Leipzig After Bach: Church and Concert Life in a German City

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List of Illustrations
List of Musical Examples
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I Leipzig, Saxony, and Lutheran Orthodoxy
Saxony and the Birth of the Reformation
The Establishment of Orthodoxy in Saxony
Threats to Orthodoxy: Pietism and Rationalism
A Catholic King
Leipzig and the Lutheran Mass
II Church Music and the Rise of the Public Concert, 1743-85
From Collegium to Concert
Bach, the Cantata, and the Concerted Mass
Gottlob Harrer and the New Era of Leipzig Church Music
Johann Friedrich Doles and Approachable Church Music
Hiller, Church Music, and the Grosse Concert
The Gewandhaus
III Hiller, Schicht, and the Crises of Church and State, 1785-1823
Hiller as Thomaskantor
The Cantor, the Superintendent, and the Crisis in the Church
August Muller and the Invasion of Leipzig
Schicht and the Transformation of Gewandhaus Sacred Music
IV Mendelssohn and the Transformation of Leipzig Musical Culture
Schulz, Pohlenz, and a Demand for Change at the Gewandhaus
Mendelssohn and a New Vision for Music in Leipzig
Programming Trends
Mendelssohn and Serious Music
They prefer to ignore Weinlig
An Ally for Change: Moritz Hauptmann as Thomaskantor
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

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Leipzig, Germany, is renowned as the city where Johann Sebastian Bach worked as a church musician until his death in 1750, and where Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy directed the famed Gewandhaus orchestra until his own death in 1847. But the century in between these events was critically important as well. During this period, Leipzig's church music enterprise was convulsed by repeated external threats-a growing middle class that viewed music as an object of public consumption, religious and political tumult, and the chaos of the Seven Years and Napoleonic wars. Jeffrey S. Sposato's Leipzig After Bach examines how these forces changed church and concert life in Leipzig. Whereas most European cities saw their public concerts grow out of secular institutions such as a royal court or an opera theater, neither of these existed when Leipzig's first subscription concert series, the Grosse Concert, was started in 1743. Instead, the city had a thriving Lutheran church-music enterprise that had been brought to its zenith by Bach. Paid subscription concerts therefore found their roots in Leipzig's church music tradition, with important and unique results. These included a revolving door between the Thomaskantor position and the Gewandhaus directorship, as well as public concerts with a distinctly sacred flavor. Late in the century, as church attendance faltered and demand for subscription concerts rose, the Gewandhaus dominated the musical life of Leipzig, influencing church music programming in turn. Examining liturgical documents, orchestral programs, and dozens of unpublished works of church and concert music, Leipzig After Bach sheds new light on a century that redefined the relationship between sacred and secular musical institutions.

Reviews

This is a comprehensive examination of the relationship between church and secular music in a Protestant city renowned for the composers in its service. ... The author also provides vivid depictions of music directors, accounts of how they were chosen, examinations of kinds of music composed, and discussion of the interrelationship between the choral and musical directors. Finally one sees how Mendelssohn came to exert sole influence over repertoire and choice of musical directors, gradually creating many of the secular and sacred traditions listeners enjoy today. The book includes footnotes with original German quotations, concert programs, contemporary reviews, and well-constructed charts categorizing musical offerings over time

Sposato has carefully constructed a narrative that threads together a wealth of political, social, and musical history, bringing clarity to a topic deserving of such attention

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