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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata XXX.: Freue dich, erloste Schaar 1 . Feast of St John Baptist (1738 2 ) - Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach’s Chorals, vol. 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts [1917]

Edition used:

Bach’s Chorals. Part I: 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts, by Charles Sanford Terry (Cambridge University Press, 1915-1921). 3 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Bach’s Chorals, 3 vols.

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Cantata XXX.

Freue dich, erloste Schaar1 . Feast of St John Baptist (17382 )

For the melody of the concluding Choral of Part I, Louis Bourgeois’ “Ainsi qu’on oit le cerf,” see Cantata 13.

The words of the concluding Choral of Part I are the third stanza of Johannes Olearius’ Hymn for St John Baptist’s Day, “Trostet, trostet, meine Lieben,” first published in his Geistliche Singe-Kunst (Leipzig, 1671), to Bourgeois’ melody (supra).

Olearius was born at Halle in 1611. In 1643 he was appointed Court Preacher and Private Chaplain there to Duke August of Saxe-Weissenfels. After 1680 he held appointments as Kirchenrath and General Superintendent at Weissenfels. He died in 1684. His Geistliche Singe-Kunst of 1671 was one of the largest and best German Hymn books of the seventeenth century, and contained 302 hymns by Olearius himself:

  • Eine Stimme lasst sich hören
  • In der Wusten, weit und breit,
  • Alle Menschen zu bekehren:
  • Macht dem Herrn den Weg bereit,
  • Machet Gott ein’ eb’ne Bahn,
  • Alle Welt soll heben an,
  • Alle Thäler zu erhöhen,
  • Dass die Berge niedrig stehen.

  • B.G. v. (i) 360.

English translations of the Hymn are noted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 866.

Form. Simple (2 Fl., 2 Ob., Strings, Organ, Continuo). Choralgesänge, No. 103.

[1 ] An English version of the Cantata, “Come rejoice, ye faithful,” is published by Breitkopf & Haertel.

[2 ] The Cantata is founded upon an earlier secular work. See Spitta, iii. 77.