Gewandhaus Orchestra

The Gewandhaus Orchestra is the oldest civic symphony orchestra in the world. The orchestra's genesis was the concert society "Das Große Concert," founded in 1743 by 16 noblemen and citizens. With its move to the cloth makers' trade hall in 1781, the ensemble acquired its first high-quality concert hall and the name "Gewandhaus Orchestra."

The orchestra is famous above all for its distinctive warm and dark sound, which clearly sets it apart from many other large orchestras. The orchestra cultivates this unique timbre and broad repertoire diversity in nearly 300 performances annually at its three Leipzig venues: It is the Gewandhaus Concert Orchestra, the Leipzig Opera Orchestra, and the ensemble that performs Bach cantatas weekly in St. Thomas Church together with the Thomanerchor.

At the beginning of the orchestra's history, musical performances in churches, theaters, and at festive secular events were reserved exclusively for the city's permanently employed "town pipers." Professional musicians developed only slowly alongside the town pipers, as they were granted special rights and privileges. Anyone wishing to pursue musical activities could only do so in private salons or the "Collegia musica." However, the city's professional musicians played in these student music societies, as they later did in the founding ensemble of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Due to the increasing technical and personnel demands in church and theater, however, the town pipers were forced for the first time in 1773 to ask members of the concert orchestra (founded in 1743) for assistance. This was an important step that would completely change the city's music system for the next hundred years: the monopoly on professional music-making shifted from the city pipers to the concert orchestra, whose members gradually displaced the city pipers from their territories and played in their venues. The organization of how theater, church, and concert orchestras cooperate with one another and the status of the musicians was repeatedly revised in the following years. The strain caused by the performances of Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle in 1878 at the Neues Theater finally provided the decisive impetus for a far-reaching and fundamental reorganization of the music system in Leipzig and sparked new discussions about the status of musicians. In 1881, the city council therefore decided that there should be a minimum social security benefit for all musicians in the Gewandhaus and theater orchestras and that the orchestra would henceforth be obliged to serve in churches, concerts, and the opera. Since then, the concert hall, opera, and St. Thomas Church have had the same orchestra: the Gewandhaus Orchestra.