Kevorkian, Tanya. Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 1650-1750.

Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

- Chapter Five Leipzigs cantors: status, politics and the adiaphora
Musicians were among the most important producers of religious culture. Cantors
were the leading musicians and directors of church music as well as, increasingly, of
secular musical life in Leipzig and other large towns. This chapter explores how the
two cantors of the first half of the 18th century, Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722; cantor
from 1701) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750; cantor from 1723) negotiated a
working environment rich in opportunity as well as conflict. Kuhnau and Bach
operated in a confessional system that was bursting at the seams, but was capable
of accommodating considerable change. Music historians have taken important steps
toward placing the cantors in their social context. This chapter builds on and extends
that work, examining the cantors roles in urban society and their relations with the
local and Saxon authorities. It shows again how religion was the arena where social
and cultural change, relations among status groups, and interactions between the
authorities and the governed were negotiated.
Cantors fulfilled a variety of duties as teachers, composers, and performers. Their
office and their skills gave them an ambiguous status in Baroque urban society, a
status that reflects that societys numerous criteria for ordering and ranking people,
ongoing social and cultural change, and considerable opportunities for social mobility.
The cantors job description and status are examined first here. The cantors many
interactions with the Leipzig authorities are discussed second. Bachs conflicts with
city councilors, clerics, and the Leipzig Consistory are the best known of these; but
Bach, like Kuhnau before him, also had a range of routine interactions which were
often neutral or positive. Councilors were important patrons of music, appointing and
regulating the cantors; in fact, they set the stage for much music composition and
performance in the city. In turn, patronage of musical life was a source of power and
status for councilors. Councilors also played an active role in the schools, civic
institutions where the cantors taught and had supervisory duties. In Leipzig, one
councilor served as school director, and the council was ultimately responsible for
student discipline, morals, and learning, and payment of its school employees.
(Kevorkian, Tanya. Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 16501750. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, 123.)
- The cantors status and job description
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Like their peers around Lutheran Germany, the Leipzig cantors had two main sets of
duties: teaching and directing music in the churches. They were also expected to
direct music at weddings and funerals. In larger towns the cantors were installed as
teachers in the Latin schools, and they were also musical figures in a broader sense,
publishing their compositions and works of music theory, and directing music at civic
events such as visits by a ruler.4 The cantorate at the Latin school of St. Thomas in
Leipzig was regarded as the premiere cantorate in Germany. Many highly-talented
students there went on to become professional musicians. And a long line of St.
Thomass cantors, including Sethus Calvisius, Hermann Schein, and Johann Schelle
was respected around Germany. Traditionally the cantors were true Renaissance
men, university graduates who taught and often published in Latin as well as
composing, performing, and conducting. Kuhnau, for example, not only practiced law
until he became cantor, but was also known as a mathematician, music theorist,
composer, and performer. His authorship of several novels and published volumes of
music also made him well-known beyond Leipzig.
Since their office had been established during the Reformation, cantors occupational
duties around Lutheran Germany had gradually expanded. Throughout most of the
16th century, the job of cantor was regarded as a temporary one, often a stepping
stone to a position as cleric. By the beginning of the 17 th century, it had become a
permanent post in many towns. In the course of the 17 th century, instrumental music
became increasingly common in the church service, and expectations rose that
cantors would compose new music on a regular basis. Thus, whereas the 1580
Saxon Church Ordinance had actually forbidden the cantors to perform music they
had composed, by 1688 Kuhnau wrote that this law was now obsolete. 5 The cantors
also started to compose more secular music, and came to be regarded as city music
directors as well as church and school employees. These shifts were gradual, and
musicians remained defensive about their secular activities. For example, in the
preface of his 1663 Merry Madrigals and Canzonettas, Leipzig cantor Sebastian
Knpfer write that ex officio, it would be more proper for me to publish a sacred
work, and added that he had composed these pieces before he had been elected as
cantor.6 By the late 17th century, though, especially in larger towns, the expansion of
the cantors activities was well established. In addition, both secular and sacred
music were rapidly becoming more elaborate, technically demanding, and
cosmopolitan. Musicians were expected to be virtuosi and to compose more new
music. New performance venues were opening up, including coffee houses, opera
houses, and pleasure gardens, creating more opportunities along with potential
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competition. At the same time, the cantors were expected to continue to fulfill their
school duties.
Cantors did not fit neatly into the main urban groupings of the elites, burghers, and
sub-burghers. Scholars have argues that cantors cultural standing conveyed a higher
social status than their income and some aspects of their job descriptions would
indicate.7 Leipzigs cantors lived in an apartment in the St. Thomass school, as did
the school rector. As they did elsewhere, they shared some features with clerics:
unless they owned homes of their own in the city, they were not burghers; they, like
clerics, lived in service apartments; and both occupations were exempt from military
and watch duty.8 However, a cantors status was complicated by ties to the material
conditions of schools and his duties there. Along with teaching, the cantor alternated
with the rector and two teachers in a stint as inspector at the school one week a
month. He supervised meals and prayers and served as a night guard to make sure
the boys returned to the building by their curfew, and to keep them from leaving the
building during the night. The St. Thomass school was overrun with rats and mice at
least until the buildings renovation in 1732. 9 Kuhnau wrote that all the school boys
had scabies. One teacher during Kuhnaus time complained bitterly of spending all
night during his weeks as inspector running around the building to keep track of the
boys. Reinhard Szeskus argues that the unhygienic conditions in the building may
have contributed to the deaths of five infant children of the Bachs between 1726 and
1732.10 (Kevorkian, Tanya. Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig,
1650-1750. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, 125-6.)