A day in the life

DW: What is the typical day like for a member of the St. Thomas Boys' Choir?

Oskar Didt: It's organized from start to finish. So, you get up at the same time. You have breakfast and then go to school, and then you have lunch. In the afternoon, you have rehearsals and musical lessons - like singing lessons, or maybe piano lessons or other instruments. The rehearsals are during the whole afternoon, and they start with sopranos and end with a rehearsal for the whole choir. In the evening, you have a bit of time to do your homework. Then it's off to bed.

Is there no time for computer games, TV, swimming, soccer?

Sure, in the afternoons. You don't have a rehearsal all the time. The rehearsals are only like an hour long, or one and a half hours, and then you have a bit of time for yourself. If you like, you can do those things. You have the weekends and the holidays. There is still enough time. And you learn to manage your time pretty well once you've found your way in the choir.

There's a great sense of community in the choir, but there must also be rivalries.

Of course. It's a hundred boys living together and spending the whole day together, kind of. Of course there are rivalries sometimes, but those are put aside really quickly. You don't have secret wars going on for years on end. I think it's really easy with boys - easier than with girls. Girls have these fights a bit longer. With boys, you deal with it, or it just goes over. It's easy - it's really easy-going, especially because the older ones really kind of take care of the younger ones. It's easier for an older boy to know what's going on with the little ones than for maybe a teacher because we're just much closer.

When it comes to the repertoire, you sing a lot of Bach, a lot of historic and modern music. What are your favorites?

My favorite is Bach. It's hard to say why, but we regularly do the big pieces by Bach - the St. Matthew's Passion, the St. John's Passion, Mass in B Minor and so on. And you get a sort of routine in it, and you know what's especially fun. So, you can try and do that better.

I like some modern music. But with modern music, it's almost always more difficult to learn than Bach. Bach has some of the same structures, and you recognize stuff from other pieces. You can apply your knowledge and experience with Bach.

Do you have solo singing activity, or do you want to? Do you aspire to that?

We do because with our music class in school, we have to perform once every semester for a grade. We're trained by vocal teachers in our boarding house, and we have lessons once a week. And we're also trained to sing solistically, but of course our main aim is to sing in a choir. That's only on the side and for school purposes.

Do you want to have a career in music?

No, I don't. I think to be able to have a successful career in music, you need to be the best. And you have to be one of the best to earn a living on music. It's really difficult. I think I've done it for nine years now, and it's time to move on. I'll certainly keep music as a hobby. It's impossible to lose that after what I've done with the choir already, but as a profession, it's really difficult to maintain.

When you look back on nine years of having this as your world, what did this world give you for the future?

Basically everything I go into the future with. I guess discipline is quite a big part. You learn to follow rules. It's the music I take and can always draw from this experience. It's the whole living together - the team feeling you have. I think it's something great to build up on.

Oskar Didt is a current member of the Saint Thomas Boys' Choir, which is based in Leipzig. Famous for its centuries-old tradition and high musical standard, the choir is also closely associated with Johann Sebastian Bach. The composer served as its director for nearly 30 years.