future of the GDR were debated. Thus, the Gewandhaus became a platform for the political opposition of the GDR.” (Source: Wikipedia, own translation).

Since Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the Gewandhaus Orchestra has had a dazzling gallery of artistic directors and still has an excellent reputation in the music world. For the program, see the website.

The first Gewandhaus, Mendelssohn’s place of work, was built in the 18th century from an attic converted from a cloth warehouse. Here, in addition to two symphonies by Schumann, the first performances of Mendelssohn’s E minor violin concerto (with Ferdinand David as soloist) and Schubert’s C major symphony (No.9) took place.

For the program, see the website.

https://www.gewandhausorchester.de/

Konzert-Saal des historischen Gewandhauses:

The building lost its function as a concert hall at the end of the 19th century and was rebuilt into a Municipal Department Store complex. During the Second World War it was severely damaged and underwent basic reconstruction. A memorial plaque on the second floor of the historical staircase reminds of the former entrance to the Gewandhaus concert hall.

Städtisches Kaufhaus (“City department store”):

Johann Sebastian Bach:

In Bach’s time, St. Thomas Church was not the only place of activity of the St. Thomas Boys’ Choir, a boys’ choir whose tradition dates back to the 13th century. The choir consisted of just over 55 students, who mostly sang in groups of 8 in various churches.

Johann Sebastian Bach:

Among other things, the premiere of his St. Matthew Passion in 1727 took place in St. Thomas Church. Some of Bach’s works from this period have church lieder by Luther as their basis.  Luther can also be seen in the church on a window that dates from 1889. A plaque on a pillar commemorates the reformer’s Pentecost sermon in 1539.

Johann Sebastian Bach:

The choir room of the church has been the final resting place of Bach’s tomb since 1950, whose bones came here in a roundabout way. When Bach died, he was buried without a gravestone in the cemetery of the Church of St. John. After the Bach Renaissance of the 19th century, triggered by Mendelssohn, they wanted to exhume his body and rebury it in the neighboring church. The only information about the exact location of the grave was the surviving statement “six steps straight ahead from the door on the south side”.

There is some controversy as to whether the exhumed body is really that of Bach. However, the fact that the body was in an oak coffin is an important argument in favor, as this was true in only 1% of burials at the time. A definitive clarification would be given by DNA analysis. St. John’s Church was bombed during the Second World War and the bones had to be taken out from under the debris to eventually be placed in St. Thomas Church.

Johann Sebastian Bach:

The bronze Bach statue stands in front of the Bach window of St. Thomas Church. In the course of the exhumation of Bach’s body in the 19th century, an impression of the skull had been made, which was used as the basis for the design of the monument. The monument shows Bach conducting (why he has rolled up music paper) in front of an organ.

Johann Sebastian Bach:

St. Thomas Church regularly hosts musical performances, you can find the calendar of events on the website. Registration is usually mandatory for performances.

Link: Click on header

Johann Sebastian Bach:

The St. Nicholas Church was one of Bach’s places of work, where many of his works were heard for the first time, for example the St. John Passion in 1724 or the Christmas Oratorio in 1734/35, in addition to countless cantatas and motets.

The St. Nicholas Church still even mor features. For example, the Gothic pulpit from the time of Luther, also called the “Luther pulpit”.

Johann Sebastian Bach:

The most famous work of art in the Old Town Hall is the portrait of 61-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach, painted by Elias Gottlob Haussmann. It is possibly the only portrait of the composer (there is speculation of a second painting) that he sat for the painter. Interestingly, there is a second version of this painting, which was produced at two-year intervals by the painter’s workshop. The “copy” from 1848 had been in the possession of the city of Leipzig for a long time, and now the “original” from 1846 has also been bequeathed to it by a collector. There is an amazing story about it: the famous British conductor John Eliott Gardiner told that the picture hung in his parents’ house for years and that he saw it so daily as a child. A Jewish-German family friend had put it there for safekeeping with the Gardiner friends during the World War. As chance would have it, in 2015 the same Gardiner, in his capacity as president of the Bach Archive, was allowed to receive the painting as a donation! Now both paintings are back in Leipzig.

In the case of the painting, it is a so-called “official picture” that had been created for official purposes and shows him with music paper (a canon from 1846) and cantor’s robe. Considerable differences are visible between the two paintings. It is assumed that the original was once not properly restored. In the meantime, it has been carefully restored once again.

The Mendelssohn House, where he lived and died from 1845-47, has been used as a music salon since 1997 and is the only Mendelssohn museum anywhere. The salon has been faithfully recreated and houses many memorabilia. It also hosts regular concerts and even a piano festival in the summer (see website for programs).

The Bach Museum is an educational museum with an informative audio guide and is aimed at the interested music lover. It is located in a beautifully restored Renaissance building with a small garden.

This 16th century wine tavern with 4 historic cellars (barrell cellar. , Luther room, Goethe room and Old-Leipzig) became world famous through Goethe’s “Faust”. Goethe stayed in Leipzig for two years about 20 years after Bach’s death and often visited this wine cellar. Thus, it can be assumed that Bach, who was not a teetotaller, had also spent time in this cellar.

https://www.auerbachs-keller-leipzig.de/index.php

The bronze Bach statue stands in front of the Bach window of St. Thomas Church. In the course of the exhumation of Bach’s body in the 19th century, an impression of the skull had been made, which was used as the basis for the design of the monument. The monument shows Bach conducting (why he has rolled up music paper) in front of an organ.