In Lent no church music was performed, except on the festival of the Annunciation; and on the last three Sundays in Advent there was no church music.
The above list of holidays may seem at first sight ample; but it had this great drawback: the masters were never free, as in English schools, to go away for change of scene. The boys appear to have lived with them throughout the year. It is possible that German boys do not cause so much anxiety to their masters as English boys, and that work was not carried on at such high pressure as nowadays; it is quite certain that no master of an English public school could pursue his work continuously, year after year, as these old Germans seem to have done, without breaking down in health.
The cantor was provided with a residence in the school: the salary was 100 gülden (about £13), but the whole income from various sources amounted to about 700 thalers (about £100), together with certain allowances of corn, wine and firewood. A curious custom, though not an uncommon one in those days, was, that certain scholars twice a week went round the town to collect donations for the school; and out of these, 6 pfennige (about three farthings) per week were taken for each scholar and divided between the four upper masters. The moneys collected during the processional singing in the streets, and also the fees paid for funerals and weddings were divided according to certain fixed rules. Bach mentions to Erdmann that when the air of Leipsic is good there are few funerals, and therefore the cantor’s income is smaller. Many efforts were made by the public to evade these taxes, by holding funerals and weddings without music; and there arose a certain feeling of indignation that an important school and church official should partly derive his means of subsistence from money obtained by begging.
Owing to the insufficiency of accommodation the school was a centre of illness, until the building was enlarged.
The Rector, Ernesti, was very old—he was a learned man, but was not able to control either masters or boys. The former quarrelled among themselves, and neglected their duties; the boys were undisciplined, and the many calls on their time for musical performances made their education difficult. When Ernesti was appointed there were one hundred and twenty boys in the lower school; there were now only fifty-three.
The scholarships had plenty of applicants, but the better class of citizens sent their sons to the other schools. The lowest classes of the Thomas School consisted of boys of the worst character, who went about the town barefoot and begging.
Kuhnau’s troubles
All reform which might result in curtailing his salary was opposed by Ernesti, and the cantor seconded his opposition. Things therefore grew worse and worse till his death in 1729. In 1730 the superintendent reported that the school had run wild, and that there were so few scholars that it was proposed to close the lower classes altogether. As to the singing, it must have been very bad. The slow processions in the worst of weather, the running up long flights of stairs to sing before the doors of the higher “flats” ruined the voices. Kuhnau complained in 1717 that the trebles lost their voices before they had learned to use them. In addition to this, they were undisciplined and often feeble and miserable from illness, so that they did not offer an attractive material for the cantor to work upon.
Kuhnau worked his hardest to remedy this state of things, but without avail. In reply to his very reasonable request that at least two trebles should be set apart for church music only, and not allowed to run about the streets and attend funerals for money, the Council took no further steps than to allow 4 gülden for this purpose, and that two boys should be released from the winter processions.