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Brahms Shines From the Gewandhaus Orchestra
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11211 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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5 / 1986 |
1,419 Words |
| Author
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Tom Pniewski
Tom Pniewski is a musicologist at Hunter College in New York. |
The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is one the great ensembles of the world, known to millions through its recordings, broadcasts, and concerts. When an orchestra of this stature makes one of its rare trips to the United States from East Germany, in a week-long celebration of Brahms, the musical world has to sit up and take notice--or rather, queue up and take tickets. For it is rarely that one would find such an ideal combination, a marriage made--if not in Heaven--at least somewhere in the neighborhood.
Leipzig has always been a musical city, and the city fathers from the Renaissance on were generous patrons of the arts; don't forget that J.S. Bach lived out his days as a civil servant employed by the Leipzig city council, and to the present day the government supports a rich musical life. In the Middle Ages there were Stadtpfeifer and Kunstgeiger (city wind and string players). In 1599, Turmer (brass players) were hired to play daily from the tower of the city hall. After the Thirty Years' War, the city musicians became more organized and were called upon for festivals, weddings, and funerals, as supervised by the town council or the Thomaskantor (director of music at St. Thomas' Church--Bach's position).
Ensemble music-making often brought together professionals, townspeople, and students from the city's prestigious university in an institution known as the collegium musicum. The earliest recorded groups date from 1688, and in later years they were led by such notables as Telemann and Bach. They continued through the eighteenth century, until the building of a new "Gewandhaus" (cloth-merchants' hall) provided a worthy concert hall for the city's musical life. The original Gewandhaus was completed in 1781, although the musicians'
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