Suite No. 6 in D major for solo cello, BWV 1012

Prelude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Gavotte 1 - Gavotte 2 - Gavotte 1 da capo

Gigue

While there is much we don’t know about Bach’s solo cello suites and solo violin sonatas and partitas, we can at least be certain about the instrument the composer had in mind for the violin works, significantly remodelled though the violin and the bow have been in the last 300 years. The same can be said of only the first five cello suites. No.6 in D presents a problem. It is scored for an instrument with five strings rather than the four strings of the cello standard in our days and in Bach’s. It used to be thought that what he had in mind was the viola pomposa, which was tuned to C-G-D-A-E, like a regular viola with an an additional E string, and was played on the arm. The currently favoured candidate, however, is the violoncello piccolo, a small cello with an additional E string, an example of which was apparently made for Bach to his own design in Leipzig. That of course would have been long after the cello suites, products of the Cöthen period, were written. On the other hand, there are parts for the violoncello piccolo in several of the cantatas from 1724 onwards. Perhaps Bach played it himself. There is a portrait (of about 1733 but of uncertain authenticity) showing a group of    musicians one of whom could be J.S. Bach holding a violoncello piccolo.

However that may be, while a fifth string tuned to E certainly facilitates the execution of the highest notes in the Suite in D, it does bring other problems. Most present-day cellists prefer to play it on the standard modern instrument in spite of the necessarily frequent recourse to high positions on the A string. The extended range is not always the most interesting aspect of the work anyway. The prominent feature of the Prélude, for example, is its use of the percussive repeated notes with which it begins and which recur from time to generate the triplet rhythm running through much of the piece. Changes of rhythm, to even semi-quavers or detached chords, are reserved with dramatic effect until near the end. The Allemande, on the other hand seems to have been designed specifically to make the most of the fluency available to the five-string instrument in its top register. The exquisitely elaborate melodic decorations cover a wide range, including an emphatic bottom C, and tend to find their most eloquent effect at the upper end of it.

If the cheerful French-style Courante presents no particular problems of this kind – apart from wide leaps between registers – the next movement certainly does. A profoundly contemplative piece, with only the strong second beat left of its dance origins, the Sarabande sustains its melodic interest in an expresssive alto lined supported by (necessarily arpeggiated) three-note or four-note chords. The two Gavottes make contrastingly bright use of the upper register, with emphatic chordal accompaniment in the first of them and a charming bag-pipe colouring in the second. As for the concluding Gigue, it is a brilliant display of the textural variety available to the violoncello piccolo and a virtuoso challenge for any cellist, no matter how many strings he has at his disposal.         

Cellists and violinists have long debated the question. Which are the more effective of J.S.Bach’s works for solo strings, the cello suites or the violin sonatas and partitas? As far as the musical content is concerned, there is little to choose between them: they are all of the highest quality and, of their kind, they remain unsurpassed in more than two hundred and seventy-five years of creative activity. It is more a question of the nature of the instruments themselves and their suitability to the formidable tasks they are required to carry out.

Cellists will argue that their instrument has a wider ranger of colour and the more serious sound when it comes to philosophical movements like the Sarabandes. Violinists would argue that they, on the other hand, are equipped to provide a more brilliant effect. As for philosophy, what is there in the cello suites to compare with the great Chaconne in Partita No.2 in D minor? And, while both the cello and the violin are essentially one-line instruments, Bach seems to have regarded the violin as the more capable of creating at least an illusion of multi-voiced counterpoint – not only in the Chaconne but also in the fugal second movements of the three sonatas. The cello might be particularly good at accompanying itself, drawing a sustained melodic line over full chords in the bass, but, except in the fugal section of the Prelude of No.5 in C minor, counterpoint is not a prominent feature of the cello suites.

Anyway, Bach must have known some remarkable instrumentalists at Anhalt-Köthen where, as court Kapellmeister between 1717 and 1723, he is though to have written his works for unaccompanied cello and violin. Historians mention among others the Köthen cellist C.F. Abel and the Konzertmeister Joseph Spiess as possibile recipients of these compositions. The suggestion that he wrote them entirely for his own intellectual satisfaction, with no prospect of having them performed, results from the same kind of thinking as that which, in a recent television series devoted to the Cello Suites, depicted Bach working with a quill pen and lighting his pipe with a gas lighter.

Suite No.6 in D major for solo cello, BWV 1012

Prelude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Gavotte 1 - Gavotte 2 - Gavotte 1 da capo

Gigue

One of the problems in performing these works is that the instruments have changed considerably in the intervening centuries. It is particularly acute with Cello Suite No.6 which was written for a cello - or was it a viola pomposa, or a violoncello piccolo? - with a fifth string to extend the upper register. While it is not impossible to play it on a modern cello with four strings, it is extremely difficult.

The most interesting feature of the Prelude, however, is not so much the extent of its range as its use of the percussive repeated notes with which it begins and which generate the triplet rhythm running through much of the piece. Changes of rhythm, to even semi-quavers or detached chords, are reserved with dramatic effect until near the end. The exquisitely elaborate melodic decorations in the Allemande, on the other hand, do cover a wide range and tend to find their most eloquent expression at the top end of it.

If the cheerful French-style Courante presents no particular problems of this kind, the contemplative Sarabande, with its three-note chords supporting a melody sustained in the alto range, certainly does. The two Gavottes make contrastingly bright use of the upper register, with emphatic chordal accompaniment in the first of them and a charming bag-pipe effect in the second. As for the concluding Gigue, it is a virtuoso challenge for any cellist, no matter how many strings he has at his disposal.