Leipzig Bach's Home

Leipzig Bach's home...

It takes my encyclopedia only three paragraphs into its entry on Germany’s 10th largest city to make reference to Leipzig as the home of Johann Sebastian Bach. Even today, 260 years after his death, the white-wigged composer remains Leipzig’s favourite son.

Not that he was born here. But for the last 27 years of his life as Cantor (director of music) at St. Thomas Church, he created much of the music for which he has become recognized as one of the foremost musical citizens of the world.

For evidence, look no farther than Tafelmusik’s March calendar. From the 10th to the 14th, Canada’s leading Baroque orchestra and its chamber choir will spend their evenings at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre with “Bach in Leipzig,” a program narrated by William Webster and devised by resident double bassist Alison Mackay, inspired in part by her pilgrimages to western Saxony.

Both she and I naturally make St. Thomas Church a focus of our Leipzig visits, notwithstanding the distinction of the university where Goethe and Wagner studied, the exciting bustle of the annual trade fairs and the beauties of the city’s parks and gardens. For there, in the front of the chancel, rests a simple metal memorial plate, beneath which lie the mortal remains of the greatest of the rebuilt 15th{+-}century church’s many distinguished Cantors.

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