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BWV51

No, it was done by Marianne Kweksilber - a rather mercurial performance (sorry). It's not one of my favorites from the set and I usually play the JEG recording with Emma Kirkby on Philips (paired with the Mag in D). I heard her do it live in Muehlhausen in Bach's Divi Blasius Kirche; they had to have another go at the Alleluja as the trumpet fluffed.
I think 51 and 199 (Barbara Bonney) are the only two cantatas where they didn't use boys.

I've just had a relisten to the Teldec recording. Kweksilber has a very light, bright voice, rather boy-like, which I suppose suits the rest of the series, but to my ear, even though it's not "inaccurate" it somehow doesn't quite seem in control. The recording date is 76 (p), so she would have been in her early 30s. The fiendish Alleluja is the best bit and the trumpet's good, too. Overall, better than I remembered.
 
No, it was done by Marianne Kweksilber - a rather mercurial performance (sorry). It's not one of my favorites from the set and I usually play the JEG recording with Emma Kirkby on Philips (paired with the Mag in D). I heard her do it live in Muehlhausen in Bach's Divi Blasius Kirche; they had to have another go at the Alleluja as the trumpet fluffed.
I think 51 and 199 (Barbara Bonney) are the only two cantatas where they didn't use boys.

I've just had a relisten to the Teldec recording. Kweksilber has a very light, bright voice, rather boy-like, which I suppose suits the rest of the series, but to my ear, even though it's not "inaccurate" it somehow doesn't quite seem in control. The recording date is 76 (p), so she would have been in her early 30s. The fiendish Alleluja is the best bit and the trumpet's good, too. Overall, better than I remembered.
Thank you! Just wondered - I couldn't imagine a boy, any boy (especially back in those days) being able to handle the virtuoso demands of this cantata.
 
Of course, some of Bach's corpus of cantatas were written before his engagement in Leipzig, so it could conceivably have been written for a court singer (and the courts did use women singers), and perhaps never used in a church.
 
From Wikipedia:

"The Bach scholar Alfred Dürr assumes that Bach had an unusually gifted singer, adding that a female voice was unlikely in conservative Leipzig.[2] According to Joshua Rifkin Christoph Nichelmann is a possible candidate because Bach being aware of his capabilities accepted him willingly to the Thomasschule and Nichelmann matriculated into the school three weeks before the first performance."

... and the link to the full article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jauchzet_Gott_in_allen_Landen,_BWV_51
 
Thank you! Interesting stuff. I have Dürr's book on the cantatas (a must for all cantata lovers) and it doesn't quite say what the Wikipedia article says it says (I have the same edition quoted). Dürr opines that because "the solo soprano part, which exceeds in range and technical demands all others in Bach's Leipzig church music...might have been conceived in the first place for a female coloratura soprano rather than a boy treble. It is possible, therefore, that the cantata originated as an occasional work somewhere other than Leipzig: the court of Weissenfels and the Duke's birthday on 23 February (1729?) have been put forward as a plausible venue and occasion". He even says "If the work really was performed in Leipzig on the 15th Sunday after Trinity, as was formerly thought..." (my emphasis).

Anyway, who cares? Boy soprano, female soprano, it's a wonderful piece of music, full stop, end of story.
 


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