ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the cantors' roles in urban society and their relations with the local and Saxon authorities. Cantors were the leading musicians and directors of church music as well as, increasingly, of secular musical life in Leipzig and other large towns. The chapter shows how religion was the arena where social and cultural change, relations among status groups, and interactions between the authorities and the governed were negotiated. It also examines the cantors' job description and status. The adiaphora of the Baroque era, including music, are best known through a debate between Pietist and Orthodox writers. The adiaphora were regulated in sumptuary ordinances, edicts about religious observance, and legal commentaries; ideas about them were articulated by councilors, territorial rulers, and consistory assessors when they appointed and regulated the activities of cantors and organists. Rather, availability, the ability and willingness to teach at the St. Thomas's school, and general cultural politics, were the focus of discussion.
