Backe, backe Kuchen

"Backe, backe Kuchen" is a German-language children's rhyme. The original was in Saxony and Thuringia with several textual versions from 1840.

Text and melody
Melody and text with simple chords

The melody musically structures the text in the way of bar form. The framing lines follow a conventional four-bar period, where only the melodic variation in the postscript of the reprise (i.e. in the last two bars) enlivens the otherwise rather monotonous course. However, the symmetry of these run counter to the bars of the sung "middle part". This irregularity is common in folk songs when litany-like prose texts are set to music. Familiar songs that use this effect are significantly stronger than that with a relatively simple three-bar song, examples like "Backe, backe Kuchen" include "Der Bauer schickt den Jockel aus" or the Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas".

Baker, blowing a horn (c.1681, J. A. Berckheyde

The song describes a common practice in earlier times: bakers, after baking bread, called with a horn to signal to the women of the neighbourhood that the residual heat of the oven could now be used to bake the women's own cakes.[1] Also, where the bread was baked on certain days in the common village oven, there was a signal when the bread was removed and the residual heat of the oven could be used for baking cakes.

The text mentions the yellow colouring effect of saffron. None of the other six mentioned ingredients provides an obvious rhyme word for the modern German word "gelb" (yellow). The Middle High German form "gehl" (or "gel") is used to rhyme with "Mehl" (flour).

Cultural references

See also

References
  1. "Von Backofen, Bäckern und Backstuben", Deutsches Brotmuseum Ulm (in German)

Further reading
  • Franz Magnus Böhme (1897). "Kuchenbacken". Deutsches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. pp. 46–48.
  • Karl Joseph Simrock, ed. (1856). Die deutschen Volksbücher (various text versions) (in German). Vol. 9. Frankfurt am Main: Heinrich Ludwig Brönner. pp. 84ff.
  • Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann: Das Buch der Kinderlieder. 235 alte und neue Lieder: Kulturgeschichte – Noten – Texte. Atlantis-Schott, Mainz 2002, ISBN 3-254-08370-9
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