Even though Cantata 105 Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht (Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, O Lord) is the ninth cantata Bach performed after taking up his post in Leipzig in 1723, it can be seen as his first original cantata from Leipzig. The previous eight cantatas had, at least partly, either been written ahead of time, while Bach still lived in Köthen, or were reworkings of cantata movements Bach had written earlier in his career. Thus cantata 105 can be seen as Bach’s first true Leipzig cantata.
And Bach did his very best with this cantata, because most scholars consider this composition one of his masterworks. Alfred Dürr, normally extremely careful with praise, even goes so far as to declare it “one of the greatest soul paintings of Baroque and Christian art.”
Seen from that viewpoint, it is extra interesting that this cantata contains several features that would later turn up in Bach’s Passions. It is possible that he was experimenting with ideas for those compositions, perhaps even planning for them already as early as that summer of 1723. Or maybe he was just so proud of this Cantata 105 that he referred back to it when composing those later works. Whether there is a connection between the different compositions or not, the new features in this cantata are striking, and worth looking at.
If you would like to follow along in the score or read the text, you can find the German text with English translations here, and the full score here. (To participate in our workshop as a singer, please use the vocal reduction score available here).
Pleading to God in the opening chorus:
Bach might have referred back to the opening chorus of Cantata 105 from 1723 when writing the opening chorus of his St. John Passion for Good Friday, 1724. The “Herr, Herr” exclamations, the pulsating bass notes, and the crunching harmonies in the first instrumental measures are some features that appear in both compositions. Already after the first few measures you know there is something very special happening.
A soprano aria without a foundation
The exquisite soprano aria has no cello, bassoon, or organ in the accompaniment. This is extremely unusual for a Bach aria, or any aria of the Baroque era. The accompaniment consists only of oboe, violins, and viola. Bach omits the music’s foundation on purpose, to illustrate the wavering and uncertainty expressed in the text. This is made even more apparent by the “trembling” in the violin parts. Note that these same trembling strings appear again in the violin parts of this cantata’s closing chorale.
It is the first time ever that Bach leaves out the bass instruments when writing an aria for a cantata. He will experiment a bit more with this technique two weeks later, in the soprano aria “Liebster Gott, erbarme dich” from Cantata 179, though not as drastically as in Cantata 105. The score for that aria does include a line for the bassoon or cello, but not for the organ. When Bach applies this model again for the alto aria “Ich will auch mit gebrochen Augen” in Cantata 125 in 1725, he explicitly writes in the score that the organ is to play only the written notes, “no accompaniment” (i.e. no chords).
The pinnacle of a Bach aria without bass instruments is the “Aus Liebe” aria from the St. Matthew Passion, from 1727. There are truly no bass instruments in the accompaniment for that aria; there are just two oboes and a flute. The oboes are the lowest instruments here, similar to the viola in the soprano aria of Cantata 105.
The deeply moving and comforting bass arioso
There is no way to prove this, but it seems that Bach might have thought of this moving and comforting bass arioso from Cantata 105 when he wrote the bass arioso “Am Abend da es kühle war” for his St. Matthew Passion. It is not exactly the same music, and the movement from the St. Matthew Passion has one more line of text, but the style and the idea behind it are similar. In the cantata the text about carrying a body to the grave refers to the believer’s body, while in the bass arioso from the St. Matthew Passion it refers to Jesus’ body.
An uncommon closing chorale
The closing chorale of this cantata is very different from most closing chorales of Bach’s cantatas. Bach uses the 11th verse of a special chorale, Jesu der du meine Seele, which we know from Cantata 78. Normally Bach lets the instruments double the vocal parts, but in this case he writes independent lines for the two violin parts and the viola part. At first, these are exactly the same repeating chords as used earlier in the soprano aria. But at the start of the third line of the text, the “trembling” slows down; at the fifth line, it slows down even more; and at the 7th line the rhythm changes from ominous to dance-like. With this, Bach illustrates that the fear has gone and the beating heart has calmed down. Life is still a tribulation (hence the dissonant harmonies from the opening chorus still present here), but the believers can be assured that they will be saved in the end. Showing the entire story of the cantata in the closing chorale is something Bach has not done prior to writing this cantata.
Wieneke Gorter, March 2021.