Maul, Michael. Bach’s Famous Choir: The Saint Thomas School in Leipzig, 1212–1804. Translated by Richard Howe. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2018. 394 pp. $95.00.
In Bach’s Famous Choir: The Saint Thomas School in Leipzig, 1212–1804, Michael Maul asks, “what made the St. Thomas cantorate so attractive from the late sixteenth century on through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it consistently drew the best musicians”? (1). According to Maul, the answer to this question lies in “the composer’s study[,] in the local town hall, in the choir lofts of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, and in the last wills and testaments of the Leipzigers,” rather than the education and public singing of the choirboys that was “commonplace elsewhere” (4). Bach’s Famous Choir is an exploration of the St. Thomas School’s history based on a wide survey of primary source materials. Maul methodically utilizes these sources to demonstrate that Bach’s appointment as cantor of the St. Thomas School was not a standout event but rather followed a broader pattern of appointing great musicians and scholars to the position long before Bach (4).
Chapter 1, “From Monastery to Municipal Music School, 1212–1593,” covers the early history of the St. Thomas School, focusing on the effects of the Protestant Reformation on both Leipzig and the St. Thomas School as a whole. Maul notes, “The St. Thomas School students—who were known simply as the ‘Thomaners’—were tasked with providing music for [the Leipzig Disuptation]” (12), a debate on Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses between Luther, Andreas Karlstadt, and Johann Eck in June and July of 1519 in which Luther explicitly rejected papal authority. In this chapter Maul denotes two practices that would be seen in the St. Thomas choirs for centuries: (1) the alternation of two choirs of Thomaners between the St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches and (2) the collection of alms by the boys, who wandered the streets of Leipzig three to five times a week (24).
Chapter 2 details how the St. Thomas School became a music school. This chapter explains the causal relationship between the boys’ singing and the flourishing of the school (27). The St. Thomas School had been in decline, which resulted in Seth Calvisus’s twelve rules that codified a new standard of only accepting highly musical boarders (33–34). This standard was directly linked to the school’s great success. Because it was a municipal school, the success and struggle of the school was largely impacted by the state of the town council charged with its care. Maul indicates that the “new regulations [of 1643] reinforced the musical character of the St. Thomas School and made it, together with its cantorate, into a unique musical institution that was soon to become famous far beyond the borders of Saxony” (64).
Chapter 3, “Famous Throughout the Whole World of Music: 1640–1701,” is divided into sections in which Maul discusses the eight cantoreys (small choral ensembles) within the school, significant rectors and mayors and their impact on the school, and three cantors in particular who contributed to the growth and development of the school (Sebastian Knüpfer, Johann Schelle, and Johann Kunau). Maul writes that in the late 1690s, the Leipzig town council first demonstrated pride in the “prominent list of cantors” (102).
In chapter 4, Maul describes the early eighteenth-century decline of the arts-friendly atmosphere among the town council and a general financial decline of the school. Whereas in years past the town council members had been happy to allow the school’s faculty to teach a music-heavy curriculum, the council now felt the school to be lacking in “German stylistics” and geography (156). Bach was established as cantor at the end of 1723, following a long vacancy in the position due—Maul concludes—to significant disagreement between the council and faculty on forming and implementing new regulations at the school (163).
Chapter 5 covers the years 1730 to 1804 and discusses the ongoing struggle between maintaining the established musical standards or surrendering to more common academic goals. Maul details the falling out between rector Ernesti and cantor Bach, a relationship that saw no improvement prior to Bach’s death in 1750 (222). As a result, Bach’s successor was auditioned during his lifetime, “a singular event in the history of the St. Thomas cantorate,” explains Maul (232). It was this audition “and the circumstances that occasioned it” that precipitated an “inglorious end to a musical era to which the city owes a great deal of its cultural identity today” (233).
The information presented by Maul in Bach’s Famous Choir is extensive and detailed. The book is thoroughly researched, meticulously assembled, and expertly presented. From page to page, Maul gives primary source excerpt after primary source excerpt and presents both new information and reframes or gives larger context to old information. At times, however, the primary sources Maul uses are more engaging than the book’s prose (at least in translation), which often comes off as matter of fact, monotone, and less than captivating. While this book may be read with interest by academics of various fields, the average reader may struggle with its dense style.
In Bach’s Famous Choir, Michael Maul demonstrates the detailed, fascinating, and complex history of the St. Thomas School. The historical narrative woven by Maul reveals the underlying reasons for its prominent list of cantors. From the establishment of Calvisius’s twelve rules to Bach’s death in 1750 and beyond, Maul leaves no corner of the school’s history unexamined.
