The Tölzer Knabenchor Extends Bach’s Choral Vision

In August 1730—in the seventh year of his post as Leipzig’s Thomaskantor—Johann Sebastian Bach vented his frustration over the ongoing staffing problems with his Thomanerchor in a letter to the Leipzig City Council. In his famous Entwurff einer wohlbestallten Kirchen Music (Draft of a Well-Appointed Church Music), he demanded with great vehemence that his ensemble have at least three or four singers per part if he was to continue fulfilling his duties as Cantor. But he never got this line-up. And indeed, to this day there are no recordings, or even concerts, with such a lean formation — and using only boys’ voices, even for the solo parts. One reason is that very few boys’ choirs today are up to the required quality standard for such a line-up. The Ultra HIP music’s BACH-ENTWURFF-PROJEKT saw this as an opportunity to launch a project with the world-famous Tölzer Knabenchor (Tölz Boys’ Choir) and the Baroque Orchestra Concerto München in which Bach’s wish would, so to speak, be fulfilled posthumously: performances and recordings of various Bach cantatas with the “Entwurff” ensemble! We spoke with Christian Fliegner, the artistic director of the Tölz, and Michael Hofstetter, who will conduct of the upcoming concert, about why something that is usually never done works with the Tölz—and how they go about it.

Interview with Christian Fliegner

Mr. Fliegner, you are not only yourself a Tölz Boys’ Choir alumnus—once a brilliant soprano soloist—but now also its artistic director, responsible not just for many concerts but above all for the singers’ training. How is it that the Tölz soloists, who are engaged for boys’ parts at countless opera houses, festivals, and concerts around the world, can sing as soloists so effortlessly—and, above all, so powerfully? What do you do differently from other boys’ choirs?

Christian Fliegner: Our children start receiving singing lessons from our voice teachers at the age of six, and that allows them to be trained so well that within four or five years they reach this level of quality—not by forcing the voice, but with truly excellent technique, enabling them to sing works such as these cantatas.

Other choirs also offer voice training—yet they usually don’t have soloists who perform so confidently. So is it the Schmidt-Gaden method?

C. F.: Yes, they also have voice training, but not with the same intensity as we do. First of all, all our teachers have been trained either by me or by Mr. Schmidt-Gaden himself after their studies. Because teaching children’s voices is a very particular discipline, it can’t be compared with teaching adult voices. Everyone here works according to the same system, which means we reach our goals much faster. We also have to work quickly, because the boys’ voices change so soon. Our voice-training time is therefore at least one hour per week, whereas in many other choirs it’s often only fifteen or thirty minutes. In addition, we have ensemble sessions, where the children work in pairs or trios on polyphony and intonation, and they also have one or two choir rehearsals a week. And, of course, they learn sight-singing according to the Kodály method, though we’ve also developed our own system so the children can sing intervals. That was the choir’s founding mission when Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden established the Tölz Boys’ Choir: to train the children so well that they could reach this level of excellence. After all, it must have been possible in Bach’s time, too. And I think we’ve succeeded very, very well it’s truly a unique feature, even worldwide, I’d say.

Yes, I think you’re right about that. And you still work the same way Mr. Schmidt-Gaden did when he began in the 1950s?

C. F.: Essentially yes. Of course, the method continues to evolve, we keep refining it, but the foundation remains the same.

That must also be quite a financial commitment… 

C. F.: Oh yes (laughs)! But it’s the only way to achieve this level of quality—to be able to record the Bach cantatas with only three or four boys per part.  

How long have the soloists rehearsed for this project—and the choir, or perhaps one should say the vocal ensemble? 

C. F.: We prepare over one to two months, with intensive rehearsals. The children receive recordings (which we make ourselves) to learn their parts, then we focus on phrasing and technical details, and of course we have rehearsals with the conductor. But above all, it’s essential that the children take joy in the music. That’s the only way to reach this level. If you start with “You must do this and that”—that doesn’t work. I didn’t experience that myself as a child in the Tölz Boys’ Choir, and it was my wish that under my direction, the children would also simply sing with joy. That creates a spark: the children want to achieve something, and then they practice on their own.

So, on the bus to school, they don’t listen to, I don’t know, Taylor Swift…?

C. F.: Not really, they rather listen to Bach! (smiling) They should ideally practice for about an hour a day, I’d say. And not just notes, but voice work, which is crucial. These aren’t just warm-ups for us; they’re targeted exercises designed to help each child work on their individual problem areas such as transitions, breath, vowel structure. That’s why there’s no all-purpose CD you can pop in, and two years later you sing like Pavarotti. Each exercise is tailored to the individual child, so they don’t start developing bad habits in the first place. With children, that’s quite practical. They learn playfully and don’t have the same ingrained problems as adults: tight throats, tension, pushing, singing with force. Children don’t do that at first. They approach it with ease, and that helps avoid a lot of mistakes.

How well suited are the two chosen cantatas to boys’ voices, aside from the fact that they were written for them? Bereite dir, Jesu, noch itzo die Bahn from BWV 147 is, after all, one of the highest soprano arias Bach ever wrote…

C. F.: The cantatas are wonderful (a bit higher than the ones we recorded last time), and indeed, Bereite dir goes up to B-flat2, but our soprano singers can all reach C3. We then divide them into alto, mezzo, or soprano, and for our soloists, a C3 is standard. Through our vocal training, the children have a range of up to three and a half octaves. They actually compete over who gets to sing the highest notes. When they say they’d like to sing the Queen of the Night (up to F3) that’s fun for them (laughs)! The higher it goes, the more excited they get, let’s put it that way. So, they love these cantatas. 

Interview with Michael Hofstetter 

Mr. Hofstetter, as an established guest conductor and long-time friend of the Tölz, having once served as their artistic director for a year, you will now be conducting these cantatas. You’re not especially known as a Bach conductor, but rather as an opera conductor and the artistic director of the Gluck Festival. You do work with period instruments, but that’s a rather different stylistic world. Do you approach Bach differently from colleagues who come more from the early-music or sacred-music sphere?

Michael Hofstetter: A few thoughts on that. First: with this project I’m in a way going back to my roots: I studied organ and church music. I didn’t continue in that field but went into theatre, yet that foundation is still there. Secondly: around the turn of the millennium, I conducted a wonderful Bach project themed Vanitas—five Bach cantatas staged under the direction of Herbert Wernicke, whom I still regard as one of the greatest opera directors, and certainly the most philosophical of them all. That project remains one of the great strokes of fortune in my life. So I approach this, I think, in the spirit imagined by Peter Catalano of the Concerto Vocale Foundation, with the idea that Bach’s music is driven by profound drama. I always feel in it the echo of the tragedies Bach’s family endured during the Thirty Years’ War. We recorded a CD with the Tölz featuring music by the Bach family, and you can clearly sense how deeply that music is still marked by the Thirty Years’ War. It raises existential questions of faith, questions of life itself—and I want to make that vividly tangible. That’s my approach when I read the score and interpret its musical gestures. Bach writes in a very gestural, sculptural language, and I start from this primal human substance that runs so deeply through his music and its moving texts. 

How can one tell that these cantatas were originally written for boys’ voices and such a small ensemble—even smaller, in fact, than what Bach had?

M. H.: Well, what’s striking is that when you read these scores, you immediately feel the urge to make every voice as clear and distinct as possible, because each part is complex and expressive in its own right—something that would be obscured by a thick, blended sound. So, one instinctively wants to use a small line-up. Whether that means two or three singers per part, or one or two—I wouldn’t get hung up on that debate. But fundamentally, it’s this intimate scale. There’s hardly any baroque music more dense, complex, or intricate than that of Johann Sebastian Bach, at least within this genre. And the smaller the forces, the more transparent it becomes by itself. Phrasing further enhances that clarity. With thirty singers per part, you simply have far fewer possibilities than with a small ensemble.

The children learn to trust that inner voice. In other words, to trust themselves. And I think that’s the most important thing one can give a young person today: a healthy self-confidence.

How do you work with the boys on this? What are the differences compared to working with adults in such small formations?

M. H.: Essentially none. The key is, first, that these young singers are very well trained. Once they’re in the concert choir at Tölz, they already have five years of training behind them. And second, they’re genuinely ambitious: they want to be good, to hold their own alongside professional singers! And I think the best thing you can do for children in such an ensemble is to take them completely seriously. Always within a caring environment, of course, but gently demanding of them what you would also expect from an adult singer. Otherwise, they’d feel under-challenged, bored. They want to perform at the same level as adult singers, and they keep working at it. When three boys sing in The Magic Flute in Berlin or New York or wherever, they have to keep up with the other singers performing Pamina or Tamino; that’s what’s expected there. And from us too. Guided lovingly, in an atmosphere of complete safety and support, but treated as fully-fledged artists. And one has to say, Christian Fliegner is a magician with young singers—perhaps because he himself was once one of the great boy soloists.

That’s true. I also have several recordings with him, back from the Bach cantata series with Harnoncourt and Leonhardt.

M. H.: Exactly. Christian’s a real marvel (laughs)! You see, the kids come straight from school. They are sometimes distracted, maybe from difficult circumstances, stressed, whatever. Then in the evening they’re with us, restless, unfocused—and Christian does two or three group vocal exercises with them, then a little contest: he says, “Whoever can hold this note longer than me on one breath gets an ice cream”—and within five minutes he’s got them all fully focused, 100 percent present, and you can feel it: boom, they’ve arrived! I think that’s something incredibly important that this choir, or rather this vocal ensemble, teaches: self-confidence, which is essential for children.

The Tölzer Knabenchor Brings Bach’s Vision to Life

And that hard work pays off. That’s something today’s pedagogical philosophies, with their emphasis on need-oriented rather than effort-based learning, often take away from children, both at school and at home.

M. H.: Exactly. When I put in the effort, I can achieve something, I can make something special of myself. And when you make music, you’re not playing into a void; you see the notes and know how you want it to sound—what I’d call the inner voice. The children learn to trust that inner voice. In other words, to trust themselves. And I think that’s the most important thing one can give a young person today: a healthy self-confidence. That training is priceless. Beyond all the musical joy the children experience (and, of course, the thrill of performing in major opera houses and traveling the world), there’s an immense, purely human, non-musical value: this deep self-assurance that the children take with them from their time in the Tölz Boys’ Choir!