Leipzig

Leipzig is where German music keeps its accounts. Bach served as Thomaskantor here for twenty-seven years, writing a cantata a week for the boys' choir that still sings his motets in the Thomaskirche every Friday and Saturday, eight centuries old and counting; he lies beneath the choir he trained. The Gewandhaus Orchestra, the world's oldest civic concert orchestra, premiered epochal works under Mendelssohn, who also founded Germany's first conservatory here; Schumann edited his music journal in Leipzig's coffee houses; Wagner was born around the corner; and Grieg, Janáček and half of musical Europe passed through the city's conservatory and publishing houses — Breitkopf, Peters — that made Leipzig music's printing press.

The trading city behind the music — its fairs privileged since 1497, its arcaded passages built for commerce and now for flânerie — has a heroic modern chapter: the Monday demonstrations that gathered at the Nikolaikirche in autumn 1989 grew from prayers to seventy thousand candles and broke the East German regime without a stone thrown. "Wir sind das Volk" was first said here.

Auerbachs Keller, where Goethe set Faust's carousal, still pours; the Museum of Fine Arts and the cotton-mill galleries of the Spinnerei carry the visual arts; and between Thomanerchor, Gewandhaus, opera and Bachfest, Leipzig remains what Bach made it — a city where counterpoint is municipal infrastructure.