Bach: For all the generations

Sometimes when I’m practicing my current choir music,I have to sit there and shake my head.  At first, it was a case of “How on Earth am I going to do this?!” Over time, however, lots of time, I’ve arrived at a new question: “How on Earth did he do this?!”So one day, armed with my own score and a pencil, I decided to try to figure out exactly what he was up to in those lines of music.

I think it’s highly appropriate that the first thing I saw as I opened to Omnes generation was an instruction from my choir director that I had transcribed:

Breathe as needed.  Observe rests.

Sound advice.

I decided to tackle the most obvious component of this movement to see what Bach did.  The entire piece consists of two words, [all the generations] repeated again and again.  Bach brings this phrase in with five repeated eighth notes on the same pitch—a clarion trumpet call, announcing “all, all the generations.”  It’s insistent.

You don’t have to read music to see this note pattern, it’s easy to pick out.  Look, I’ll show you:
He uses it 46 times in 27 measures.

He must mean it.

Then, I looked at what note in the scale of D major he used to start the phrase.

Answer:  all of them wow hahahahaha