Bach's Importance of Choral Formation

In 1723, Bach was appointed cantor of Saint Thomas's School and the director of music at Leipzig. Saint Thomas's school had approximately 55 boys and young men and from that, Bach was to divide those boys into 4 choirs for 4 different churches. The church was extremely important during this time. Leipzig citizens often spent the majority of their morning attending Sunday services from 7 a.m. until around 12 p.m. There were also daily services and special celebrations that were held on holy days and festival days. While Bach was at Leipzig, he not only had to teach Latin and music, he also had to compose music for these services, all of which focused primarily on the Lutheran liturgy. This required Bach to become a "preacher" through his music. He had to interpret passages of the Gospel reading and compose based around the message of the Gospel.

Bach always had singers and instrumentalists at his disposal, regardless of how well trained, well-educated or talented they were, which there were not very many that fit into that category. Bach had to make do with what he had. It is said, that Bach's choir, at the minimum had twelve singers. From other surviving works, we know that Bach had as little as four to eight singers.

In this passage, Bach is describing his perfect "ratio" of singers in a choir. Bach says "Every musical choir should contain at least 3 sopranos, 3 altos, 3 tenors and as many basses." He says this should be because if one falls ill, which frequently happened being that children spread germs very fast, he would still be able to have at least a double-chorus motet. Among his vocalists, he divided them into 2 groups:

1) Concertists- Who performed solo work and were well-rounded musically

2) Ripientists- Had no music of their own and pretty much doubled the concertists when told to do so.

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