The church in Leipzig auditions for Bach's first 21st-century successor
By E.H.B. | LEIPZIG
MOST of the music on NASA’s Voyager Golden Record, sent into outer space as an audio greeting from Earth, was written by Johann Sebastian Bach. The work of this German 18th-century composer was seen to represent some of humankind’s finest achievements. Many say he was the greatest composer who ever lived. So it is a rather big deal that the St Thomas Church of Leipzig, Bach’s employer for 27 years, is about to appoint his first 21st-century successor.
This week begins the auditions of four finalists from a pool of 41 applicants. The candidates are Markus Teutschbein, 44, who currently conducts the boys’ choir in Basel, Switzerland; Clemens Flämig, 39, who conducts the city choir in the city of Halle, near Leipzig; Markus Johannes Langer, 44, who leads the music at a church in the northern German city of Rostock and conducts a concert choir in the city; and Matthias Jung, 51, who conducts the Dresden Boys’ Choir as well as an adult concert choir. Each one has a week to sell himself in the job.
“It’s an immense pressure,” admitted Stefan Altner, a member of the search committee. “If we don’t find the right candidate among the finalists, we’ll start over again.”
When Bach applied for the job in 1723, the search committee also auditioned four candidates. Their first choice turned the job down. So did their second choice and their third. Bach ended up winning the role by default.
During his tenure as St Thomas’s Thomaskantor, as the position is called, Bach transformed the church into a world-renowned musical temple. After his death, however, musical tastes changed and his music languished in obscurity until it was revived by Felix Mendelssohn, a 19th-century German composer, a century later. Leipzig is now one of maybe five cities in the world that people associate with a church, observes Martin Jean, director of Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music. “When the St Thomas Choir sings, the line to get in stretches around the block.” In October UNESCO announced that Bach’s manuscript for Mass in B minor, composed in Leipzig, had been added to its “Memory of the World” register.
Tourists with little interest in church music attend St Thomas’s services and concerts, and the choir is warmly received around the world. Some say that the choir’s nearly 100 boy singers, aged between nine and 19, are Germany’s foremost musical ambassadors. “The St Thomas Choir was extremely important to my career,” says Sebastian Krumbiegel, a former choirboy and now a member of the popular German pop band Die Prinzen. “If you sing Bach for two hours a day, something sticks.” Die Prinzen’s other members, too, are St Thomas Choir alumni, as was Georg Christoph Biller, the 16th Thomaskantor since Bach, who had held the role since 1992. Mr Biller vacated the post earlier this year for health reasons.
During Bach’s time, not a single boy in the choir came from Leipzig. Ambitious families from around Germany sent their sons to the St Thomas Church for access to good education. During communist times, the choir was particularly attractive because it offered rare opportunities for foreign travel. (Only after the regime’s collapse did it come to light that Hans-Joachim Rotzsch, the Thomaskantor at the time, had spied on the boys for the Stasi.)
Today 80% of the choir’s boys—who all board—are local. In part this is because German parents are less keen on boarding school for young children, and it is easier for local boys to visit their families during the week. Like Bach, the new Thomaskantor will both train the choir’s boys and conduct them in concerts and three weekly church performances. This makes the job tricky, as the proper candidate must be both a child-friendly pedagogue and a world-class musician. Parents today also expect a more nurturing academic environment. “We have to make sure that singing here is a joy for the boys, that they don’t feel like performing monkeys,” says Mr Altner, who is also the choir’s general manager.
However, Bach himself did not have to manage so many boys. His choir was around half the size, and new research suggests that the music at the St Thomas Church was sung by a choir as small as four. Today his choral works are typically performed by a mere two-dozen singers, yet the St Thomas Choir ballooned in the 19th century, when the fashion was for larger choirs. This can put the new Thomaskantor in a bit of a bind. Boys’ changing bodies present another challenge. While boys in their late teens sang treble (soprano) in Bach’s choir, today voices often break when a boy is 12 or 13. Over a third of the choir now sing bass, and the treble section is shrinking. To maintain an aural balance, some of these boys need to sit out some concerts.
At least the winning candidate is not expected to compose. Most people come to St Thomas Church to hear Bach, after all. The appointment will be announced after Easter.
