Postcard from Leipzig
Also known as the City of Music, Leipzig is a vibrant destination for music lovers and musicians alike. Every square inch of the city is filled with musical history, making it the perfect place to enjoy and experience classical music.
Read more…Some of the world's most influential composers lived and worked in Leipzig, creating some of the classical repertoire’s most beloved works. Starting with the father of the "Gesamtkunstwerk", Richard Wagner, this was definitely a turning point in the opera scene. Born in Leipzig the same year that the Battle of the Nations took place, Wagner became a passionate opera composer and librettist. His early works were written in Leipzig, laying the foundation for his later style and the intense, epic operas such as 'Tristan and Isolde', 'The Flying Dutchman', 'Parsifal' and many more, which made Wagner famous throughout the world.
Among Leipzig's many magnificent architectural gems, the Gewandhaus is undoubtedly one of the world's most important classical music venues. It was also the reason why Felix Mendelssohn came to the city and worked as the appointed conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, with whom he premiered his 'Violin Concerto in E minor and his “Scottish” Symphony. Mendelssohn was keen to develop Leipzig's musical life and founded the Leipzig Conservatory (now the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy”), where Robert Schumann later became a professor. Schumann was based in Leipzig for several years, where he founded the New Journal of Music and was engaged in music journalism, as well as meeting his wife Clara Wieck, whom he married in 1840. British composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth was briefly a student at the Conservatoire, the first woman to take composition lessons there. Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg also travelled to Leipzig to study at Mendelssohn's Conservatoire.
Gustav Mahler's career began at the Neues Theater (now the Leipzig Opera), where he became second Kapellmeister and gained recognition while writing his first symphony, known as 'Titan'. And how can we forget perhaps the most famous figure in Leipzig's musical history, the first of the "three B's", Johann Sebastian Bach. In his role as Thomaskantor, he prepared the boys’ choir of St Thomas for service in four Lutheran churches - Thomaskirche (St. Thomas), Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas), Neue Kirche (New Church) and Peterskirche (St. Peter) - and organised music for city functions such as town council elections and homages. His Magnificat in E flat major was one of the first compositions he created in Leipzig.