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The earliest stirrings of music at St Thomas Church (Thomaskirche) came from the singing school established by Augustinian monks in the early 1200s. To begin with, the church would have echoed simply to plainchant, but by the middle of the 13th century, just as in England and France, the monks began to use polyphony. With its associated school, St Thomas soon became the most important of Leipzig\u2019s churches, and by the 15th century the post of its musical director, Thomaskantor, was formalised.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1519 the first major post-holder, Georg Rhau, wrote the music <\/i>introducing the debate between Martin Luther, the incipient Protestant, and the defender of the Catholic faith, Johann Eck. Rhau\u2019s strong Lutheran sympathies forced his departure shortly after, but Leipzig nevertheless embraced the Reformation in 1539, soon becoming the leading centre of Lutheran church music. All church property now passed to the Town Council, which turned the Thomasschule into a grammar school with the Thomaskantor as its musical head. The Kantor was more school teacher than Kapellmeister and although he directed music at the churches of St Thomas and St Nicholas, he was employed first and foremost by the school where he was resident. The third most senior member of staff, the Kantor was responsible for teaching music, Latin and other subjects to the boys, as well as training the choristers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n By the early 17th century the reputation of the choir had spread beyond Leipzig\u2019s town walls and the post of Thomaskantor began to attract a succession of first-rate musicians with wide intellectual interests. Sethus Calvisius (Kantor 1594-1615) was a distinguished theorist, chronologist and astronomer, while Sebastian Kn\u00fcpfer (1657-1676) was admired for his profound knowledge of philology and poetry. His mentor, Tobias Michael (1631-1657) read theology and philosophy but above all cherished the choir, raising the level of performance by insisting that pupils be selected first and foremost for their singing ability; he also saw the choir safely through the Thirty Years\u2019 War (1618-1648).<\/span><\/p>\n The first really front-rank composer was Johann Hermann Schein (1615-1630) who, unusually for a Thomaskantor, composed secular as well as sacred music and published it systematically. But even he couldn\u2019t escape the mundane demands of the day job: teaching ten hours of Latin grammar and four hours of singing a week. On the bright side, though, there was always the respect and revenue to be earned from the choir\u2019s attendance at the weddings and funerals of Leipzig\u2019s great and good, a role which resulted, during Kn\u00fcpfer\u2019s tenure, in the elevation of the Thomaskantor to Leipzig\u2019s director of music, increasing the status of the post \u2013 and also its workload.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Prestige encouraged innovation and the Thomaskantors led the development of Lutheran church music with the colourful, large-scale festival cantata, cultivated by Kn\u00fcpfer and his successor Johann Schelle (1677-1701), and the chorale-based cantata linking the hymn<\/a><\/strong> of the day to the subject of the sermon \u2013 a form that Bach would later perfect. Schelle and his successor Johann Kuhnau (1701-1722) shared a deep awareness of the meaning of the biblical texts they set, and to give them the fullest possible expression they broadened the scope of the cantata<\/a><\/strong> to include operatic style recitatives and arias. But along with these developments, the baton they passed to their heir was weighted with increased responsibilities and the demand to stretch the St Thomas choir between four of Leipzig\u2019s churches.<\/span><\/p>\nThomaskirche during the Reformation<\/h2>\n