Es ist euch gut, daß ich hingehe, BWV 108
Es ist euch gut, daß ich hingehe, 108, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for Cantate Sunday, the fourth Sunday after Easter, and first performed it on 29 April 1725.
It is the second of nine cantatas on texts by Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, with whom he collaborated at the end of his second cantata cycle. She used two quotations from the prescribed gospel from the Farewell Discourse and closed the cantata with a stanza from Paul Gerhardt's "". The topic is the prediction of Jesus of his parting and the coming of the Spirit as a comforter. The first announcement is sung by the bass as the vox Christi, the second, in the centre of the work, by the choir in three fugues combined in motet style but unified by similar themes. Bach scored the cantata for three vocal soloists, a four-part choir, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two oboes d'amore, strings and continuo. He used elements of word-painting, such as very long notes to illustrate firm belief, and sigh motifs interrupted by rests to illustrate the desiring heart.
History and words
Bach composed the cantata in his second year as in Leipzig for the Fourth Sunday after Easter called Cantate. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the Epistle of James, "Every good gift comes from the Father of lights", and from the Gospel of John, Jesus announcing the Comforter in his Farewell Discourse. In his second year Bach had composed chorale cantatas between the first Sunday after Trinity and Palm Sunday, but for Easter returned to cantatas on more varied texts, possibly because he lost his librettist.Between Easter and Pentecost Bach's congregation heard a series of nine cantatas with texts by a new librettist, Christiana Mariana von Ziegler. As the average interval between the performances was less than a week, Bach may have been composed at a correspondingly intense rate, although it is not known when he began work on them. The first of the series was BWV 103, BWV 103, followed a week later by Es ist euch gut, daß ich hingehe. It begins with a bass solo as the delivering a quotation from the gospel ; a second quotation appears in the fourth movement. The second and third movements deal with the hope for salvation; the fifth is a prayer for guidance until death. The poet used as the closing chorale the tenth stanza of Paul Gerhardt's hymn "", expressing faith in God's guidance.
Publication
The cantata text was published in 1728 in Ziegler's first collection, Versuch in gebundener Schreibart. The version set by Bach was slightly different, as he shortened the text here as in other cantatas by the same librettist. The music survived in a holograph manuscript, but was not published until 1876 when the cantata appeared in the Bach Gesellschaft´s first complete edition of Bach's work.Music
Structure and scoring
Bach structured the cantata in six movements, beginning with a biblical quotation for the vox Christi, Jesus speaking. A set of aria and recitative is followed by a chorus on another biblical quotation from the gospel, while an aria leads to the closing chorale. Bach scored the work for three vocal soloists, tenor and bass ), a four-part choir, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two oboes d'amore, two violins, viola and basso continuo. The duration of the cantata is given as 20 minutes.In the following table of the movements, the scoring follows the Neue Bach-Ausgabe. The keys and time signatures are taken from Alfred Dürr, using the symbol for common time. The continuo, playing throughout, is not shown.