Music

“If you get asked this question, you can’t say no” – God is hold, Black new Thomas Cantor

A large majority of the city Council of Leipzig has chosen the singer and conductor gotthold Schwarz to the Thomas Cantor. It was a great honour, says an Interview with the new choir Director of the famous thomanerchor in the DW.

If Saturday is singing in the afternoon in the Thomas Church in Leipzig, the thomaner choir in a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, then a few hundred people, including many tourists, who want to hear the famous boys ‘ voices. The St. Thomas boys choir has been around for over 800 years. The world famous Cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, who led the choir for 27 years until his death in 1750. Shortly before the opening of this year’s Bach festival on March 10. It was June, Gotthold Schwarz 17. Cantor of the Thomas Church appointed to Bach. He succeeds Christoph Biller, the 22-year-long the office as the Thomas Cantor in Leipzig was held. The singers, conductor and Organist, Gotthold Schwarz was already the interim leader of the Choir. What it means to be a Cantor, and, thus, in the broadest sense, Bach’s successor, he explains in a DW Interview.

DW: It is, as Johann Sebastian Bach in 1723 took up the post of thomaskantor in Leipzig, as he had initiated a fundamental Reform. For example, that he composed each week, a new cantata. Are you also reforms?

Gotthold Schwarz: So the basic reforms, there is not sure. We will restructure of some of the tasks for the members of the choir better, so that you have more leisure time and can regenerate and then to some concert projects with a little more rest to prepare.

That is to say, the boys are very busy.

Yes, especially in the time prior to school year end. Since the stream is still fixed, and then the summer trip of the members of the choir and the 24. June there is the final motet, before it goes into the holidays.

It was a longer process, not to occupy the position of Thomas Cantor, because the candidate corresponded to ultimately the requirements. They have taken over the office in the meantime on an interim basis, but have not reckoned with the appeal.

I had assumed that this interim period is in the summer for me and now it came – somewhat surprisingly – different. But of course it is a great honour and obligation, I will like to meet. If you get asked this question, to assume the office, then you don’t say no.

The claims to a Cantor of the Thomas Church are particularly high?

The good manners with the young God hold Black especially important

It requires a Person with artistic and human Format. Then, of course, are also expected to not put musical accents that were, perhaps, so far in the foreground. The one who performs the office, of course, must also find a good deal with the boys. This is actually the most important thing is that you met the boy as a person, but also as a demanding musician who claimed a high level.

And beyond that, what we want to do with our music counts, of course. You have to bring the singers to the spiritual content of the works close to, so that you can convey the content to the listener.

They themselves were also members of the choir?

I have been for a short time as a child, St. Thomas, had then but homesick all the time and have to leave the choir. But there was never a real separation. During my studies, I have sung as a soloist with the Thomas choir and then I was at the end of the studies already voice educator of the Choir.

It is said: “Once a Thomaner, always a Thomaner” – is this done today?

This is certainly a good spell, and the ties and the embossing, the social place, which is practically a lifetime. That is why the good community is the Thomas choir is so important.

Choir concert in the Leipzig Thomas Church

What fascinated still, by a pure boys ‘ choir? You could have the high voices of girls singing.

Has a sound of its own, a boys ‘ choir. The boys ‘ voices, when they are formed, have their own Timbre, and that is, I think the appeal of it. This specific sound is the focus of a boy’s voice before the voice is the voice other than in the case of the girls – and this is audible.

What do you do with the boys in the puberty, when the voice comes?

The boys, in the breaking of the voice, in the dispensed time, so we call them, are exempt from the vocal tasks. But they are entrusted with organizational tasks, or tasks for the community, thus, the connection within the Choir never stops.

If you look back on your time with the Thomas choir, the choir changed over time?

The so-called “Kieler blouse” as a concert clothing, the trademark of the members of the choir

Has changed not much. Except in bad times, during the Nazi dictatorship and the GDR, where the life in the Alumnat, in the “box”, as we like to call the Internatsbau, should be strongly influenced, for example, through the SED, I have never experienced. From the Nazi time, there are images, where the choir in the Uniform of the Hitler youth occurred – but these influences has resisted the choir. This is of course due to the content of the music, from which we draw the strength.

And how do you see the musical side? By the Bach-Archiv, there was very much research in the direction of historical performance practice.

Still in the 1970s or 1980s, to feel a little of what was in Europe, actually is Commonplace to deal with the historical instruments was here in the GDR. The historical practice has of course an impact on the linguistic treatment of the respective texts and the connection to melody and harmony.

Today, we place the Thomas choir of emphasis on the connection between rhetorical concision, and tonal homogeneity. Because you can make a Phrase, for example, easier and much clearer for the listeners experience. The Aesthetic was still in front of 30, 40 years. You wanted more of a large-scale, Legato sound that took account of this rhetorical Element is so strong.

What is the role of Bach for the choir? You no longer sing only Bach.

Bach is, of course, in the foreground. We play usually every week, a Bach cantata or a motet to the days of the high. For me, however, it is also important that we back to the old masters such as Heinrich Schütz and the former Cantor Johann Hermann Schein again more in the foreground. Then there are the musicians, such as Brahms or Mendelssohn, in which the kinship to Bach again, and where this Element of the linguistic connection with the melodic or harmonic skeleton of a very important role to play.

Are you composing as a Cantor of St. Thomas Church also cantatas?

No, as a composer, I am not going to press me, I have. This requirement has placed on me.

The Interview was conducted by Gaby Reucher.

World-famous St Thomas’s boys choir (2012)