27 - Deceptive Cadence

Summary

By the early 1930s the sexagenarian Thomaskantor had taken on an old man's mien, his hair receded and white. The stress-related issues that had stopped him in his tracks in August 1935 portended a long decline. Despite warning signs, his schedule remained as punishing as ever, the pressures unrelenting. As 1936 dawned, Max Hinrichsen continued to fire off regular news that customers were anticipating the Bach edition and inquiring as to its progress. Having been reminded the previous fall about his roots in England, and mindful now to exercise those connections, Straube had escaped to Hamburg in late March 1936 to hear the choir of King's College, Cambridge, at the Jakobikirche, one of the final stops on its northern European tour. “The Thomaner surpass the English choir by far in terms of sound,” he confided to Hertha. “But despite that, there is a wonderful peace and beauty to the choir's singing, something expressly English, something sweet and tranquil, I can't express it any other way.” It was not “his” sound, but one that had captured his imagination in London some ten years earlier. “The English felt it was a great honor that I came,” he continued, clearly gratified.

That same spring Straube became light-headed during a rehearsal and again during a business meeting. On May 22, for the second time in a year, he was off to the Glottertal on medical orders to quiet his nerves. “My duties will be assumed by Herr Helmut Kästner, who, as a former Thomaner and first prefect will lead rehearsals and the church music in my sense and according to my practice,” he informed the new rector Alfred Jentzsch. Kästner, who had stepped into the breach during the 1935 episode, was again engaged on the enthusiastic recommendation of both cantor and rector. The latter had hastened to add in his official assessment, “Aryan ancestry unquestionable. He is intimately acquainted with the Thomanerchor and so is the most appropriate substitute in the rehearsals.”

Actually it seems that the most “intimate” and “appropriate” Kenner to have taken the reins would have been the cantor-in-waiting Günther Ramin.