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Michael Maul In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
the cantors of the St. Thomas School and
This is an important book with scholarly insights in terms
translated by Richard Howe
Bach’s Famous ChoiR

Church in Leipzig could be counted among
of social and political history and with ramifications for the most significant German composers of
the musicologist and practitioner in disputed areas of their times. But what attracted these artists
performance practice. – from Seth Calvisius to J.S. Bach to Johann
Adam Hiller – to the music school and choir
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, CBE and inspired them to explore new repertoire
of the highest standing? And how did the
Michael Maul’s comprehensive and informative discussion cantors influence the musical profile of the
Michael Maul is Senior Scholar at the Bach- of the educational and musical traditions of the St. Thomas school – a profile that often became a bone
Archiv Leipzig and lecturer in musicology at of contention between school and city hall?
the universities of Leipzig/Halle. He is also
School in Leipzig before, during, and after Bach’s time
the artistic director of the annual Leipzig is based on a critical review of extensive primary source The success of the St. Thomas School was
materials, much of it used for the first time. not a foregone conclusion; its history is
Bach Festival.
Famous ChoiR
s
replete with challenges and setbacks as well
The book presents a lively, multi-faceted, differentiated, as triumphs. The school was caught between
and altogether accurate picture of a unique institution that the conflicting interests of enthusiastic
notably between 1600 and 1800 operated largely in mayors and townspeople, who wanted to
a conservatory-like role. showcase the city’s musical culture, and
opposing parties, including jealous rectors
Christoph Wolff, Adams University Professor at Harvard The Saint Thomas School and elitist sponsors, who argued for the
University, emeritus, and former President of the Leipzig in Leipzig, 1212–1804 traditional subordination of the cantorate to
Bach Archive Foundation the school system.
Michael Maul
Drawing on many new, recently discovered
sources, Michael Maul explores the
phenomenon of the St. Thomas School. He
shows how cantors, local luminaries and
municipal politicians overcame the School’s
detractors to make it a remarkable success,
with a world-famous choir. Illuminating the
social and political history of the cantorate
and the musical life of an important
German city, the book will be of interest to
scholars of Baroque music and J.S. Bach,
cultural historians, choral directors, and
musicologists and performers studying
historical performance practice.
Cover image: The St. Thomas Church and School
circa 1840. Watercolour by Felix Mendelssohn
Bartholdy. The view is from Mendelssohn’s first
Leipzig apartment in Lurgenstein’s Garten. Privately
owned. Reproduced with the kind permission of
Sotheby’s auction house.
Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com
Bach’s Famous Choir
The Saint Thomas School
in Leipzig, 1212–1804
The Saint Thomas School
in Leipzig, 1212–1804
Michael Maul
translated from the German

by Richard Howe
the boydell press

An authorised translation and licensed edition of

‘Dero berühmbter Chor’: Die Leipziger Thomasschule und ihre Kantoren, 1212–1804 by
Michael Maul. © Lehmstedt Verlag, Leipzig 2012
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Michael Maul to be identified as

the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2018

The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
ISBN 978 1 78327 169 6
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International –

Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany,
a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office,
the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels
(German Publishers & Booksellers Association)
The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee
that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Designed and typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro by

Richard Howe, Champaign, Illinois
To the City of Leipzig and its famous choir
Contents
List of Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i x

Author’s Note on the English Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiv
Translator’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Preface by John Eliot Gardiner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xix
Organization of the St. Thomas School in the 17 th and 18th centuries . . . . . . . . xx
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
I From Monastery to Municipal Music School, 1212–1593

Early history of the St. Thomas School �� 9
Introducing the Reformation�� 15
The Leipzig town council and other community authorities��18
New doctrine: new school, new music? �� 20
II How the St. Thomas School Became a Music School, 1594–1640

Singing for endowments and the growth of the school:
a causal relationship��27
‘Father of the Choir’ Calvisius: the high art of singing
under a polyhistorian ��32
With trumpets and drums: church music in the court style
under Cantor Schein and Mayor Möstel��38
Municipal bankruptcy and the ‘decline of the so noble art
in the service of our dear Lord’ in the 1620s �� 49
Music as salvation in the ordeal of the Thirty Years War:
the road to the school regulations of 1634 ��56
A music school ‘better organized than any other’ �� 64
Tobias Michael and the ‘almost St. Thomas cantor’ Johann Rosenmüller �� 67
III ‘Famous Throughout the Whole World of Music’, 1640–1701

Boarding school statistics and personnel after 1634��73
Eight out of fifty-four: the St. Thomas School’s elite Cantoreys�� 76
Cramer, Thomasius, Ernesti: intelligent and sympathetic rectors��87
Well-organized church music under Mayors Lorenz von Adlershelm,
Pincker, and Wagner �� 98
vii
Sebastian Knüpfer: ‘very rich in intricate relationships’�� 118

Johann Schelle: ‘sweet honey’ flowing from the choir loft��126
Johann Kuhnau: a universal scholar who composes? Or a ‘musical
Horribilicribrifax’?��131
IV ‘Odd Authorities with Little Interest in Music’: the St. Thomas School
in Crisis, 1701–1730
Bach’s letter to Erdmann�� 141
Boarding school vs. charity school: the faculty splits in two��144
An ominous development: the long road to the revised school
regulations of 1723��149
Charity school for the poor and music school by the grace of the
overseer: the new regulations and the reaction of the faculty ��166
Everything for ‘the common weal’: council politics in the context
of the new school regulations�� 172
The mayor and his counsellor: Abraham Christoph Platz, Johann
Job and the reasons for seeking to change the character
of the St. Thomas School�� 177
Johann Sebastian Bach: a masterpiece a week – and against the
decline of music (1723–1727) ��186
Fifty percent unmusical boys and no budget: Orpheus Bach
at the cross-roads 1729/30�� 191
The cantor mutates into a ‘disagreeable’ colleague�� 195
Bach protests in writing – and musically?��200
An amuse-bouche in the interim: ninety-six ‘Hollanders’
for Bach’s ‘Plan’ �� 206
V School for Scholars or ‘Conservatory of Music’?

An ongoing conflict, 1730–1804
Good times for cantors: Johann Matthias Gesner’s rectorate (1730–1734)�� 209
‘What? You want to be a beer fiddler too?’ Ernesti vs.
Bach: the start of an endless conflict�� 217
Johann Adolph Scheibe’s criticism of Bach and
Gesner’s commentary��224
Standstill on all sides: the 1740s��228
‘A great musician, it is true, but not a school teacher’:
the end of the Bach era�� 232
Gottlob Harrer: Italian sonorities and Latin church music��236
viii Bach’s Famous Choir
Johann Friedrich Doles (I): new ideals in the choir loft��239

Johann Friedrich Doles (II): new players, same old trench warfare�� 246
Johann Adam Hiller and Carl Wilhelm Müller: two friends
reinvent the ‘music school’ at St. Thomas��259
Prefects’ conflict con variazioni: ‘shadow boxing’ between Hiller
and Fischer��272
Hiller’s ‘peace proposal’ and Rost’s ‘outburst of feelings of someone
concerned’: quo vadis the St. Thomas School? ��276
Perspective and epilogue on the founders �� 285
Appendices
Cantors and Rectors of the St. Thomas School from
the Reformation through 1810 ��297
Overseers of the St. Thomas School and the Churches of
St. Thomas and St. Nicholas (1600–1804)�� 301
Timeline of the History of the St. Thomas Choir and the
St. Thomas Cantorate (1212–1837)��307
Income and Expenses of the St. Thomas School�� 313
Cantors of the St. Thomas School 1810 – present �� 314
Endnotes�� 317
Bibliography �� 359
Index of Persons �� 374
List of Plates
Plates 1–24 appear between pp. 76 and 77, Plates 25–48 appear between
pp. 140 and 141, and Plates 49–68 appear between pp. 204 and 205
11. Deed establishing the St. Thomas Foundation, issued by Kaiser Otto IV, Frankfurt,
March 20, 1212. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, Inv.-Nr. 10001, Ältere
Urkunden, Nr. 177. Original and reproduction: All rights reserved © by Sächsisches
Staatsarchiv, Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden.
12. A page from the St. Thomas Gradual, with monophonic chants for Sundays and feast
days, 14th century. Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Ms. Thomas. 391.
13. Manuscript anthology from the era of St. Thomas cantor Melchior Heger (1529–
1568). Shown: Johann Walther, opening of the St. Matthew Passion. Leipzig, ca. 1555.
Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Ms. Thomas. 49-1, fol. 310v.
14. Purchase of Melchior Heger’s music library. Leipziger Ratsbuch, 1564. Stadtarchiv
Leipzig, Ratsbuch Nr. 20, fol. 4v.
15. Schedule for the five classes of the St. Thomas School from the year 1592, for the
weekdays Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift.
VIII. B. 2a, fols. 90v–91r.
16. Seth Calvisius (1556–1615), St. Thomas cantor from 1594. Portrait drawing based on
the copperplate of 1616, in the family album of his son, Seth Calvisius the Younger.
Forschungsbibliothek der Universität Gotha, Chart B. 1003, Bl. iv.
17. Calvisius, Exercitationes Musicae Duae (Two Musical Exercises), Leipzig 1600.
Copy in the possession of the St. Thomas School. Bach-Archiv Leipzig, Rara II,
23-A. On permanent loan from the Thomanerchor, Leipzig.
18. Johann Hermann Schein, Fontana d’Israel, Israels Brünlein [...] auf eine sonderbar
anmüthige Italian Madrigalische Manier (Fount of Israel, Israel’s Little Wells […] in
a Particularly Pleasing Italian Madrigal Style), Leipzig 1623. Title page. Stadtge-
schichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: Mus 76b.
19. Johann Hermann Schein (1586–1630), St. Thomas cantor from 1616. Portrait, oil on
canvas, painter unknown, Leipzig (?) 1620. Kunstbesitz der Univ. Leipzig, Inv-Nr.
0021/90. Photo: Marion Wenzel © University of Leipzig, Kustodie.
10. Theodor Möstel (1564–1626), Leipzig mayor from 1604, simultaneously Leipzig chief
inspector of schools. Copperplate, unknown artist. Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig,
Porträtstichsammlung, Inv.-Nr. 34/71.
11. Draft of the St. Thomas School regulations of 1634, chapter VII: Vonn Auffnehmung
der Knaben, undt deren dimission (On the Admission of the Boys, and their Expul-
sion). Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 2b, fol. 328r.
12. Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), Saxon court capellmeister from 1619. Portrait, oil
on canvas, Christoph Spetner, ca. 1660. Kunstbesitz der Univ. Leipzig, Inv-Nr.
0023/90. Photo: Marion Wenzel © University of Leipzig, Kustodie.
13. Tobias Michael, Musicalischer Seelen-Lust Ander Theil (The Soul’s Delight in Music,
Supplement), Leipzig 1637, Stimmbuch Prima Vox, title page. Leipzig, Städtische
Bibliotheken – Musikbibliothek, II.4.72.
x Bach’s Famous Choir
14. Nacht-Music (Serenade) for the name day of the ‘very famous composer’ Johann
Rosenmüller, Leipzig 1652. Text by Caspar Ziegler the Younger. Thüringer Univer-
sitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena, 2 Sax. IV, 2(38).
15. Employment contract of Sebastian Knüpfer (1633–1676), St. Thomas cantor from
1657. Signed in his own hand and sealed, Leipzig, July 21, 1657. Stadtarchiv Leipzig,
Urk.-K. 79, 44.
16. Sigismund Finckelthaus (1611–1674), town councillor from 1649, municipal judge
from 1652. Host of Leipzig’s first Collegium Musicum. Stadtgeschichtliches
Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: Stadtrichter, Nr. 6.
17. Christian Lorenz von Adlershelm (1608–1684), Leipzig mayor from 1659, from 1664
overseer of the St. Thomas School. Copperplate by J. C. Höckner, 1665. Stadtge-
schichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: K/804/2003.
18. Catalogue of the sixty-six pieces of music acquired from Knüpfer’s estate, signed by
Johann Schelle. Last page of the inventory. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. IX. A. 35, fol. 2r.
19. Christoph Pincker (1619–1678), Leipzig mayor from 1655, son-in-law of Heinrich
Schütz. Copperplate by J. C. Höckner, 1665. Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Inven-
tar-Nr. 39/156.
20. Paul Wagner (1617–1697), Leipzig mayor from 1659. Publisher of the so-called
Wagner hymn book. Copperplate by J. C. Höckner, 1665. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
21. Printed Formula Obligationis – agreement to be signed by all incoming boarders at the St.
Thomas School. Leipzig, ca. 1673. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 2c, fol. 352.
22. CATALOGUS ALUMNORUM […] SCHOLAE THOMANAE LIPSIENSIS (Alumnen-
matrikel der Thomasschule), RECTORE SCHOLAE THOMANAE M. JOHANNE
HEINRICO ERNESTI Königsfeldense Misnico, in númerúm Alúmnorúm et Inqui-
linorúm recepti sunt. (Catalogue of the Boarders […] Leipzig Thomas School […]).
St. Thomas boarding school matriculation book, handwritten entries for the new
arrivals in 1685. Among them ‘Reinhardt Keyser, from Teüchern in Meissen, his age
11 years, promised to remain at this school for 7 years.’ Photo copyright and owner-
ship: Thomanerchor Leipzig, Archiv.
23. Jacob Thomasius (1622–1684), St. Thomas School rector from 1676. Copperplate,
artist unknown. Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Inventar-Nr. 30/25.
24. Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722), St. Thomas cantor from 1701. Portrait in his col-
lection Neuer Clavier-Übung Erster Theil (New Keyboard Exercise[s], Part One)
Leipzig 1689. The town in the background is probably Geising, Kuhnau’s birthplace.
Leipzig, Städtische Bibliotheken – Musikbibliothek, II.2.41.
25. Kuhnau affirms the school’s acquisition of J. Schelle’s music library. Leipzig, April
23, 1712. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. IX. A. 35, fol. 15r.
26. Text booklet for Kuhnau’s Leipzig church music for the Christmas holidays, 1710.
Title page. Leipzig, Städtische Bibliotheken – Musikbibliothek, I B 2b.
27. Division of the First and Second Cantoreys of the St. Thomas School boarders for
the year 1718. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 5, fol. 59.
28. Johann Kuhnau, Nicht nur allein am frühen Morgen (Not Only Alone in the Early
Morning). Cantata for the second day of Christmas, 1718, autograph score. Leipzig,
Städtische Bibliotheken – Musikbibliothek, III.2.121.
29. Birdseye view of Leipzig. To the west (left) the St. Thomas Church, beyond it the
New Church; to the east St. Paul’s Church, beyond and to the left of it the St.
xi
Nicholas Church. Copperplate, F. de Wit, Amsterdam 1682. Stadtgeschichtliches

Museum Leipzig, 1682, K 796/2003.
30. The interior of the New Church as rededicated in 1699. Copperplate by J. C.
Oberdörffer. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
31. Franz Conrad Romanus (1671–1746), Leipzig mayor 1701–1704. Copperplate by M.
Bernigeroth. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
32. Gottfried Gräve (1641–1719), Leipzig town councillor and St. Thomas Church overseer,
Leipzig mayor from 1709. Copperplate by M. Bernigeroth. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
33. Leonhard Baudiss (1651–1709), Leipzig town councillor and St. Thomas School
overseer from 1702. Copperplate by M. Bernigeroth. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
34. Gottfried Conrad Lehmann (1661–1728), ‘vigilant’ town councillor and St. Thomas
School overseer from 1709. Copperplate, artist unknown. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
35. Johann Sebastian Bach, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (The Spirit Helps
us to overcome our Weakness), BWV 226. Motetta à doi Cori. Bey Beerdigung des
seel. Hrn. Prof. und Rectoris Ernesti (Motet for two choirs. For the Funeral of tbe
Blessed Prof. and Rector Ernesti). Autograph score. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin –
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv, Mus. ms.
Bach P 36. Photo: bpk/Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Musikabteilung mit Mendels-
sohn-Archiv.
36. Draft of chapter VI of the revised St. Thomas School regulations (Von der Aufneh-
mung derer Knaben und deren Dimission [On the Admission of the Boys, and their
Expulsion]) with annotations in Johann Job’s hand. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII.
B. 2d, fol. 235r.
37. Johann Job’s minutes of the school regulations working group meeting with Rector
Ernesti, July 21, 1721. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 2d, fol. 278r.
38. Ordnung der Schule zu S. Thomae (Regulations of the St. Thomas School), Leipzig
1723. Title page and frontispiece. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
39. Johann Heinrich Ernesti (1652–1729), St. Thomas School rector from 1684. Copper-
plate by M. Bernigeroth. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
40. Abraham Christoph Platz (1658–1728), Leipzig mayor and overseer of the St. Nicho-
las Church and School from 1705. Oil on canvas, David Hoyer. Stadtgeschichtliches
Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: Stadtrichter Nr. 13.
41. Bach, Jesu, nun sei gepreiset (Jesu, Now Be Praised), BWV 41, Chorale cantata for
New Year’s Day 1725. Autograph part for violoncello piccolo solo. Bach-Archiv
Leipzig.
42. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), St. Thomas cantor from 1723. Oil on canvas,
Elias Gottlob Haussmann, 1748. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
43. St. Thomas Church and School (after the renovation). Tinted copperplate by
Joachim Ernst Scheffler, Nürnberg 1749. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
44. Bach, overview of the ‘necessary’ increases in the strength of the choirs in the
four Leipzig churches, early 1729. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 2d, fol. 549r.
45. Bach’s letter of recommendation for the future boarder Gottlob Michael Wintzer
from Leipzig, June 3, 1729. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 2d, fol. 472r.
46. Bach, Examination report and ranking of the applications to the St. Thomas board-
ing school early in 1729. The bottom eleven candidates (on the right) were, in Bach’s
judgment, those who ‘so nichts in Musicis praestiren’ (could contribute nothing
xii Bach’s Famous Choir
to music). The five boys marked with a cross were nonetheless, at the behest of the
town council, admitted as boarders at the St. Thomas School. Stadtarchiv Leipzig,
Stift. VIII. B. 2d, fol. 518.
47. Bach, Entwurff einer wohlbestallten Kirchen Music (Plan for a Well-Organized
Church Music), August 23, 1730. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
48. Minutes of the meeting of the elders’ council on August 2, 1730. Discussion of
Bach’s neglect of his duties at the school: vote of town councillors Lange, Steger,
and Hölzel. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Tit. VIII. 60b, fol. 311r.
49. Christian Ludwig Stieglitz (1677–1758), overseer of the St. Thomas School 1729–
1742, Leipzig mayor from 1741. Oil on canvas, Elias Gottlob Haussmann, 1725.
Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: Stadtrichter Nr. 20.
50. The renovated St. Thomas School. Drawing by Leipzig’s superintendent of build-
ings, George Werner, ca. 1731. Stadtarchiv Leipzig.
51. Johann Matthias Gesner (1691–1761), St. Thomas School rector 1730–1734. Oil on
canvas, Friedrich Reibenstein, 1747. 65 x 82 cm. Photo copyright and ownership:
Thomanerchor Leipzig, Gemäldesammlung.
52. Album Alumnorum Thomanorum. Matriculation register begun by Gesner in 1730,
continued by rectors Ernesti, Leisner, Fischer, and Rost. Title page. Stadtarchiv
Leipzig, Thomasschule, Nr. 483.
53. Johann August Ernesti (1707–1781), St. Thomas School rector 1734–1759. Oil on
canvas, Anton Graff. Kunstbesitz der Univ. Leipzig, Inv-Nr. 0047/90. Photo:
Marion Wenzel © University of Leipzig, Kustodie.
54. The gatekeepers at the Thomas Gate, caricatured by an anonymous Thomaner in the
bass part of the motet collection Florilegium Portense (Leipzig 1618). Bach-Archiv
Leipzig. On permanent loan from the Thomanerchor, Leipzig.
55. Bach’s letter of recommendation for Johann Christoph Altnickol. Leipzig, May 25,
1747. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
56. Jacob Born (1683– 1758), Leipzig town councillor, mayor, and overseer of the St.
Nicholas Church and School from 1728. Oil on canvas, probably by David Hoyer.
Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: Stadtrichter Nr. 19. Photo: bpk/
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv.
57. Printed text of Gottlob Harrer’s audition cantata, June 1749. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, in
Riemer-Chronik, Band II.
58. Bach, Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan (The Dispute between Phoebus and Pan),
BWV 201. Handwritten text booklet for a revival in the year 1749 with text revisions
in Bach’s own hand. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musik-
abteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv, Mus. ms. Bach St 33a.
59. Doles’s autograph chorale book, open at Collecte choraliter and figuraliter. Bach-
Archiv Leipzig.
60. Gottlob Harrer (1703–1755), St. Thomas cantor from 1750, confirms the receipt of the
Nathan legacy in 1752. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
61. Johann Friedrich Doles (1715–1797), St. Thomas cantor starting 1756. Album page:
Ein menschenfreundliches Herz ist eine fruchtbare Quelle, aus der die ganze Welt
Wohlthaten schöpft (A Heart Well-Disposed to Mankind is a Fruitful Source from
which the Whole World Draws Blessings), 1793. Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig,
Sammlung Taut.
xiii
62. Johann Wilhelm Richter (1719/20–1799), Leipzig town councillor and St. Thomas
School overseer 1776–1796. Oil on canvas, probably by Benjamin Calau. Stadtge-
schichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: Stadtrichter Nr. 39.
63. The teachers and the eight singers of the First Cantorey acknowledge receipt of the
incidental fees. Account statement for the first quarter of 1771 in the hand of Rector
J. F. Fischer. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Thomasschule, Nr. 283, fols. 522f.
64. Agreement regarding the division of the cantor’s salary between J. F. Doles and
J. A. Hiller, June 21, 1789. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 12, fol. 20.
65. Hiller asks the town council for seven musicians ‘to be engaged permanently’ for
the church music, June 1789. Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Stift. VIII. B. 12, fol. 5.
66. Carl Wilhelm Müller (1728–1801), Leipzig town councillor, mayor from 1778, St.
Nicholas Church and School overseer from 1782. Oil on canvas, Anton Graff, 1773.
Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: Stadtrichter Nr. 38.
67. Johann Adam Hiller (1728–1804), St. Thomas cantor from 1789. Oil on canvas,
Anton Graff, 1774. Kunstbesitz der Univ. Leipzig, Inv.-Nr. 0052/90. Photo: Marion
Wenzel © University of Leipzig, Kustodie.
68. The Hiller memorial in front of the St. Thomas School. Colored drawing, ca. 1832.
Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-Nr.: A 166.
Author’s Note on the English Edition
It’s not often that a German-language monograph in musicology is published in

English. That my study of J. S. Bach’s St. Thomas School in Leipzig, written in
2011/12, has been thus privileged I owe to a number of fabulous people and some
fortunate turns of fate. It was Michael Middeke, Editorial Director at Boydell
& Brewer, who, in a conversation we had at the American Musicological Society
Conference in Milwaukee, WI, in November 2014, first expressed a great interest
in an English edition of my book and encouraged me to look for a sponsor for its
publication. The problem of financing the publication was quickly solved when
in the fall of 2015 my book was awarded the prestigious ‘International Prize to
Promote the Translation of Works in the Humanities’, for which I most heartily
thank the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhan-
dels, and the German Foreign Office for this exceptional honor. It was, however,
a long journey from securing the financing to the finished translation – a journey
full of struggles, surprises, and feats of strength and endurance.
In my book I make extensive use of lengthy quotations from the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth-centuries, which are no longer easily understood
even by native speakers of German; and I often embed shards of quotations
from my source texts into my own sentences. This procedure makes for all kinds
of challenges for the translator. That the translation ultimately succeeded and
thereby in the countless problematical individual instances found what I believe
to be the best possible compromise between being readable, comprehensible, and
correct is due to my fabulous translator, Richard Howe. To him and the zeal with
which he plunged into the German language of the Baroque and the problemat-
ics of Bach scholarship I owe my deeply felt thanks. Richard, it was for me a
great pleasure and an richly rewarding time working with you for more than two
years, returning over and over again to discuss the problematical contents of the
quotations and to search together for ways in which words that at first appeared
untranslatable nevertheless could be conveyed into English with all the necessary
precision and as understandably as possible!
As a great help to us in this process we were fortunate to have working with
us my friend Andrew Talle (Northwestern University, Vice-President of the
American Bach Society), with his immense experience in dealing with German
source texts from the Baroque era. With their patience, motivation, and commit-
ment, Michael Middeke and the whole team at Boydell & Brewer also contrib-
uted over and over again to make it possible to bring the whole project to a suc-
xv
cessful conclusion within three years. My German publisher, Mark Lehmstedt,

also supported the prolonged process in many ways and smoothed the way for the
translation to proceed. To him too I owe a heartfelt thanks.
•
Even though my book is now, at the time of its English publication, already six
years old, it is not at all outdated and therefore its contents have not been updated
for the translation. The only additions are to be found in the footnotes, which
include references to all the German-language original documents pertaining
to the history of the St. Thomas cantorate which are and will be published in:
Dokumente zur Geschichte des Leipziger Thomaskantorats, Vol. I: Von der Reforma-
tion bis zum Amtsantritt Johann Sebastian Bachs, edited by Michael Maul, Leipzig
(publication anticipated in 2019); Vol II: Vom Amtsantritt Johann Sebastian Bachs
bis ins 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Andreas Glöckner, Leipzig 2018.
Three publications have appeared in the meantime that either complement
or extend the observations and approaches presented in my book also warrant
mentioning.
A more extensive treatment of my reflections and recently acquired know
ledge about the first ‘Cantorey’ of the Thomaner, the St. Thomas School Boys’
Choir, which I present at the beginning of chapter III (pp. 78-87), was presented by
me in the Bach-Jahrbuch 2013: Michael Maul, ‘‘‘welche ieder Zeit aus den 8 besten
Subjectis bestehen muß”. Die erste “Cantorey” der Thomasschule – Organisation,
Aufgaben, Fragen’, Bach-Jahrbuch 99 (2013), pp. 11–77.
In 2013, shortly after my book was printed, I happened upon a letter written
in 1751 by a former choir prefect of the Thomaners, Gottfried Benjamin Fleck-
eisen, in support of his application for the position of cantor in his home town of
Döbeln. In the document he mentions that
As concerns me, I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas

School in Leipzig for nine years, and while I was there served for
four years as prefect of the choro musico. For two whole years I had
to perform and conduct the music at the churches of St. Thomas
and St. Nicholas in place of the capellmeister, and without boast-
ing, may say that I always acquitted myself honorably.
Fleckeisen thus claimed that for two whole years (apparently sometime between
xvi Bach’s Famous Choir
1743 and 1747) he functioned as the de facto St. Thomas cantor in place of the
capellmeister – doubtless Johann Sebastian Bach. This claim gives rise to many
questions and surely leaves room for differing interpretations. But it does docu-
ment that for a lengthy period of time Bach left the performance of his official
duties in other hands and thus supports the picture of Bach that I present at the
beginning of chapter V, i.e., the picture of the thoroughly frustrated Bach, who,
after the trouble concerning the admission of unmusical boys to the St. Thomas
boarding school in the early 1730s never recovered the zeal with which he had
begun his tenure as St. Thomas cantor. If in the last years of his life it was said
that he no longer fulfilled the greater part of his official duties, this would not
only relativize the decision of the town council to conduct an audition for the St.
Thomas cantorate in June, 1749. It would also shed a new light on the remarks of
mayors Stieglitz and Born, who after Bach’s death said of him that he had not
been a proper ‘school man’ (p. 235), and that his cantorate had brought about ‘too
much disorder’ (p. 239). I have presented an extensive analysis of Fleckeisen’s
letter and its implications in the Bach-Jahrbuch 2015: Michael Maul, ‘zwey ganzer
Jahr die Music an Statt des Capellmeisters aufführen, und dirigieren müssen’ – Über-
legungen zu Bachs Amtsverständnis in den 1740er Jahren, in: Bach-Jahrbuch 2015, S.
75–97. English translation by Barbara Reul online in: Understanding Bach 12,
Bach Network 2017, S. 37–58: https://www.bachnetwork.org/ub12/ub12-maul.pdf.
Lastly I would like to mention the book by my colleague Jeffrey S. Sposato
(University of Houston) which appeared a few months ago and in a number of
ways extends my presentation of Leipzig’s church music under Bach’s successors
Harrer, Doles, and Hiller: Jeffrey S. Sposato, Leipzig After Bach: Church and Con-
cert Life in a German City, Oxford 2018.
Michael Maul
Leipzig, September 2018
xvii
Translator’s Note
When – the better part of three years ago – Boydell & Brewer’s Michael Middeke
sent me a copy of Michael Maul’s history of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig and
its famous choir and enquired as to whether I would be interested in translating it
into English, I knew as soon as I started reading it that I did indeed want the job.
It was exactly the kind of multi-dimensional history I have always found most
compelling, a history in which the social and institutional lives of individuals – by
no means only Bach – as well as the workings of the institutions through which
they shared in the social, religious, and intellectual movements of their times are
largely presented in their own words and are yet so closely interwoven that they
vividly illuminate one another. In this way Michael Maul conveys something of
that Rankean sense of ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’ – ‘how it really was’ – that our more
skeptical but also more self-regarding age has so often been inclined to dismiss as
an epistemological chimera. Michael’s book is, in short, that rare thing: a book
for specialists that transcends its specialty and has something to offer a much
wider audience: almost anyone with an interest in the history and sociology of
music and its institutions may find, as I did, that Bach’s Famous Choir is an absorb-
ing – if occasionally challenging – read.
What I failed to realize sufficiently when I contemplated taking on the job
of translating this fascinating book into English was just how remote from my
twenty-first century world and language were the world and the language of the
people who lived in Leipzig and its cultural environs hundreds of years ago and
whose jottings, letters, memoranda, reports, and minuted conversations and meet-
ings form so large and vital a part of Michael Maul’s book. But enthusiasm and
optimism were a potent combination for overriding the caution that a more sober
assessment would have suggested, and so I took the job, despite being neither a
musicologist nor an historian of pre-modern Germany. Naturally I soon enough
found myself in over my head, and so my indebtedness to the author, Michael
Maul, knows no bounds: without his endless patience the job might well have
proved impossible. Besides answering my innumerable questions, and engaging
in what at times no doubt seemed to both of us to be an endless back-and-forth
regarding how – if at all – to deal with some of the more difficult terms, Michael
volunteered to paraphrase and even where necessary to translate the many dif-
ficult passages of pre-eighteenth century German into modern German. I could
and did then use these paraphrases as guides for unravelling the often tortured
syntax, arcane vocabulary, and florid style of what were rarely literary – and often
xviii Bach’s Famous Choir
not even highly literate – communications among Leipzig’s governing bureaucrats

and the civil servants they employed, among them the cantors of the St. Thomas
School.
If ever an author should be credited as a co-translator of his work, it would
be Michael Maul for his unfailingly generous help in translating this book, and
his shared commitment to producing a result that would satisfy both its specialist
and non-specialist readers. To what extent we have succeeded is of course not for
me but for them to say.
In saying that, I by no means intend to slight the endless patience and support
provided by Michael Middeke, whose editorial faith in the project was always a
steadying hand during my many moments of doubt and occasional moments of
despair. The contribution of Northwestern University musicologist Andrew Talle
in reviewing the draft English manuscript during one especially difficult period
is also not to be overlooked. Megan Milan, Michael Middeke’s assistant, was
helpful in innumerable ways great and small, and once again, the good cheer and
professionalism of Boydell & Brewer’s Rohais Haughton during the production
phase of the project has been of inestimable help in getting over the many ‘little
glitches’ that bedevil a scholarly work of this complexity on its way from manu-
script to press.
Finally, I would be utterly remiss not to most gratefully acknowledge the
inestimable support of my friends Howie Becker, Celia Coles, Jeff Glassman,
Michael Kowalski, Alan Kusinitz, Allen Otte, and Geoffrey Rogers, whose
experience, wisdom, and warmth have sustained me throughout, as always.
Richard Howe
Champaign, IL
September 2018
Preface
Michael Maul is one of the new generation of brilliant Bach scholars at the
Leipzig Bach-Archiv, scholars who are transforming our view of Bach through
their rediscovery over the last few years of source materials that were hitherto
unknown or long thought to have been lost. His timely new book on the his-
tory of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School and its famous choir is being published in
the year [2012] of the school’s 800th anniversary. Maul provides a scrupulously
researched, highly readable, and exciting study that yields a welcome corrective
to the standard account of the school’s musical achievements, which were said to
have unfolded in a serene teleological progress, with the period of Bach’s cantor-
ate as its glorious summit, followed by a plateau of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century consolidation. Maul offers a far less edifying, less rose-tinted portrait of
the school. His more nuanced chronology of the development of the St. Thomas
School choir, from its medieval beginnings on through the visionary accomplish-
ments of Seth Calvisius and into the late seventeenth century and beyond, makes
it comprehensible how municipal and clerical interventions in the running of the
school’s affairs and in promulgating multiple revisions of the school’s regulations,
which originally had the effect of ensuring the quality of the choir, soon came to
stifle its musical resources and to curb the authority of its cantor.
Bach’s growing dissatisfaction with his lot is of course on record and well
known. What Maul has uncovered is the degree to which the town council delib-
erately concealed from him at the time of his appointment the full extent of their
proposed financial cuts and other steps to restrict his room to manoeuvre, all of
which make Bach’s musical achievements in his first three years – just think of the
Passions and cantatas! – all the more remarkable, and explain how it came about
that later on Bach never recovered his earlier productivity in the field of church
music.
This is an important book with many scholarly insights in terms of the social
and political history surrounding the St. Thomas choir and cantorate. But Maul’s
observations also have wide-ranging ramifications for the musicologist and prac-
titioner in disputed areas of historical performance practice.
John Eliot Gardiner, 2012

ORGANIZATION OF THE ST. THOMAS SCHOOL

in the 17th and 18 th Centuries
Religious Officials LEIPZIG TOWN COUNCIL

Leipzig Superintendent of Churches (Patron and owner of the school)
Senior Pastor of the St. Thomas Church
supervise the school on behalf of the Con- Overseer (Vorsteher)
sistory, the Saxon office of religious affairs A senior member of the town council,
administrative director of the school, man-
ages the financial and other affairs of the
school on behalf of the town council
certify
teachers
supervises monitors
teachers admission of boarders
ST. THOMAS SCHOOL LATIN SCHOOL for 54–56 CHARITY SCHOOL

boarders; also external for external (non-
(non-resident) students resident) students
CLASSES *I* II III IV V VI VII

TEACHERS
Senior Faculty √ = usually teaches
Rector academic director of the school √ √ √
Conrector (previously ‘Supremus’) √ √ √
Cantor teaches music in classes I–IV and

√ √ √ √
Latin & catechism in classes III–IV
Tertius √ √ √
Junior Faculty √ = usually teaches
Baccalaureus funerum (from 1723: Quartus)

teaches ‘principles of music’ in classes IV & V √ √ √
(occasionally taught by other junior faculty)
Baccalaureus nosocomii (from 1723: Quintus) √ √ √
Collaborator I (from 1723: Sextus) √ √ √
Collaborator II (from 1723: Septima) √ √ √
* Classes (note that I is the highest, VII the lowest)

I Prima boarders & external (non-resident) students, ages ~19–21
II Secunda boarders & external students, ages ~17–19
III Tertia boarders & external students, ages ~14–16
IV Quarta external students, seldom boarders
V Quinta external students only
VI Sexta external students (from ~1615)
VII Septima external students (from ~1630); in the 1730s at first
combined with the Sexta, then suspended
INTRODUCTION
My work on this book began with a question: why did Cöthen’s court capell-
meister Johann Sebastian Bach and two others in the premier league of German
capellmeisters of his generation, Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph
Graupner, apply for the St. Thomas School cantorate in 1722/23? Or, more con-
cretely, why would any leader of a famous court orchestra want to resign a posi-
tion working with professional musicians in order to take a job with a municipal
boys’ school and the ‘dusty robes’ of a cantor? Expressed in a broader historical
context: how did it come about that the chronological list of the St. Thomas
cantors is made up almost exclusively of the names of famous and historically
significant musicians? No other municipal music institution in Germany, or for
that matter in all of Europe, can boast a comparable list of prominent names,
least of all over the span of half a millennium. From the end of the sixteenth
century in particular and on into the nineteenth century the St. Thomas School
cantors shaped the development of the whole of Protestant church music.
Seth Calvisius, Johann Hermann Schein, Tobias Michael, Sebastian Knüpfer,
Johann Schelle, Johann Kuhnau, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Friedrich
Doles, and Johann Adam Hiller were all among the most influential composers
of their times, and they were so because they did not yet conceive of their office
as being in the first place that of a choir director and a guardian of tradition
but rather were at the same time creators of a repertory of their own works that
was adopted in many other places. In other words, the real question is 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, and did so long before those who held the office could adorn
themselves with the honorific ‘Bach’s successor’?
A short explanation for the phenomenon would be that the St. Thomas
School was no ordinary municipal school and its school choir was no ordinary
boys’ choir: the St. Thomas School cantors were in the advantageous position of
being able to recruit their students from the whole of central Germany, and more-
over to do so on the basis of a entrance exam for musical aptitude and accom-
plishment; those who were admitted to the school were taken on as boarders
(alumnen). The St. Thomas School’s boarding school (Alumnat) was famous above
all for its choir’s singing. From very early on it acquired1 the aura of a hothouse for
future musical elites, just because – as a former Thomaner pointedly formulated it
in 1767 – ‘according to the school rules all fifty-five of the school’s boarders must
2 Bach’s Famous Choir
be musical’.2 Long before there were any academies of music, the St. Thomas
boarding school was characterized as a ‘true conservatory of music’ (1805), 3 and
rightly so. From as early as the seventeenth century no other school has had a
comparably high number of graduates who became cantors, organists, musicians
at court ensembles. By 1793 the St. Thomas cantor Johann Adam Hiller could ask
with great pride, ‘What town in Germany, besides Dresden, has anything that
can match our boarding school [Alumneum]?’ 4
Although the Dresden Kreuzchor (Holy Cross Boys Choir) is as old as the St.
Thomas Boys Choir, we may remark in passing that at the turn of the nineteenth
century its good reputation was still new (it would later become the ‘favorite rival’
of the St. Thomas Choir), whereas the hymns of praise for the Leipzig choir had
been resounding for two centuries already. In 1648 the Dresden Court capellmeis-
ter Heinrich Schütz (plate 12) of all people had already created a monument to the
consistently exceptional standing of the Leipzig choir: he dedicated his famous
anthology of motets Geistliche Chormusik (Sacred Choral Music) to Leipzig’s town
councillors ‘and their famous choir [that] has always been greatly superior to the
others, and which has always been (not to detract from the praise of other towns)
an almost perfect ensemble’. 5 But even this praise of the Leipzig town council was
not without precedent: twenty-nine years earlier the Wolfenbüttel capellmeister
Michael Praetorius had said the same thing, dedicating the second part of his
epoch-making magnum opus on music theory, Syntagma musicum (Constitution
of Music), to Leipzig’s leadership, because they were ‘particularly great patrons of
the muses’ and ‘regard [music] highly, as dear and valuable; for they have always
had excellent people in their most praiseworthy [St. Thomas] School’.6
If one doesn’t take for granted the early existence of a singularly unique ‘music
school’ and those hymns of praise for both the St. Thomas Choir and the guard-
ians of the muses in the town hall, but rather, prompted by the celebration of the
St. Thomas School’s eight hundredth anniversary, one inquires into the causes
and origins of both phenomena, the available source-based literature offers little
in the way of concrete answers – even though this literature is comprehensive and
rich in content. Otto Kaemmel dealt with the development of academic instruc-
tion at the St. Thomas School in his Geschichte des Leipziger Schulwesens (History
of the Leipzig Schools; 1909).7 Rudolf Wustmann and Arnold Schering presented
an extensive and detailed portrait of the history of the St. Thomas cantorate and
the St. Thomas Choir in their three-volume Musikgeschichte Leipzigs (History of
Music in Leipzig).8 From early on in the nineteenth century the rectors of the
school were occasionally making aspects of the history of the institution the sub-
jects of printed school programs.9 Richard Sachse, a senior class teacher at the St.
Thomas School at the turn of the twentieth century, examined the early history
Introduction 3
of the St. Thomas School in detail, basing his work on a thorough review of the
archival materials.10 Here, as in the studies by Sachse, Wustmann, and Schering,
as well as in the numerous festschrifts occasioned by the school’s jubilee, one
often gets the impression that the practice of admitting the St. Thomas School’s
boarders on the basis of an entrance exam in music had been firmly established
when the school was founded and that this practice was never seriously in doubt
thereafter. But the truth of the matter revealed by the primary sources is that
such an exam was not formally instituted until the school regulations of 1634 were
promulgated, though it is not unreasonable to suppose that even before then – at
least since Calvisius’s cantorate (1594–1615) – the school’s cantors had vetted the
applicants to the school, however informally, for their musicality. Neither in the
school’s earliest period nor with the coming of the Reformation to Leipzig in 1539
was its primary function as a music school in question; it was only with the advent
of the Enlightenment in Leipzig at the turn of the eighteenth century that oppo-
sition arose and the entrance exam requirement became the focus of the ongoing
conflicts between the school’s cantors and its rectors, overseers, and the town
council. The issue was only definitively resolved, in favor of the school as a music
school, in the nineteenth century. The prominence of this issue meant that it was
by no means assured that the Leipzig town council, since 1539 the patron of the
school, would always be so fortunate as to choose cantors who would maintain
and even raise the quality of the St. Thomas Choir, although in retrospect we are
fully justified in giving the council credit for having done so.
That is, in outline, why another book on the Leipzig St. Thomas School is appear-
ing now: I wanted to explore the history of the school as a music school on the
basis of a new and broadly conceived study of the primary source materials. To
anticipate my findings, the authorities had a less important part in establishing
the character of the school as a music school than did the citizens of Leipzig, and
the continuation of its character as such was fiercely contested again and again
in the school and in the town hall. I wanted to find out not only who the intel-
lectual forebears and the most important promoters of this musically so fertile
idea were, but also who its greatest opponents and most ambitious enemies were,
and to what extent the individual cantors from Calvisius to Hiller were simply
continuing a tradition as they found it or were giving it a new stamp of their own.
From this point of view the history of the St. Thomas School reads rather differ-
ently than it does in previous studies. Even if it might appear in retrospect to be
a continuous success story, there were, most emphatically, vicissitudes along the
way, in particular during Bach’s cantorate, when the most significant musical
works in the history of the St. Thomas School were written within its walls, even
though local politicians steadfastly sought to transform the school into a publicly
prominent humanistic institution of learning, favoring Leipzig school children,
no matter at what cost to its musical character. Had they been completely success-
ful, what relevance would the St. Thomas School have today?
The longer-term fate of the St. Thomas School as an elite music school was
decided more in the composer’s study in the second storey of the cantor’s apart-
ment, 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 than in learned instruction
or the wearisome currende singing by the choirboys in the streets of Leipzig and
at funerals, which was commonplace elsewhere as well. The latter aspects of the
school’s history therefore appear only as background to the former in this book;
they have already been dealt with in the works cited earlier.
In presenting the results of my research I have limited my discussion of the
existing literature to the most essential and for the most part relegated it to the
footnotes. I hope this is not construed as ignorance on my part, but rather as
an attempt to produce a text that is closely oriented to the sources, easily read
by the broadest possible public, but nevertheless still transparent. All the more
important to me at this point is to name two works that particularly motivated
me to undertake the present study: Hans-Joachim Schulze’s 1975 essay on the
political Kontroversen und Kompromisse vor Bachs Leipziger Amtsantritt (Contro-
versies and Compromises Preceding Bach’s Installation as Cantor in Leipzig) and
Ulrich Siegele’s exhaustive examination (1983–) of Bachs Stellung in der Leipziger
Kulturpolitik seiner Zeit (Bach’s Position in the Cultural Politics of his Time in
Leipzig), which is based on Schulze’s work.11 The effort made by both authors to
treat the richly consequential appointment of Bach as the St. Thomas cantor not
as an isolated event but rather in the context of the cultural-political decisions and
decision makers of the time spurred me on to undertake the attempt to deal with
the developments in the town council, the town, and the St. Thomas School over
a much greater span of time.
The state of the source materials is conducive to this intention. While only
a few primary sources are still extant as regards events at the St. Thomas School
prior to the Reformation, in the era since the town took over the school’s admin-
istrative archive materials have been preserved in great numbers in the Stiftung-
sakten (the records of charter deeds and of the administration of the chartered
foundations and endowments) in the Leipzig Stadtarchiv (municipal archive). The
survival of these materials is no accident: they have been maintained by the town
as the official record of the St. Thomas School since 1539 and were already being
used by the town council in making decisions about the school in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. As a result, these records are a reliable
Introduction 5
source of insights into, e.g., the genesis of the school regulations that were pro-
mulgated in 1634 and 1723. Minutes of the plenary sessions of the entire town
council (including both the ‘presiding’ and ‘resting’ councils), and of the elders’
council have also by and large been preserved, and allow us to eavesdrop on the
councillors in their discussions of personnel matters at the St. Thomas School.
These records go back to around 1640, while the still extant account books for the
town treasury, the St. Thomas School, and the two principal churches reach far
back into the sixteenth century. Lost sources in the church and state bureaucra-
cies are noted (in the archives of local clergy, church district superintendents, and
consistorial officials); but because the leading decision makers in the affairs of the
St. Thomas School were not officials of these bureaucracies, the gaps are not so
important and at any rate are partly compensated for by parallel records in the
Leipzig municipal archive.
It is regrettable that school’s own archives and library materials have by and
large not survived: the music library of the St. Thomas School was lost at the end
of the Second World War. Only a few scraps are still extant, but among them is the
library’s greatest treasure, the original performance materials for Bach’s so-called
Choralkantatenjahrgang (Bach’s second annual cycle of cantatas, based on chorales
and composed 1724/25). At least the everyday life of the school in the seventeenth
century is documented in the diary of the school rector Thomasius,12 in addition
to which important documents of the school’s internal administration turned up
again in the course of my studies in the Leipzig municipal archive: e.g., the school’s
register of matriculations (1730–1800), long thought to have been lost; an unknown
teachers’ petition from the year 1723/24 concerning Bach and Ernesti that is of cen-
tral importance for understanding the history of the school; and numerous account
books that for the first time allow us to make more precise statements about the
school’s income from the rounds of street singing (currende) of the Thomaners (as
the St. Thomas School’s boarders are generally known) and from the fees for sing-
ing at so-called ‘casual’ occasions (ceremonies such as weddings or funerals).13
All the key German source texts have been completely and source-critically
correctly reproduced in the two-volume Dokumente zur Geschichte des Leipziger
Thomaskantorats, edited by me (Volume 1: From the Reformation to J. S. Bach)
and Andreas Glöckner (Volume 2: To the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century).
•
Twenty-six years ago I could not have imagined myself ever writing a book about
the St. Thomas School. At that time a good friend of mine from school disap-
peared from one day to the next: he had become a Thomaner, and from then
on he was constantly raving about his trips to countries beyond the ‘Iron Cur-
tain’ – West Germany, Japan, Korea, China – that were inaccessible to ordinary
citizens of the GDR such as myself. Little by little the choir eventually won
back my sympathies. My fascination with Bach’s works brought me professionally
into the research department of the Bach Archive in Leipzig. Here we used the
eight-hundredth-year jubilee of the St. Thomas School as an occasion to revisit
the archival sources for the history of its choir and cantorate, and to publish the
two volumes of documents just mentioned. This research project made it possible
for me to start work in parallel on the present book. That the book was actually
finished is something I owe to the support of many people: to begin with there
was the encouragement from my Ph.D. advisor Professor Christoph Wolff (Bach-
Archiv Leipzig, Harvard University). He, together with my colleagues and men-
tors Professor Emeritus Hans-Joachim Schulze and Dr. Peter Wollny, followed
the development of my study, providing much inspiration and many critiques
of my hypotheses – many of them falling by the wayside as a result – and ulti-
mately with their watchful eyes during the final editing. In addition, my mother
Elke, Nikolas von Oldershausen (Ahlden), Dr. Bernhard Schrammek (Berlin),
and Manuel Bärwald and Bernd Koska (both at the Leipzig Bach Archive)
helped with the proofreading. I owe an additional thanks to Bernd Koska for his
invaluable support in sifting through the archival collection, especially the time-
consuming evaluation of the town, church, and school ledgers as well as in the
transcription of many documents.
My ambitious trawl through all the archival materials would not have been
possible without the friendly support of the staff of the Leipzig Stadtarchiv (Dr.
Beate Berger and Carla Calov); their help for this study was invaluable. For their
help in making the materials available I also must thank the following insti-
tutions and people: the library and photo archives of the Stadtgeschichtliches
Museum Leipzig (Kerstin Sieblist, Doris Mundus, Marko Kuhn and Christoph
Kaufmann); the Thomanerchorarchiv (Dr. Stefan Altner); the Ephoralarchiv and
the Kirkliches Archiv Leipzig; the archives of the Pfarrämter St. Thomas und
St. Nikolai; the Superintendentur Leipzig; the Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig;
the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, the Musikbibliothek der Stadt Leipzig (Bri-
gitte Geyer); the Bibliothek und Museum des Bach-Archivs Leipzig (Kristina
Funk-Kunath, Viera Lippold, Brigitte Braun, Maria Hübner); Dr. Lutz Mahnke
(Ratsschulbibliothek Zwickau); the Archiv der Franckeschen Stiftungen Halle,
preacher Matthias Möbius (Leipzig-Grünau); Henrike Rucker (Heinrich-
Schütz-Haus Weissenfels), Sotheby’s London (Dr. Stephen Roe); and Szymon
Paczkowski (Warsaw University, Poland).
Introduction 7
Finally, I would most whole-heartedly like to thank Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
That he has ennobled my study with an prefatory note is the wonderful result of
what has by now been a decade-long exchange of views about Bach and his world,
full of unforgettable experiences and smaller as well as larger surprises.
Leipzig, June 2012 Michael Maul
The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge the support of the Margarita
M. Hanson Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part
by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, for this edition.
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W I N D S .
The Winds, different from our Quarter of the World, in these Voyages
are either peculiar to warm Latitudes; such are Trade-Winds, Land
and Sea Breezes; or to the Coast, Tornadoes, and Air-Mattans.
Trade-Winds are easterly, blow fresh night and day, all the Year,
and every where round the Globe; that Part of it I mean that we are
upon, the Ocean, whether Atlantick, Indian, or American: for the Soil
and Position of Lands, though the same Cause of them subsists
more powerfully, gives uncertain and various Deflections. They will
extend to 30°° of N. Latitude, when the Sun is on this side the
Equator, and as far S. when on the other; deflecting where he is
farthest off (here to the N. E. there to the S. E.) and always nearest
to the E. Point on the Equinoctial, or where he is vertical.
The general Causes assigned by the Ingenious for these
Phænomena, and with the greatest Probability of Truth, are;
First, the daily Rotation of the Earth Eastward upon its Axis,
whereby the Air or Wind (the enforced Stream of it) by this means
goes Westward in respect of the Superficies; and this is farther
countenanced in that these Winds are found only in the largest
Circles, where the diurnal Motion is swiftest; and also because they
blow as strong in the Night as Day; home, on the Coast of Brasil, as
near Guinea.
The second permanent Cause of this Effect, the ingenious Dr.
Halley ascribes to the Action of the Sun-beams upon the Air and
Water every day, considered together with the Nature of the Soil, and
Situation of the adjoining Continents.
The Sun heats and rarefies the Air exceedingly, in all Latitudes
within the Zodiack, (evident from the anhelous Condition it subjects
most Animals to in Calms) and therefore the Air from Latitudes more
without his Influence (as more ponderous) presses in, to restore the
Equilibrium: and to follow the Sun, must come from the Eastward.
The westerly Winds that restore this Balance, from Latitudes beyond
the Tropicks, would, I fancy, be as constant, and keep a Circulation,
were the whole a Globe of Waters: As it is, they are from 30 to 60°°,
abundantly the most predominant, with a Deviation to N. or S. on
various Accidents: blow with more force, because, among other
Reasons, the Equilibrium is restored to a greater from a lesser
Circle; and as it were to confirm this, are received into the Trade-
wind, with a Deflection of N. E. or more northward at the Point of
reception.
On the Coast of Guinea, North of the Equinoctial, the true Winds
are westerly, keeping a Track with the Shore, where it trenches all
eastward. From the River Gabon again, under the Line, the Land
stretches to the Southward, and, exactly answerable thereto, the
Winds wheel from S. E. to S. by E. to keep nigh a Parallel with it; in
both, the Shore seems to deflect the true Trade, in the same manner
Capes do Tides or Currents, and obliges it, like them, on that Point
where they have the freest Passage. If at any particular Seasons (as
in the Rains is remarked) the Winds become more southerly, and set
full upon the Shore, they are weak; and as the Sun is at such time on
this side the Equinoctial, it is probably to restore an Equilibrium to
that Air at land, more rarefied from a stronger and more reflected
Heat.
I shall give two or three other Remarks on Trade-winds, proper,
tho’ made at other Periods of the Voyage.
1. You must be distant from the Influence of Land to Windward,
before the Trade blows true and fresh, (from this Coast we may
suppose twenty or thirty Leagues) and then a Ship bound to America
will make a constant and smooth Run of forty or fifty Leagues every
twenty-four Hours. And as there are no Storms, vast numbers of
flying Fish sporting near the Ship, (found every where within the
Verge of these Winds, and no where else that ever I saw,) Bonetoes
pursuing them; with Birds of various sorts, Garnets, Boobys, Tropick-
Birds, and Sheerwaters, it makes a very delightful sailing.
2. Although the N. E. and S. E. Trade-Winds on this and that side
the Line, do not blow adverse, yet by approaching to it, are in my
Thoughts, the Occasion of becalming the Latitudes between 4 and
12° N, the Point of Contest; as we found, and will be hereafter
remarked in our Passage from Brasil to the West-Indies, in July and
August: and this I think, First, because the East southerly Trade is
known ordinarily to extend E. S. E. to 4° of Northern Latitude: and
consequently, as the East northerly is bounded a little nearer or
further from the Equinoctial, as is the Station of the Sun; Calms and
small Breezes, the Attendant of them, may vary a little, yet they will
always happen about these Latitudes, and near the windward
Shores be attended with Thunder, Lightning, and perpetual Rains.
Secondly, all Ships actually find this in their Passage from Guinea to
the West-Indies in any Month, or from England thither; the true Trade
decreasing as they approach those Latitudes, and up between Cape
Verd and the Islands, those Calms by all our Navigators are said to
be as constantly attended with Rains and Thunder.
Thirdly, Because the same thing happens at the Commencement
of the Trade, from the variable Winds in 27 or 28°° of Northern
Latitude, sooner or later as I observed is the Station of the Sun:
From all which I would infer, that from Guinea these calm Latitudes
are easier passed, not nigh, but within 100 Leagues of the Continent
of Africa, and at America not to get into them till a Ship has nigh run
her Distance; for the Land, I think, either to Windward or Leeward
does give a better Advantage to the Breezes, than nearer or more
remote: Ships from England do not want this Caution so much,
because the N. E. Trade does not fail till a little beyond the Parallel of
Barbadoes, the Southermost of our Islands.
Land and Sea-Breezes are Gales of no great Extent, the former
much fainter and inconstant will blow off an Island to a Roadsted, be
on which side of it you will, but whether at the same time or no, or
now here, now there, I am not experienced enough to say, tho’ their
Weakness and Inconstancy makes either way defensible.—They are
found at all shores within or near the Tropicks, the Sea-breeze
coming in about ten in the morning, fresh and sweet, enlivening
every thing. The Land-breeze when it does succeed, is at the same
distance from Sun-set or later, small, sultry, and stinking, especially
when from Rivers whose Banks are pestered with rotten Mangroves,
stagnating Waters, &c.
They seem to arise entirely from the Heat of the Sun-beams: That
the Air is more rarified by their Reflections on the solid Body of the
Earth than on a fluid, is certain; therefore till their rarified Air, made
so by three or four hours Sun, is brought to an Equilibrium, the
Breezes must be from the Sea at all parts of the Coast, because at
all parts, the same Cause is operating. And if this Rarefaction is
limited by a determined heighth of the Atmosphere, the Sea-breezes
that are to fill up the Vacuities will last a determined time only; two,
three, or more hours: this is fact, but whether properly solved, must
be submitted. Of affinity with this are the frequent Breezes we find
with meridian Suns at shores, even to the Latitude of England, tho’
very still before and after. Again, the Land-breezes which succeed at
night when the Sun has lost it’s Power, seem by their Weakness to
be the return of Air heaped up by the preceding day’s Heat, like
other Fluids when higher or fuller from any Cause (in one part than
another) of course has it’s reflux to make an even Surface.
Tornadoes, by the Spaniard called Travadoes, are in no part of the
World so frequent as at Guinea. They are fierce and violent Gusts of
Wind that give warning for some hours by a gradual lowering and
blackening of the Sky to Windward whence they come, accompanied
with Darkness, terrible Shocks of Thunder and Lightning, and end in
Rains and Calm. They are always off shore, between the N. and N.
E. here, and more Easterly at the Bites of Benin, Calabar, and Cape
Lopez; but although they are attended with this favourable Property
of blowing from the shore, and last only three or four hours, yet
Ships immediately at the appearance of them furl all their Sails and
drive before the Wind.
We have sometimes met with these Tornadoes two in a day, often
one; and to shew within what a narrow Compass their effects are,
Ships have felt one, when others at ten Leagues distance have
known nothing: Nay, at Anamaboo (3 or 4 Leagues off) they have
had serene Weather while we have suffered under a Tornado in
Cape Corso Road. And vice versa. A Proof of what Naturalists
conjecture, that no Thunder is heard above 30 Miles; in these
Storms it seems to be very near, one we felt the Afternoon of taking
Roberts the Pyrate, that seemed like the ratling of 10000 small Arms
within three yards of our Heads; it split our Maintop-Mast, and ended
as usual in excessive Showers, and then calm; the nearness is
judged by the Sound instantly following the Flash. Lightning is
common here at other times, especially with the shutting in of
Evening, and flashes perpendicularly as well as horizontally.
Both arise from a plenty of nitrous and sulphurous Exhalations that
make a Compound like Gun-powder, set on fire in the Air; and if the
Clouds that retain them be compact, and their heterogeneous
Contents strong, various, and unequal, then like a Cannon in
proportion to these, the disjection is with more or less Violence,
producing Thunder, which as with a [32]Shot has frequently split the
Masts of Ships; and strengthens the above Observation of their
being discharged near hand; because if at any considerable
distance, they would spread in the Explosion, and lose their Force. It
furnishes also another, viz. That neither Thunder nor Lightning can
be felt or heard far from shores; Winds may impel such Exhalations
something, but at a hundred Leagues from any Land the
Appearance must be rare and uncommon, because the matter of
their Compound cannot be collected there.
Air-mattans, or Harmatans, are impetuous Gales of Wind from the
Eastern Quarter about Midsummer and Christmas; they are attended
with Fogs, last three or four hours, (seldom with Thunder or
Lightning, as the Tornados) and cease with the Rain; are very dry,
shriveling up Paper, Parchment, or Pannels of Escruitores like a Fire.
They reach sometimes this Gold Coast, but are frequentest and in a
manner peculiar to the Bite of Benin, named so some think from Aer
Montain, respecting whence they come; or by others Mattan, the
Negrish Word for a pair of Bellows, which they having seen,
compare this Wind to.
The G U I N E A Trade.
An extensive Trade, in a moral Sense, is an extensive Evil, obvious
to those who can see how Fraud, Thieving, and Executions have
kept pace with it. The great Excess in Branches feeding Pride and
Luxury, are an Oppression on the Publick; and the Peculiarity of it in
this, and the Settlement of Colonies are Infringements on the Peace
and Happiness of Mankind.
By discoursing on this particular Branch, I do not pretend to a
Sufficiency of giving full Directions; the Natives Alteration and
Diversity of Taste are Obstacles with the most experienced: It’s only
within my Design to give a general Insight to such as are Strangers,
and a Rule to improve upon by such as are not.
We may for this end divide Guinea into a windward Coast, the
Gold Coast, and the Bay, a Tract of 6 or 700 Leagues from the River
Gambia, in 13°° N. to Angola, about 9 or 10°° S. The Portuguese
were the first Europeans that settled and built Forts here, tho’ now
the least concerned, paying their Tribute to the Dutch for Leave:
What remains of theirs is to the Southward on the River Congo at
Loango de St. Paul, and the Islands, where they keep Priests to
teach their Language to the Natives, and baptize without making
Christians.
1. In the windward Coast, Gambia, Sierraleon, and Sherbro Rivers
may be reckoned chief; the African Company having Factors and
Settlements there. Less noted, but more frequented by private Ships
in this part of Guinea, are Cape Mont, and Montzerado, Sesthos
River, Capes Palmas, Apollonia, and Tres Puntas. A number of
others intervene, of more or less Trade; which it is their Custom to
signify at the sight of any Ship by a Smoke, and is always looked on
as an Invitation to Trade; but as each is alterable among them from
the Chance of War, the Omission shews they decline it, or are out of
Stock.
This Change of Circumstance found on different Voyages,
proceeds from weak and bad Governments among themselves,
every Town having their own Cabiceers or ruling Men, (or it may be
three or four in Confederacy) all so jealous of the others Panyarring,
that they never care to walk even a mile or two from home without
Fire-Arms; each knows it is their Villanies and Robberies upon one
another that enables them to carry on a Slave-trade with Europeans;
and as Strength fluctuates, it is not unfrequent for him who sells you
Slaves to-day, to be a few days hence sold himself at some
neighbouring Town; this I have known.
The same way of reasoning answers for the Panyarrs and
Murders so frequently between them and us, and never that I heard
with the French or Portuguese. For if any of our Ships from Bristol or
Liverpool play tricks, and under pretence of Traffick seize and carry
away such of them as come on board, and trust themselves on that
Confidence, the Friends and Relations never fail with the first
Opportunity to revenge it; they never consider the Innocence of who
comes next, but as Relations in Colour, Panyarr the Boat’s Crews
who trust themselves foolishly on shore, and now and then by
dissembling a Friendship, have come on board, surprized and
murdered a whole Ship’s Company. Captain Piercy’s Lieutenant was
killed on shore on some such Pretence, or because he had a good
Suit of Cloaths, or both. Captain Canning of the Dove Brigantine
1732, was cut off by the Natives of Grand Bassau from an
Inadvertency; first, of tempting the Negroes with the sight of a fine
Cargo, and then by trusting the Mate Mr. Tho. Coote on shore; the
one prompted them to rob, and the other was an Hostage for their
Security, they ventured off in their Canoos and murdered all the
Company under the Conduct of a Fellow they called Thomas Grey,
who run the Vessel in shore; the Mate remained with them unhurt,
about sixteen days, and was then redeemed by Captain Wheeler for
17 Pounds worth of Goods, which as an Encouragement to the
Service, he was suffered to repay at London. His Food during the
stay, was Indian Corn, Rice, Snails and Monkeys; the last they shoot
as often as they want, in the Woods, and after the Guts are taken
out, singe the Hair off, and then boil it in the Skin. He saw no other
Flesh in this part of the Country, excepting a few Fowls, tho’ he was
up it above twelve miles.
2. The Gold Coast is the middle and smallest part of the Division,
stretching from Axiem a Dutch Settlement, to near the River Volta,
an extent of 70 or 80 Leagues, but of more consequence than the
others, in respect to our’s and the Dutch Company’s Forts, who
together command the greatest part of it. There is one Danish Fort at
Accra indeed, (the Leewardmost of our Settlements) but in a
decaying State, and will probably (as that of the Brandenburghers at
Cape Tres Puntas) be relinquished in a little time.
Our Company’s principal Fort is at Cape Corso. That of the Dutch,
two or three Leagues above, called Des Minas or St. George de
Elmina; each has other little ones up and down this Coast, to gather
in the Trade that centers for the respective Companies, at one or
other of the aforesaid larger Forts.
The African Company was erected under the Duke of York in K.
Charles II’s Time, and therefore Royal; the Epithet being still
retained, tho’ that Prince’s Superstition, and Thirst after Power, have
long since justly banish’d him the Realm.
In it’s first flourishing Condition, it was allowed by authentick
Accounts to have gained annually to England 900,000l. whereof in
Teeth, Camwood, Wax and Gold, was only 100,000l. and the rest in
Slaves; which in the Infancy of their Trade were in very great
demand over all the American Plantations to supply their own wants,
and carry on a clandestine Commerce with the Spanish West-Indies.
On Computation, Barbadoes wanted annually 4000 Negroes,
Jamaica 10000, Leeward Islands 6000; and because the Company
(’twas complained by such as wished them ill Success) could not
supply this Number, having only imported 46396 Slaves between the
years 1680 and 1688; Interlopers crept in, and contended for a
Share; which the Company represented as contrary to the Privileges
of their Patent, and withal, that the Accusation was groundless and
unjust, because they did supply enough for demand, and maintained
Forts and Garisons at a great Charge, for awing and subjecting the
Natives to trade, and maintaining an Industry equal to the Dutch,
without which it was plain to all impartial Considerers, it would be but
very difficultly carried on. However, their Adversaries, after some
years of grumbling, obtained an Act of Parliament 1697, whereby
private Traders for making good this deficiency of Slaves, should
have Liberty of Trade, allowing the Company 10 per Cent. towards
defraying their extraordinary Expence.
From this time the Company more visibly decayed, insomuch that
in eight following years they only imported to the West-Indies 17760
Slaves; and the separate Traders in that time 71268.
Their 10 per Cent. in the first ten years amounted to 87465l. and
therefore finding their Trade under great disadvantages with these
new Inmates, they resolved to make the best shares they could in
this Money, by lessening their Expence about the Forts. They
accordingly withdrew all Supplies from their Garisons, leaving them
to subsist by their own Management or starve. Gambia Fort having
only twelve men, was taken by a Privateer of eight Guns in 1709,
Sierraleon thirteen men, Sherbro four, and these not of any Charge
to the Company, but were possessed by such, who having a long
time resided in their Service, by help of those Fortifications were
capable to do something for themselves, and so the private Traders
by degrees got entirely quit of their Impost; the reason in a manner
ceasing, for which it was at first allowed.
About 1719, their Affairs seemed to revive again, under the
Auspices of the Duke of Chandois, who became a very considerable
Proprietor in their Stock, and promised from his Figure and Interest a
Renewal of those Privileges that had depressed them; their
Objections ceasing, (the number demanded being now very short of
what it was formerly.) More Ships were imployed than for many
years past, but whether it were their too large Expence, or
Corruption of their chief Officers, who too often in Companys think
they are sent abroad purely for their own Service, or both; they soon
felt that without a separate Act they were uncapable of contending
with private Traders, and every year more and more explaining their
Inability, they applied to Parliament, and now support their Forts by
an annual Allowance from the Government, of 10000l.
Those who are the Favourers of Companies suggest, that if the
Trade must be allowed, and the Christian Scheme of enlarging the
Flock cannot well be carried on without it, that then it seems
necessary and better for the Publick that some rich and powerful Set
of Men should have such exclusive Powers to encourage and enable
the subsisting of Forts and Garisons, to awe the Natives and
preserve the Trade from being engrossed by our dangerous Rivals
here, the Dutch; which, as we relinquish, falls an acquisition to them,
and renders all precarious; they could also bring (as an exclusive
Company) foreign Markets to their own Price.
The Company’s Trade wanting that Encouragement, every year
grows worse; buying dearer than in times past on the Coast, and
selling cheaper in the West-Indies; the reason at Guinea, is a greater
Scarcity of Slaves, and an improved Knowledge in the trading
Negroes who dispose of them; and at the West-Indies it is the
Demand failing, more disadvantageously still for them, because
separate Traders are not under the delays they are subject to: They
take the whole Coast in their way, while the other is consigned to the
Governour, and can afford to undersel their Goods (necessary
Requisites for Dispatch and Success) because they stand exempt
from all Coast-Charges. On the other side, our Colonies are now
pretty well glutted with Slaves, and their Call consequently not nigh
so large: 2000 in a year perhaps furnishes all our Plantations, and
tho’ more are imported, it is in order to transport them again to the
Spanish West-Indies, where tho’ the Assiento Ships are of late years
only indulged by Treaty, all others being liable to Confiscation, and
the People to Slavery if taken by the Spanish Guard le Costa; yet the
Prospect of Gain inciting, they still find means to continue on, and
maintain a forcible Traffick for them, under the Protection of their
Guns. This clandestine Method, by the way, hurts the South-Sea
Company, beating down the Price of their Slaves, who cannot so
well afford it, because bought, and brought there at a greater
Charge.
The third part of our Division is the Bay of Guinea, which takes in
Whydah, Benin, Callabar, &c. to Congo and Angola in 8°° S. In this
Extent Whydah is principal, there being more Slaves exported from
that place before the late Conquest of it by the King of Dauhomay,
than from all the rest of the Coast together, the Europeans being
said in some years to have carried off 20000; but more of this by and
by. I shall only observe, that as this part abounds more with Slaves,
the other does with Gold, and the windward Coast with Ivory.
I now proceed to our Method of Trade, and shall sum the Rules of
it up, under the head of Interlopers. Private trading Ships bring two
or three Boats with them upon this Coast for Dispatch, and while the
Mates go away in them with a proper Parcel of Goods, and
Instructions into the Rivers and By-places, the Ship is making good
her Trade at others near hand.
The Success of a Voyage depends first, on the well sorting, and
on the well timing of a Cargo. Secondly, in a Knowledge of the
places of Trade, what, and how much may be expected every where.
Thirdly, in dramming well with English Spirits, and conforming to the
Humours of the Negroes. Fourthly, in timely furnishing proper Food
for the Slaves. Fifthly, in Dispatch; and Lastly, the good Order and
Management of Slaves when on board; of each, a Word or two.
First, on the Timing of a Cargo: This depends at several places
much on Chance, from the fanciful and various Humours of the
Negroes, who make great demands one Voyage for a Commodity,
that perhaps they reject next, and is in part to be remedied either by
making the things they itch after, to pass off those they have not so
much mind to, or by such a continual Traffick and Correspondence
on the Coast, as may furnish the Owner from time to time with quick
Intelligence, to be done only by great Merchants, who can keep
imployed a number of Ships, that like a Thread unites them in a
Knowledge of their Demands, and a readier Supply for them, as well
as dispatch for their Master’s Interest, by putting the Purchases of
two or three Ships into one. The late Mr. Humphry Morrice was the
greatest private Trader this way, and unless Providence had fixed a
Curse upon it, he must have gained exceedingly.
Secondly, Of the Sorting, this may be observed in general; That
the Windward and Leeward Parts of the Coast are as opposite in
their Demands, as is their distance. Iron Bars, which are not asked
for to Leeward, are a substantial Part of Windward Cargoes.
Crystals, Orangos, Corals, and Brass-mounted Cutlasses are almost
peculiar to the Windward Coast;—as are brass Pans from Rio
Sesthos to Apollonia.—Cowreys (or Bouges) at Whydah.—Copper
and Iron Bars at Callabar;—but Arms, Gun-powder, Tallow, old
Sheets, Cottons of all the various Denominations, and English Spirits
are every where called for. Sealing-wax, and Pipes, are necessary in
small Quantities, they serve for Dashees (Presents) and a ready
Purchase for Fish, a Goat, Kid, or a Fowl.
To be more particular, here follows an Invoyce bought at London
about the year 1721.
A G U I N E A Cargo.
l. s. d. l. s. d.
10 Cotton Ramalls at 0 11 0 5 10 0
10 Silk Do 1 00 0 10 00 0
20 Herba-longees 0 10 0 10 00 0
20 Photees 0 17 6 17 10 0
30 Tapseils 0 12 0 18 00 0
20 Blue swaft Bafts 1 02 0 22 00 0
20 Chintz 0 12 6 12 10 0
50 Nichanees 0 13 0 32 10 0
176 Blue Paper Sletias 0 7 6 66 00 0
650 Crystal Beads No 221 per Mill. 2 00 0 13 00 0
2500 Do — No 30 2 12 0 6 10 —
4500 Do — No 36 2 18 0 13 01 0
2000 Rangos per Cwt. 0 11 0 11 00 0
4 Cases and Chests — — — 1 15 0
Charges and Entry at Custom-house — — — 3 12 6
Ct. q. l.
20 Brass Kettles qt. 2 0 02
28 Do 2 0 04
25 Do 2 0 06
251 Guinea Pans 3 0 18
-------------
9 1 02
per Cwt. 7l. 7s. 0d. 68 02 5
-------------
311 00 11
4 Casks 1 03 00
20 Chests of old Sheets each qt. 65,
0 1 10½ 121 17 06
at
130 2lb. Guinea Basins.
73 3 — Do
13 4 — Do
In all 4Cwt. 1q. 11l. 18 04 09
Box of Scales, Weights and blue
— 19 00
Pans.
Cartage, Portage, Wharfage, &c. 4 10 00
84 Quart Tankards at 2s. 2d. 9 02 00
96 Pint Do at 1 8 8 00 00
A Cask — 14 09
11 Groce of slope-pointed Knives at
14 06 00
1l. 6s.
200 Blue Ranters at 0 08 00 80 00 00
50 Narrow green Do 0 08 00 20 00 00
50 Broad blue Do 0 11 06 28 15 00
25 Says at 1 15 06 44 09 06
8 Cases with Carriage 2 10 06
150 Trading Guns at 0 08 03 61 17 06
50 Do dock Locks 0 08 06 21 05 00
150 Cags 0 00 07 02 10 06
21 Cwt. Tallow 2 01 00 43 01 00
For melting and putting up per Cwt. — 00 02 2 03 00
Cartage, and 10 large Cags — 00 11 00 16 08
-------------
797 06 07
35 Small Cags at 0 00 08 1 03 04
10 Barrels of Powder 3 05 00 32 10 00
Wateridge and shifting the Powder 00 08 06
50 Wickered Bottles 0 03 02 9 03 04
172 Gall. malt Spirits 0 02 00 17 04 00
40 Cases of Spirits 0 07 00 14 00 00
Freight of a Vessel to Portsmouth 5 10 00
Expences and Postage of Letters 0 11 00
Commission at 2½ per Cent. 22 03 03
-------------
900 00 00
10 Cwt. of Cowrys at 5l. 50 00 00
-------------
Total 950 00 00
I was but a young Trader, and could not find out till I came upon
the Coast, that this Cargo was ill sorted. At the first place we touched
(Sierraleon) where commonly may be got twenty or thirty as good
Slaves as any upon the Coast, I found I had neither Cutlasses, iron
Bars, a better sort of Fire-Arms, Malt, and other strong Liquors, the
delight of those Traders. At none of the others, quite down to the
Gold Coast, were many considerable Articles of my Invoyce ever
asked for; so that I was forced to make friends with the Factorys, and
exchange at such a loss, that had it not been for the small Wages
our Ship was at, and some lucky hits, the Owners must have
suffered much; but to give an Insight.
The Sale of Goods.

At Sierraleon.
Gold Bars.
1 Piece of Planes 10
7 77lb. Kettles 26
3 Pieces of Chintz 12
1 Piece of Handkerchief Stuff 2
---
The Price of a Woman Slave 50
7 50lb. Kettles 20
5 Pieces of Brawls 10
1 Piece of Ramal 4
1 Bar of Iron 1
---
The Price of a Boy Slave 35
At Apollonia.
Accys.
2 Photees 14
2 Cotton Ramals 8
1 Piece Longee 4
2 Sletias 5
7 Sheets 7
32 Brass Pans 32
---
A Man Slave 70
3 Photees 21
41 Sheets 41
2 Longees 8
---
A Man Slave 70
At Gambia.
Gold Bars.
9 Gallons of Brandy 9
6 Bars of Iron 6
2 Small Guns 10
1 Cag of Powder 10
2 Strings of Pacato Beads 2
1 Paper Sletia 3
---
A Woman Slave 40
At Assinee.
8 Trading Guns 32
1 Wicker Bottle 4
2 Cases of Spirits 6
28 Sheets 28
---
A Man Slave 70
At Anamaboo and Cape Palmas.

Accys.
A Cag of Tallow 2½
A quart Pewter Tankard 1
A Pint Do ½
4lb. Pewter Basin 1
2lb. Pewter Basin ½
Sealing-Wax 3
A qr. Barrel of Powder 8
A gallon Cag of Musket-Shot 6
A gallon Cag of small Shot 8
At Whydah,
Cowrys sell per Cwt.—— 12l. 10s. or in their
way of reckoning, 10 grand Quibesses.
At Angola, the Duties are about 100l. Sterl.
every Ship; and Goods sell, viz.
Pieces.
A Gun 1
A Cag of Powder 1
A deep blue Baft 3
A Culgee 3
A Tapseil 2
A Nicanee 2
A Cutchalee 1½
A red Chintz 1½
A Bundle of Anabasses qt. 10lb. 1
10 Brass Pans small and large 1
4 2lb. Pewter Basins 1
1½ Case of Spirits 1
A whole Case Do 1½
4 Cutlasses 1
A Guinea Stuff ½
2 Bunches of Beads 1
4 King’s Cloths 1
4 Looking-Glasses 1
10 Pint Mugs 1
A Brawl ½
9 Foot of black Bays 1
16 Inches of Scarlet Cloth 1
16 Do of blue Cloth 1
1 Photee 2
1 Pair Cotton Ramal 1½
As I propos’d only a general View of the Trade, I have pointed out

here the best I could, what Goods are asked for, the Price, and at
some places, the Proportion; the Slaves selling at a Medium of 15l. a
Man, and 12l. a Woman; a Gun and Barrel of Powder being always
parts of the Truck (at Cabenda) for a Slave. They have Canoos
there, will carry 200 Men; matted Sails to them, and Cordage twisted
from a wild Vine that grows in plenty about the Country; with these
they pass frequently from Congo to Loango. A Slave-Ship in the
former River would intercept much of the Trade to Cabenda and
Angola: The Duties are easy with the King of Soni, and the Harmony
they live in with a few defenceless Portuguese Missionaries, shews
they are a peaceable People.
A Second Requisite for Success in this Trade, is an acquaintance
with the Places, what may be expected at them, either as to the
Manner of Trading, bold or fearful of one another, and the Number of
Slaves they are able to bring.
Where the Company’s Factors are settled, as at Gambia, and
along the greatest part of the Gold Coast, they influence the Trade
something against private Ships; so also at Sierraleon some
separate Traders live, who voyage it with Boats into the adjacent
Rivers, and most of what a Ship can purchase, is thro’ their hands;
but those from London seldom strike higher upon the Coast than
Cape Mount, Montzerado, and Junk, falling from thence down to
Leeward; many of the places in their Course being rendered
dangerous, from the Tricks and Panyarrs the Traders have first
practised upon the Negroes; a mutual Jealousy now keeping each
side very watchful against Violence. We trade on board the Ship,
often keeping our Sailors in close quarters abaft, because few: while
the Slaves are viewing and contracting for at the fore part; at night
also keeping a good Watch, some of these Negroes attempting now
and then to steal with their Canoos athwart your Hawse, and cut the
Cable. Captain Cummin at Whydah, they stranded 1734.
They again, are as often diffident of coming nigh us, and will play
for hours together in their Canoos about the Ship, before they dare
venture. In this windward part, I have before observed, they have a
superstitious Custom, of dropping with their Finger a drop of Sea-
Water in their Eye, which they are pleased when answered in, and
passes for an Engagement of Peace and Security; and yet after all
this Ceremony, they will sometimes return to shore: If hardy enough
to come on board, they appear all the time shy and frightned, and
from the least appearance of a Panyarr, jump all over board.
Downwards to Bassam, Assinee, Jaquelahou, Cape le Hou, Jaque a
Jaques, Cape Apollonia, and Three Points, or where they have
possibly gained a Knowledge of the English Factorys, there is a
better Understanding and Security: These are places that sell off a
number of Slaves, managed however wholly on board the Ships who
anchor before the Town, hoist their Ensign, and fire a Gun: Or when
the Natives seem timorous, do it by their Boats coasting along the
Beach, and pay at some of them a small Duty to the chief Cabiceers.
Thirdly, To give dispatch, cajole the Traders with Dashees of
Brandy, and tell them, you cannot possibly stay above a day or two,
and that on their account. To a Country-Man, if he joins where there
is prospect of Goodee Trade, you are to form some Story that may
carry him farther to Leeward if possible, (two or three Leagues will
hinder his doing you any Damage for that Voyage.) The Lye did me
most Service, and for which I had the Merchant’s Dispensation, was
informing my good Friend that at Cobelahou they had taken a great
number of Captives, and that Captain —— had got his Freight there
in ten days: this I did with an air of Diffidence, to make the greater
Impression, and at the same time dashee’d his Negro Friends to go
on board and back it. If on better Intelligence such like Story should
not take, and he resolves to stay and share, your Reputation is
secured by the diffidence of your Report, and you must resolve with
him now upon a Price in your Slaves, not to outbid one another; but
at the same time make as strong a Resolution not to observe it. And
here the Master has room to display his talent, the frequency of the
Trick having made all very cautious and diffident.
When a Ship has gathered up all this Trade, she makes up the
deficiency of her Freight at Anamaboo, three Leagues below Cape
Corso, where they constantly stop, and are sometimes two or three
Months in finishing. It is a place of very considerable Trade in itself;
and besides, the Company have a House and Factor, keeping
always a number of Slaves against those demands of the
Interlopers, who, they are sensible, want dispatch, and therefore
make them pay a higher Price for it than any where on the whole
Coast; selling at six Ounces and a half a Slave (in exchange for
Goods) tho’ the poor Creatures look as meagre and thin as their
Writers.
If the Company should want rather to buy than sell, as is
sometimes the case, and fits both; then such a difference is paid by
the General, as shall make it worth the Ship’s time to go to
Windward again.
Hence I make this deduction, that if the Adventurers Stock be
small, only sufficient to employ one Vessel, to have her a Sloop;
because less hazard is run in lengthning out time, which subjects to
Sickness and Mortality among the Slaves; saves the aggregate
Charge of supporting them and a Ship’s Company, and likewise such
a Vessel will have less remains of Cargo, after her Slaving is
compleated; what is left, usually going off to the trading Cabiceers
and Factories at a low Price, or what is worse, kept on board and
spoiled.
Contrarily, great Traders who can imploy many Ships, obviate in a
great measure such Inconveniencies: They put the Trade of two or
three Ships into one at Anamaboo, (the largest and most
chargeable) and with the conjunction of their remains, go to
Windward, and begin anew.
Fourthly, giving way to the ridiculous Humours and Gestures of the
trading Negroes, is no small artifice for Success. If you look strange
and are niggardly of your Drams, you frighten him; Sambo is gone,
he never cares to treat with dry Lips, and as the Expence is in
English Spirits of two Shillings a Gallon, brought partly for that
purpose; the good Humour it brings them into, is found discounted in
the Sale of Goods.
A fifth Article, is the wholesome Victualling, and Management of
Slaves on board.
The common, cheapest, and most commodious Diet, is with
Vegetables, Horse-Beans, Rice, Indian Corn, and Farine, the former,
Ships bring with them out of England; Rice, they meet to Windward,
about Sesthos; Indian Corn, at Momford, Anamaboo, &c. and further
Supplies of them, or Farine, at the Islands of St. Thomas, and

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Bach s Famous Choir The Saint

Thomas School in Leipzig 1212 1804 1st

Rethinking J S Bach s The Art of Fugue 1st Edition

Famous first flights sixteen dramatic adventures First

Michael Freeman s Photo School Fundamentals Exposure

Fichte s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Essays on the Science

50 Most Famous Pieces of Classical Music The Library of

Splendor Solis The World s Most Famous Alchemical

Piano Classics World Masterpieces: Piano Sheet Music

Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages: Mother,

Bach’s Famous ChoiR

translated from the German

the boydell press

An authorised translation and licensed edition of

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

The right of Michael Maul to be identified as

First published 2018

ISBN 978 1 78327 169 6

The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International –

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List of Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i x

I From Monastery to Municipal Music School, 1212–1593

II How the St. Thomas School Became a Music School, 1594–1640

III ‘Famous Throughout the Whole World of Music’, 1640–1701

Sebastian Knüpfer: ‘very rich in intricate relationships’����������������������������� 118

V School for Scholars or ‘Conservatory of Music’?

Johann Friedrich Doles (I): new ideals in the choir loft����������������������������239

Nicholas Church. Copperplate, F. de Wit, Amsterdam 1682. Stadtgeschichtliches

Author’s Note on the English Edition

It’s not often that a German-language monograph in musicology is published in

cessful conclusion within three years. My German publisher, Mark Lehmstedt,

As concerns me, I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas

not even highly literate – communications among Leipzig’s governing bureaucrats

John Eliot Gardiner, 2012

ORGANIZATION OF THE ST. THOMAS SCHOOL

Religious Officials LEIPZIG TOWN COUNCIL

ST. THOMAS SCHOOL LATIN SCHOOL for 54–56 CHARITY SCHOOL

CLASSES *I* II III IV V VI VII

Rector academic director of the school √ √ √

Conrector (previously ‘Supremus’) √ √ √

Cantor teaches music in classes I–IV and

Junior Faculty √ = usually teaches

Baccalaureus funerum (from 1723: Quartus)

Baccalaureus nosocomii (from 1723: Quintus) √ √ √

Collaborator I (from 1723: Sex­tus) √ √ √

Collaborator II (from 1723: Septima) √ √ √

* Classes (note that I is the highest, VII the lowest)

Leipzig, June 2012 Michael Maul

The Sale of Goods.

At Anamaboo and Cape Palmas.

As I propos’d only a general View of the Trade, I have pointed out

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List of Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i x

Sebastian Knüpfer: ‘very rich in intricate relationships’�� 118

Johann Friedrich Doles (I): new ideals in the choir loft��239

CLASSES I II III IV V VI VII

Collaborator I (from 1723: Sextus) √ √ √

Leipzig, June 2012 Michael Maul