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• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:20+00:00 Jauchzet Gott in allen Länden BWV 51 / BC A 134 13 cantata for soprano solo. Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 09/17/1730 in Leipzig after Trinity 1728. . plain 2024-04-24T14:57:27+00:00 1730-09-17 BWV 51 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity15 cantata for soprano solo Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 134 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Jauchzet Gott in allen Länden, BWV 51 / BC A 134" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 416 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig after Trinity 1728

  Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 17, 1730

  In various regards, the cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen BWV 51 (Rejoice to God in all lands) occupies a special place in the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. First of all, this applies to the generic term “cantata,” which stands as the work’s title on the manuscript’s first page. Apart from his secular works, Bach was quite sparing in his use of the term. It is found in several compositions that flawlessly embody the type defined around 1700, consisting only of recitatives and arias that use freely versified text. In addition, it is also found in several works that include chorale strophes in their texts, whether these are set in four parts or transferred to the solo voice, as in the case of our cantata.
  
  Also unusual are the demands on the solo soprano in terms of staying power, skill at coloratura, and vocal range. Even so, Johann Adolph Scheibe’s 1737 complaint proves unjustified, namely, that Bach’s pieces were too difficult to perform because the composer demanded that singers and instrumentalists match with their throats and their instruments what he was able to play on the keyboard, and that was impossible. In our cantata, one never meets the kind of mischievously amassed difficulties of the sort found in the solo cantatas of the Hamburg opera composer and Bach contemporary Reinhard Keiser.¹ Except for the high C (two octaves above middle C) that appears one time each in the opening and closing movements, the demands do not exceed the level required of choral sopranos in certain parts of the B-Minor Mass.
  
  Moreover, the combination of solo soprano and concertante trumpet² is unique in the works of Bach, particularly in view of the hardly understaffed ensemble of string instruments. The era was indeed quite familiar with the combination of soprano and trumpet, as seen in Alessandro Scarlatti’s cantata Su le sponde del Tebro or the oft-recounted story of the competition between the castrato Farinelli and a famous trumpeter in Rome in the 1720s. Still, no companion piece to Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen can be found in Bach’s oeuvre. Instead, when matching the power of one to three trumpets, Bach generally prefers the greater volume of the bass voice.
  
  Also without parallel in Bach’s oeuvre is the virtuoso mien of the entire cantata. It pays tribute to the skill of both soloists, and in doing so it runs the risk of slipping too close to a certain undesirable superficiality. Also significant in this regard is the remarkable effort to couple a concerto for two violins with a chorale cantus firmus. This constellation certainly has something to do with the fact that at roughly the same time as the first performance, about 1730, Bach composed his famous Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor BWV 1043 (or reperformed it, in the event it had been written earlier).
  
  In keeping with the composition’s tendency toward virtuosity, there is a peculiarity of the text that has long vexed Bach scholarship: while the libretto of the cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen is entirely devoted to praise and adoration, it has scarcely anything to do with the Gospel reading of the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. However, this exact assignment to the church calendar is a late addition; the original assignment read “In ogni Tempo” (for all times) in the church year, a relatively rare carte blanche in Bach’s cantatas.
  
  The secondary nature of the assignment just mentioned results in an ambiguity that is difficult to resolve regarding the work’s genesis and, in particular, its performers. Based on his profound understanding of Leipzig music history, Arnold Schering suggested that “a particularly skilled young choirboy, . . . or, what is more likely, a student falsettist” might have taken over the challenging solo soprano part.³ Then the trumpet part would have fallen to the senior member of the Stadtpfeifer (city pipers) ensemble, Gottfried Reicha. Decades later, the American musicologist Robert Marshall considered the possibility of a more professional performer, pointing to a soprano known to be active in Dresden around 1730, the castrato Giovanni Bindi—though without credibly explaining his participation in a Protestant Church cantata. Therefore, Klaus Hofmann of Göttingen proposed considering the possibility that the Leipzig Thomaskantor may have received a commission from outside the city and suggested a connection to the nearby court of Weissenfels, where there was a long tradition of birthday and other congratulatory musical pieces for soprano and trumpet. Furthermore, in Weissenfels, as well as in Hamburg and Darmstadt but not in Leipzig, female singers could take part in church music.
  
  Nevertheless, it is worth considering whether a particularly gifted St. Thomas soloist could have ventured the challenging soprano solo. To date we have no documentary evidence of this, but that is due to the particular nature of source transmission. In memoranda preserved in the archive of the Leipzig city hall, Bach and several of his predecessors describe the condition of the St. Thomas School and its choir in dismal terms, for well-considered reasons. Thus Johann Kuhnau, cantor of St. Thomas in 1717, complained about the excessive strain on students exposed to wind and weather without consideration for the effect on the most sensitive descant voices. The voices, he explained, were lost even before the singers had gained the ability to capably perform an easy short concert at sight with confidence, a goal that required longer training and often eluded even professional singers. The possibility mentioned almost accidentally by Kuhnau of achieving a certain level of perfection in spite of strenuous work as a musician echoes a remark by Johann Mattheson in Hamburg, who had been able to have women sing- ers appear, at least in the cathedral. Mattheson wrote in 1739: “The boys are of little use, I mean, the chapel boys. Before they have attained a reasonable ability to sing, the descant voice is gone. And if they know a bit more or have a mature voice, more so than others, they work so hard to develop themselves that their voice [Wesen] is unpleasant and has no staying power.”⁴ Mattheson obviously wanted to highlight his innovation. His words need to be put into perspective, just as should the oft-cited negative judgment of falsetto singing by Johann Adam Hiller, a successor to Bach as cantor of St. Thomas at the end of the eighteenth century. According to Hiller, concerts in Leipzig had “never had other singers than when one came forward from the viola or violin and, with a screeching falsetto voice, wanted to sing an aria in the manner of Salimbeni, which, into the bargain, he could not read correctly.”⁵ Here again we have a transparently self-interested remark, for it was Hiller himself who, shortly after the end of the Seven Years’ War, allowed women to appear at Leipzig concerts.
  
  As far as the capabilities of boy sopranos are concerned, we must consider that on average in the eighteenth century the change of voice happened considerably later than it does today. For example, in 1763 the seventeen- year-old son of Cantor Doles at St. Thomas School was still able to sing a soprano solo in a church celebration of the end of the Seven Years’ War. Bach himself, arriving in Lüneburg in 1700, was admitted to the matins choir as a soprano at the age of fifteen. Sometime later, it is plausibly reported, his voice broke, and his “uncommonly beautiful soprano voice” was gone. While it is only since the early nineteenth century that we have accounts of remarkable achievements by boy sopranos and altos in the Leipzig St. Thomas Choir, nothing speaks against the assumption that this is a continuation of a tradition that could develop, because, as it was said, “the school was a quasi conservatory and the students stayed in school longer than they do today.”
  
  The abilities of a similar boy soloist are described in the autobiography of one Pastor Christian Heinrich Schreyer.⁶ Born in 1751, he was admitted at the age of twelve years and three months to the choir school at St. Anne’s Church in Dresden and in a short time advanced to first soloist: “I was able to climb up to high f with equal strength, without falsetto. My narrow chest became even more so through the strains of breathing, and I was capable of singing runs of three to four measures without pause and of holding single tones even longer that earlier would have exhausted all my breath.”⁷ This refers to supplemental cadenzas, interpolation of higher pitches, and other means of demonstrating an exceptional artistic skill.
  
  One cannot dismiss the possibility that there were excellent soprano soloists in Leipzig as well during Johann Sebastian Bach’s time, around 1730 and later, who were equal to the demands of the cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen. Further, while the reason for the work’s composition in any case is best sought outside Leipzig, this does not preclude possible reperformances there. It appears that there were at least three of these. One is attested to by several textual changes by Bach that focus on a Herrschaft (lordship; not more closely defined); a second, possibly, by the revised assignment to the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. A third is documented by several changes in instrumentation undertaken by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach in Halle. A 1784 account attests that superb soprano soloists were available there as well from time to time. It mentions “a certain young man [who], roughly in his seventeenth year, has the great fortune of still singing the first soprano parts.... His voice is bright, with a very great range. His trills were—at least as of a year ago—uncommonly clear and large. He has a very high degree of expression in his power.”⁸ Almost all of these are exceptional cases. But this is exactly what an exceptional work such as Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen requires.

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  Footnotes

  1. Scheibe (1737, 36); Kümmerling (1955); Lindner (1855, 186).↵
  2. Wolf (1997); Hofmann (1989); Marshall (1976).↵
  3. “ein erlesener junger Thomaner, . . . oder, was wahrscheinlicher ist, ein studentischer Falsettist” (Schering 1950, 121).↵
  4. “Die Knaben sind wenig nutz. Ich meine, die Capell-Knaben. Ehe sie eine leidliche Fähigkeit zum Singen bekommen, ist die Discant-Stimme fort. Und wenn sie ein wenig mehr wissen, oder einen fertigen Hals haben, als andre, pflegen sie sich so viel einzubilden, daß ihr Wesen unleidlich ist, und hat doch keinen Bestand.”—Trans↵
  5. "nie andere Sänger gehabt, als wenn einer von der Bratsche oder Violin vortrat,und mit einer kreischenden Falsettstimme, dem Salimbeni eine Arie nachsingen wollte, die er oben drein nicht recht lesen konnte.”—Trans.↵
  6. Schulze (1987, 191ff.).↵
  7. “Mit gleicher Stärke war ich ohne Fistel imstande, bis ins dreigestrichene F hinaufzusteigen. Selbst meine bisherige Engbrüstigkeit verminderte sich durch die Anstrengung des Atmens, und ich vermochte Läufer zu drei bis vier Takten lang ohneabsetzen zu singen und einzelne Töne noch länger auszuhalten, sowie ich vorher vollen Odem geschöpft hatte.”—Trans↵
  8. “ein gewissen jungen Menschen [der] jetzt ungefähr in seinem 17. Jahre noch immer mit vielem Glück die ersten Diskantrollen [singt]. . . . Seine Stimme ist hell, und von einem sehr großen Umfang. Der Triller war, wenigstens noch vor einemJahre, ungemein deutlich und groß. Den Ausdruck hat er in einem sehr hohen Gradin seiner Gewalt.” Serauky (1942, 184).↵