(Ger.).
Term describing the office of a Kantor or cantor, who directed the performance of predominantly liturgical sacred music; the position is generally connected with a secondary school (a cathedral school or Lateinschule) and in its strict sense does not describe a singer or, as with the Jewish Kantor, the function of a principal singer. The Kantorat is particularly widespread in Lutheran Germany, but is also found in the Baltic states, Scandinavia and Slovakia.
The pre-Reformation Kantorat developed from the function of the principal singer into the office of a director, and after the 11th century it became a highly respected administrative post. The musical duties of the position passed to a succentor, while the cantor undertook its more formal functions; these posts, still described by the term ‘Kantorat’, survived the Reformation, sharing the fate of the monastic or cathedral chapters to which they were attached, and as the educational system was restructured the Lutheran Kantorat was established in many cities. Its duties were divided equally between sacred and municipal functions (providing music for divine service, in schools and for ceremonial occasions), and the post thus came within the jurisdiction of both the ecclesiastical and the municipal administrative bodies; the Lutheran Kantor occupied a social position somewhere between the clergy and the laity.
The performance of sacred music and the training of singers were important responsibilities for municipal Kantorats; as a cantor eruditus and a university-trained teacher the Kantor would often also teach academic subjects such as Latin. In small towns and in the country the Kantorat often covered non-musical activities as well, such as the duties of sacristan. From the 17th century the activities of municipal Kantors often extended to include the prestigious musical performances commissioned by the public authorities or by private individuals. With these occasional performances and the growing opportunities for composing, Kantors increasingly became music specialists, combining their traditional function as director of musical performances (director musices) with the new role of participating in the town’s rapidly developing concert life. The functions and structures of the post became less rigid after the 17th century, and debate about the traditional role of the Kantor can be traced in the writings of Kuhnau, Bendeler, Mattheson and Mizler. Yet even in the 18th century many theorists, citing Luther in support of their view, still insisted that singing was the essence of the Kantorat. At great churches such as the Marienkirche in Danzig and the Barfüsserkirche in Frankfurt, the Kantorat entailed duties similar to those of a Kapellmeister. The constant adaptations and changing specializations of the post, such as when Kantors stopped teaching non-musical subjects or extended their publishing activities, are important factors in its history. This tendency is seen in J.S. Bach and G.P. Telemann’s disinclination to take on the post’s traditional duties of teaching music and Latin. Such developments led ultimately to the loss of the Kantorat’s original educational function, a change that came about very early in some places: in about 1630–40 in Hamburg, and, according to Rüetz, affecting the Leipzig Thomaskantor in 1753.
Cathedral Kantors, for instance in Bremen, Magdeburg and Breslau, seem to have had more freedom than their colleagues who held civic appointments to participate in public music-making and concert life (no thorough studies have been made of the relationship between cathedral and civic Kantorats). On the other hand, not only did such city Kantorats as those of Dresden and Leipzig survive, so also did many Kantorats in small communities; Mendelssohn considered them the principal seat of the traditional practice of contrapuntal music. Around 1800 the decline of liturgical forms and of sacred song led to the abolition of the Kantorat or its amalgamation with the office of organist.
Attempts were made to re-establish Kantorats in the 19th century. Although little research has been done on this area, it seems that the intention was not to revive the earlier, municipal office but to establish an ecclesiastical position. In the 20th century the reintroduction of the post in churches united areas of church music for which the earlier Lutheran posts of organist and Kantor used to be separately responsible.
The history of the Kantorat is closely connected with the history of schools and education, as well as with aspects of institutional, regional, ecclesiastical and social history. As a result, its sources and literature are to be found in the fields of educational, liturgical and ecclesiastical history, in the history of music teaching and in studies of regional history.
G. Durand: Rationale divinorum officiorum (Mainz, 1459)
J. Kuhnau: Jura circa musicos ecclesiasticos (Leipzig, 1688)
J.P. Bendeler: Directorium musicum (Quedlinburg, 1706)
G.A. Pauli: Dissertatio theologica de choris prophetarum symphonicis in ecclesia dei, von der Prophetischen Cantorey (Rostock, 1720)
G.E. Scheibel: Zufällige Gedancken von der Kirchenmusic wie sie heutiges Tages beschaffen ist (Frankfurt, 1721)
J. Mattheson: M.H.J. Sivers Gelehrter Cantor (Hamburg, 1730)
C. Ruetz: Widerlegte Vorurtheile von der Wirkung der Kirchenmusic und von den dazu erforderten Unkosten (Rostock, 1753)
G.M. Telemann: Nachrichten das Kantorat betreffend (MS, 1775, D-Bsb)
J.N. Forkel: Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (Leipzig, 1788–1801/R)
G.C.F. Schlimbach: ‘Ideen und Vorschläge zur Verbesserung des Kirchenmusikwesens’, Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung, i (1805), 59ff
MGG1 (‘Kantor’, W. Blankenburg); MGG2 (‘Kirchenmusiker’, W. Herbot)
J. Foss: Organist- og Kantor-Embederne (Copenhagen, 3/1927)
G. Pietzsch: ‘Bildung und Aufgabe des Kantors im Mittelalter und Frühprotestantismus’, Die Musikpflege, iv (1933–4), 221
A. Werner: Vier Jahrhunderte im Dienste der Kirchenmusik: Geschichte des Amtes und Standes der evangelischen Kantoren, Organisten und Stadtpfeifer seit der Reformation (Leipzig, 1933)
W.M. Luther: ‘Die gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Stellung des protestantischen Kantors’, Musik und Kirche, xix (1949), 33–40
E. Schieche: Die Anfänge der Deutschen St. Gertruds-Gemeinde zu Stockholm im 16. Jahrhundert (Münster and Cologne, 1952)
K.F. Müller: Der Kantor: sein Amt und seine Dienste (Gütersloh, 1964)
D. Krickeberg: Das protestantische Kantorat im 17. Jahrhundert: Studien zum Amt des deutschen Kantors (Berlin, 1965)
M. Schuler: ‘Zur Geschichte des Kantors im Mittelalter’, GfMKB; Leipzig 1966, 169–73
K.W. Niemöller: Untersuchungen zu Musikpflege und Musikunterricht an den deutschen Lateinschulen vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis um 1600 (Regensburg, 1969)
E. Reimer: ‘Musicus-Cantor’ (1972), HMT
N. Grinde: ‘Latinskolen og dens kor i Christiania ca. 1720–1740’, SMN, iii (1977), 15–32 [with Eng. summary]
K. Jalkanen: Lukkarin-ja urkurinvirka, Suomessa [Precentor and organist posts, Suomessa], i: 1721–1809 (Helsinki, 1986); ii: 1809–1870 (Helsinki, 1976); iii: 1870–1918 (Helsinki, 1978) [all with Eng. summary]
Struktur, Funktion und Bedeutung des deutschen protestantischen Kantorats im 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert: Magdeburg 1991
J. Kremer: ‘Schulische Musikpflege im Zeichen pädagogischer Neuorientierung: zur Musik an der Gelehrtenschule Hamburgs im 18. Jahrhundert’, AMw, xlviii (1991), 126–52
J. Kremer: ‘Kantorat und Musikunterricht zwischen 1766 und 1815’, IRASM, xxii, (1991), 29–46
J. Butt: Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque (New York, 1994)
J. Kremer: Das norddeutsche Kantorat im 18. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen am Beispiel Hamburgs (Kassel, 1995)
J. Kremer: ‘Das Kantorat als Gegenstand der Professionalismusforschung: Überlegungen zu einer Typologie’, Professionalismus in der Musik, ed. C. Kaden and V. Kalish (Essen, 1999), 172–8
JOACHIM KREMER