Leipzig Church Music Institute Celebrates Its Centenary

The Church Music Institute at Leipzig’s University of Music and Theatre is marking a century since its formal establishment in 1926. Its weekend programme, running from 6 to 8 November, places organ music, ensemble performance and liturgy alongside an account of the institute’s complicated history.

A Friday orchestral concert features two seldom-heard works for organ and ensemble: Walter Braunfels’s Concerto for organ, boys’ choir, winds and strings and Samuel Barber’s Toccata Festiva. Students from Martin Schmeding’s masterclass are the organ soloists. Liszt’s Les Préludes and Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony frame the programme.

Saturday brings a motet at St Thomas Church and an organ-improvisation competition at St Nicholas Church, with semi-final and final rounds on the same day. A festival service at the Paulinum on Sunday will include the institute’s choir and alumni. Together, these events show the breadth of church-music training, from concert repertory to improvisation and work in worship.

The Leipzig Conservatory taught organ soon after Felix Mendelssohn founded it in 1843. Karl Straube’s appointment as organ teacher in 1907 helped establish a recognisable Leipzig organ tradition. Straube founded an institute for church music in 1921; its 1926 form is the anniversary being marked now.

The institution’s trajectory was interrupted under both National Socialism and the German Democratic Republic and it was re-established in 1992 after pressure from students. Today it offers bachelor’s, master’s and advanced study in church music, organ, choral and ensemble direction.

The centenary programme is therefore more than a celebration of an uninterrupted line. It acknowledges a tradition that required renewal and shows how Leipzig’s churches, university and performance culture continue to function as a connected training environment.