Leipzig After Bach
Chur C h and Con C ert Life in a German City
Jeffrey S. Sposato
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sposato, Jeffrey S.
Title: Leipzig after Bach : church and concert life in a German city / Jeffrey S. Sposato.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018. |Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017043134 (print) | LCCN 2017046366 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190616960 (updf) | ISBN 9780190616977 (epub) | ISBN 9780190616953 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Concerts—Germany—Leipzig—History—18th century. | Concerts—Germany—Leipzig—History—19th century. | Church music—Germany— Leipzig—18th century. | Church music—Germany—Leipzig—19th century. | Music— Germany—Leipzig—18th century—History and criticism. | Music—Germany—Leipzig— 19th century—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML275.8.L4 (ebook) | LCC ML275.8.L4 S66 2018 (print) | DDC 780.943/212209033—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043134
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Judith Ann Sposato, in loving memory
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
List of Musical Examples xi
List of Tables xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Library Sigla xix
Introduction 1
1. Leipzig, Saxony, and Lutheran Orthodoxy 15
Saxony and the Birth of the Reformation 18
The Establishment of Orthodoxy in Saxony 26
Threats to Orthodoxy: Pietism and Rationalism 34
A Catholic King 39
Leipzig and the Lutheran Mass 59
2. Church Music and the Rise of the Public Concert, 1743–1785 82
From Collegium to Concert 83
Bach, the Cantata, and the Concerted Mass 91
Gottlob Harrer and the New Era of Leipzig Church Music 104
Johann Friedrich Doles and Approachable Church Music 114
Hiller, Church Music, and the Grosse Concert 134
The Gewandhaus 143
3. Hiller, Schicht, and the Crises of Church and State, 1785–1823 155
Hiller as Thomaskantor 157
The Cantor, the Superintendent, and the Crisis in the Church 163
August Müller and the Invasion of Leipzig 189
Schicht and the Transformation of Gewandhaus Sacred Music 204
4. Mendelssohn and the Transformation of Leipzig Musical Culture 231
Schulz, Pohlenz, and a Demand for Change at the Gewandhaus 232
Mendelssohn and a New Vision for Music in Leipzig 239
Programming Trends 243
Mendelssohn and Serious Music 251
“They Prefer to Ignore Weinlig” 264
An Ally for Change: Moritz Hauptmann as Thomaskantor 268
Epilogue 276
Bibliography 279
Index 295
Illustrations
I.1 Cover to the text booklet for the 1778/79 Concerts Spirituels performed by Johann Adam Hiller’s Musikübende Gesellschaft 2
I.2 Gottlob Theuerkauf’s watercolor of the first Gewandhaus, as it appeared shortly before its demolition in 1895 3
1.1 A typical St. Thomas church- service diary (Gottesdienstordnung) bifolio, with entries for the three-day feast of Christmas, 1804 through New Year’s Day, 1805 17
1.2a Map of electoral and ducal Saxony after the 1485 “Leipzig Separation” 20
1.2b Map of the electorate of Saxony after the 1547 “Wittenberg Capitulation” 21
1.3 “Erhalt uns, Herr” in an early nineteenth- century glossed copy of Das privilegirte vollständige und vermehrte Leipziger Gesangbuch (1753) 55
1.4 St. Thomas sexton Johann Christian Rost’s diary with the liturgy for the apostle feasts as it was originally written and with modifications 68
2.1 Cover page for a copy of Johann Friedrich Doles’s figural chorale Nun danket alle Gott with listing of appropriate feasts and alternative texts 132
2.2 Musikübende Gesellschaft Concert Spirituel program of December 9, 1779 147
2.3 Gewandhaus concert program of December 6, 1781 153
3.1 St. Thomas program for the first Sunday after Easter, 1791 178
3.2 St. Thomas program for the tenth Sunday after Trinity, 1789 208
3.3 Gewandhaus concert program of December 16, 1790 212
3.4 Gewandhaus concert program of March 2, 1809 218
3.5 Sample Kirchenmusik listing (Easter, 1817) from the Leipziger Tageblatt 221
4.1 Gewandhaus concert program of September 28, 1834 (“symphonic feature” model) 246
4.2 Georg Emanuel Opiz, Leipzig’s Tumultuous Days in September 1830. Scene of Destruction on September 4th. 255
4.3 Gewandhaus concert program of January 21, 1841 258
4.4 Placard advertising a motet performance (vespers service) in front of St. Thomas in Leipzig 277
Musical Examples
2.1 Opening of Gottlob Harrer’s Miserere (HarWV 41) 108
2.2 Johann Friedrich Doles’s motet for double choir, Unsere Seele harret auf den Herrn, mm. 188–95 121
2.3 Johann Friedrich Doles’s Psalm 46, Gott ist unsre Zuversicht, fifth movement, mm. 16–27 125
2.4 Johann Friedrich Doles’s figural chorale Nun danket alle Gott (1786), mm. 42–60 128
3.1 First phrase of Martin Luther’s “Wir gläuben all’ an einen Gott” as it appears in the Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch (1682) and as Johann Adam Hiller modified it in 1790 188
Tables
I.1 Timeline of Leipzig Thomaskantors and the Kapellmeisters of the city’s leading subscription concert series (the Grosse Concert, the Musikübende Gesellschaft, and the Gewandhauskonzerte) 5
1.1 Sunday service (Hauptgottesdienst) as defined in the 1540 Kirchenordnung for Albertine Saxony and the 1710 Leipziger Kirchenstaat 65
1.2 Feasts celebrated in Leipzig’s St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches, 1700–1850 75
2.1 Latin mass settings written and copied by Johann Sebastian Bach 99
2.2 Dateable mass- setting performances at St. Thomas and St. Nicholas under Gottlob Harrer 111
3.1 Tabulations of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas communion attendance, 1740–1839 166
3.2 “Communicant Catalogue for the City and Diocese of Leipzig from the Year 1786 to 1795” 166
3.3 Tabulation of communion attendance at St. Nicholas, 1797–1820 168
3.4 Hauptgottesdienst music for the 15th–27th Sundays after Trinity, 1815 224
3.5 Hauptgottesdienst music for the 16th Sunday after Trinity through the first Sunday of Advent, 1811 226
4.1 Typical Gewandhaus concert program formats, 1809–1846 248
Acknowledgments
For assistance with the completion of this book, I am heavily indebted to many individuals and organizations. This project began with summer trips to Leipzig in 2005 and 2006 while I was assistant professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. I am grateful to the University of Pittsburgh Central Research Development Fund for a Small Grant that made these trips possible, and to my former colleagues who were very supportive of my research. Thanks especially go to librarians James Cassaro and Patricia Duck. In 2011/12, I was a visiting scholar at the main campus of the University of Pittsburgh, and am grateful to music department chair Matthew Rosenblum for making this possible, and to esteemed Bach scholar Don Franklin for his friendship and his informative thoughts about the master.
As this project turned from an idea into a book, the University of Houston (UH) has been extremely generous in providing time and funding for my work. These include a year-long Faculty Development Leave (during which I wrote a first draft), a Division of Research Small Grant, a Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts Research and Creative Project Grant, and two Global Faculty Development Grants. Equally important has been the collegiality, generosity, and enthusiasm of my UH colleagues, especially former director of the Moores School of Music David Ashley White, former associate director Lynn Lamkin, dean of the McGovern College of the Arts Andrew Davis, Moores School director Blake Wilkins, and Moores School
Acknowledgments
librarians Joan O’Connor, Katie Buehner, and Stephanie Lewin-Lane. Colleagues too numerous to mention have exchanged ideas and brightened my days, but I am especially grateful to my fellow musicologists—Paul Bertagnolli, Matthew Dirst, Barbara Rose Lange, and Howard Pollack.
Numerous friends and colleagues have provided feedback on early papers, articles and chapter drafts. These include Christina Bashford, Donna M. Di Grazia, Ellen Harris, Rebecca Herissone, Robin A. Leaver, Robert Marshall, Roberta Montemorra Marvin, R. Larry Todd, Silvio dos Santos, William Weber, and Marian Wilson Kimber. Michael Maul and Beverly Wilcox were generous in sharing sources and translations. Traute Marshall provided musicological insights and common sense, and did the yeoman’s work of making my translations sing, and Stephanie Wollny translated my article on Bach and the Lutheran Mass into German.
In 2013, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Nations, which took place outside Leipzig, the Moores School and the Mercury Orchestra put on a concert and panel discussion based on music I had assembled from the Napoleonic period of Leipzig’s history. I am grateful to Mercury music director Antoine Plante and the Mercury Orchestra and soloists, Betsy Cook Weber and the Moores School Concert Chorale, Matthew Konopacki for his assistance in preparing the scores, and the concert funders: the Houston Saengerbund; the Houston Arts Alliance; and The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, the El Paso Corporation Lecture Series, and the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston. Anselm Hartinger joined my UH colleagues Bailey Stone and Hildegard Glass for the panel discussion.
Key people in Leipzig have been instrumental to the success of this project. These include Peter Wollny, Andreas Glöckner, Michael Maul, and Anselm Hartinger of the Bach Archiv; Mayor Burkhard Jung and Gabriele Goldfuß, director of the Office of International Affairs, City of Leipzig; and Robert Ehrlich, Hanns-Martin Schreiber, Martin Kürschner, Berthold Schmid, and Barbara Wiermann of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy,” which has an exchange program with UH that I helped to start. My thanks also to Stefan Altner and Felicitas Kirsten of the Thomanerchor Leipzig for their help and support. Colleagues at the Hochschule and St. Nicholas Church, especially Thomas Stadler and Pastor Bernhard Stief, worked with me on a historical recreation concert celebrating the 500th anniversary of the German reformation in October 2017. I am also very grateful to Eric Heumann for his work on preparing the scores for the event.
Most of all, I am grateful to numerous librarians, archivists, and archives, especially David Philippi at the Thomaskirche; Katrin Richter at the Nikolaikirche; Marko Kuhn, Christoph Kaufmann, and Kerstin Sieblist at the Stadtgeschichtliches
Acknowledgments xvii
Museum Leipzig; Maik Thiem and Klaus Klein at the Kirchliches Archiv; Peter Wollny and Kristina Funk-Kunath at the Bach- Archiv Leipzig; Claudius Böhm at the Gewandhausarchiv; Birgitte Geyer at the Leipziger Städtische Bibliotheken— Musikbibliothek; Carla Calov at the Stadtarchiv Leipzig; and the staffs of the Albertina Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, the Universitätsarchiv Leipzig, the Leipziger Messe Archiv, the Sächsische Landesbibliothek— Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek PalaisMollard, and the New York Public Library. My sincerest thanks to the Stadtarchiv, Stadtgeschichtliches Museum, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Leipziger Städtische Bibliotheken, and Thomaskirche for their kind permission to publish images from their collections. I am also grateful to Brian Balsley, who designed the maps printed in this volume.
When I arrived in Houston in 2007, I was delighted to discover it is a sister city of Leipzig. Stateside, Angelika Schmidt-Lange, Wolfgang Schmidt, Ute Eisele, and Rodney Koenig of the Houston-Leipzig Sister City Association have been generous supporters and friends, as have Rick Erickson, Pastor Robert Moore, Christopher Holman, and the late Albert LeDoux of Christ the King Lutheran Church and Bach Society Houston. My thanks as well to the staff of the German Consulate in Houston.
Earlier versions of some of the ideas in this book were presented at numerous conferences, including the Conference on Nineteenth- Century Music at the University of Kansas (2009); the Vom Barock zur Romantik: Aufführungspraxis und Musiklandschaft im Umbruch (2009) and Geistliche Musik und Chortradition im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert—Institutionen, Klangideale und Repertoires im Umbruch (2012) conferences in Leipzig; the Napoleon and the Battle of Nations: Politics and Music in Early Nineteenth- Century Leipzig symposium at the University of Houston (2013); the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Louisville (2015); and at musicology colloquiums at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Florida, and University of Iowa.
Sections of this book previously appeared in:
“ ‘The Joyous Light of Day’: New Year’s Day Music in Leipzig, 1781–1847.” Music & Letters 92, no. 2 (May 2011): 202–29.
“Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.” In Nineteenth- Century Choral Music, edited by Donna Di Grazia, 141–49. New York: Routledge, 2012.
“Schicht, Hauptmann, Mendelssohn and the Consumption of Sacred Music in Leipzig.” In The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800–1930, edited by Christina Bashford and Roberta Marvin, 250–73. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2016.
Acknowledgments
“Bach, die Messe und der Lutherische Gottesdienst in Leipzig.” Translated by Stephanie Wollny. In Geistliche Musik und Chortradition im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert—Institutionen, Klangideale und Repertoires im Umbruch, edited by Anselm Hartinger, Peter Wollny, and Christoph Wolff, 101–21. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Härtel, 2017.
I am indebted to all parties for their permission to reprint excerpts from these publications.
At Oxford University Press, I am grateful to Suzanne Ryan, Victoria Kouznetsov, Lincy Priya, Carole Berglie, Celine Aenlle-Rocha, and to several anonymous reviewers who helped make my arguments and writing much better.
My family has been both supportive of this project and eager to see it come to a close. I am grateful to my father, Frank Sposato; my siblings Bonnie, Deb, Rick, Robert, Frankie, and my late sister Donna; my aunt Debra Bass and uncle Sheldon Bass; my in-laws Simon and Margaret Cohen; and my spouse, Peter Cohen, who reads neither German nor music but has painstakingly edited many, many chapter drafts and made this book better in the process.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Judith Ann Sposato, who was always my biggest enthusiast. We all miss her very much.
Library Sigla
D-Dl Sächsische Landesbibliothek— Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (SLUB), Dresden; Digitale Sammlungen
D-DS Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Musikabteilung, Darmstadt
D-HAu Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen- Anhalt, Halle
D-LEka Kirchliches Archiv (Ephoralarchiv), Leipzig
D-LEm Leipziger Städtische Bibliotheken—Musikbibliothek
D-LEsa Stadtarchiv, Leipzig
D-LEsm Stadtgeschichtliches Museum, Bibliothek, Leipzig
Leipzig After Bach
Introduction
In the fall of 1778, Johann Adam Hiller, music director (Kapellmeister) of Leipzig’s leading subscription concert series since 1763, published a booklet to accompany the forthcoming Concerts Spirituels— the biannual set of sacred-music programs performed during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent— that were to be presented by his Musikübende Gesellschaft (MusicPracticing Society).1 The booklet is part of a very small group of documents that describe the city’s public concert programming before the construction of the Gewandhaus concert hall and the founding of the Gewandhaus Concerts (Gewandhauskonzerte) in 1781. What makes it stand out, however, is Hiller’s introductory essay on the texts of the works to be performed—mostly traditional Greek and Latin liturgical texts such as the ordinarium missae (Mass Ordinary, i.e., Kyrie, Gloria, etc.), Magnificat, and Te Deum in which he reflected on the role of sacred music in the concert season. These remarks were structured around an exegesis of the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s twenty- third epistle to Lucilius, in which he comments, res severa est verum gaudium (“a serious thing is a true joy”).2 Hiller printed the maxim on the cover of the booklet (figure I.1), and soon thereafter used it as the motto for the Gewandhaus (figure I.2), one that
1 Hiller’s definition of the term Concert Spirituel as a sacred-music concert is far more literal than what contemporary French dictionaries would imply, or as the Paris concert society from which the term originates interpreted it. This discrepancy is discussed in greater depth below.
2 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, In Quo Epistolæ Et Quæstiones Naturales (Passau: Manfrè, 1713), 64. A perusal of some of the editions of Seneca’s epistles published over the past 300 years, not to mention collections of
Figure i .1 Cover to the text booklet for the 1778/79 Concerts Spirituels performed by Johann Adam Hiller’s Musikübende Gesellschaft.
Source: D-LEsm Textbücher 222. Stadtgeschichtliches Museum, Leipzig.
was emblazoned over its stage immediately after the hall’s construction. (A slight variant—Res severa verum gaudium, “Serious thing–True joy”—has appeared on or in all halls of the same name ever since.)3
famous quotations and proverbs, shows this phrase presented both in the manner reproduced here and as verum gaudium res severa est, and verum gaudium est res severa. Given that Hiller cites Seneca’s letter precisely on the cover of the booklet (“Seneca Epist. Lib. I. Ep. 23”), he was clearly striving for accuracy and thus must have been using an edition that matched the wording of the volume cited here. Indeed, he may well have been using this edition, which was part of a collection of complete works published in numerous cities, including Leipzig.
3 For a broader study of the motto’s history, see Wilhelm Seidel, “‘Res severa verum gaudium’: Über den Wahlspruch des Gewandhauses in Leipzig,” Die Musikforschung 50 (1997): 1–9. Siedel does not discuss
i .2 Gottlob Theuerkauf’s watercolor of the first Gewandhaus, as it appeared shortly before its demolition in 1895. The Seneca quotation is visible above the stage.
Source: D-LEsm Inv. 1781. Stadtgeschichtliches Museum, Leipzig.
Although Hiller’s booklet is recognized as the moment this adage first became associated with the Gewandhaus, less notice has been taken of Hiller’s essay itself, and particularly of Hiller’s choice to discuss Seneca’s words in connection with sacred rather than secular music. And while a spectator in the Gewandhaus might interpret the motto as a declaration that the music performed in the space is—and should be— something more than mere entertainment, Hiller’s original intent was more closely related to sacred music’s role in public concert life:
Should it not bring glory to a [musical] society when it not only seeks sensual delight from the music—as permissible and decent as this is—but also permits it [music] to use all of the powers it possesses to lift and move the heart? True joy is a very serious matter, says Seneca. The conviction of the truth of this statement, and the confidence in the right-thinking of our Leipzig residents, whose love of music exceeds that of many German cities, have called for the newly established Musikübende Gesellschaft to perform so- called Concerts Spirituels during Advent and Lent, in which not only serious operas
the change in the motto, however, which first appeared on the exterior of the second Gewandhaus, completed in 1884.
Figure
