The six suites for solo cello (c 1720) - part one

Suite No. 1 in G, BWV 1007

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Menuets I and II

Gigue

Suite No. 3 in C, BWV 1009

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Bourrées I & II

Gigue

Suite No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Gavottes I & II

Gigue

We know even less about Bach’s six solo cello suites than we know about his sonatas and partitas for solo violin. If the composer’s manuscript for the cello suites were available the situation would be different but, unlike that of the violin works, it is lost: printed editions all derive from one or more of four, frequently contradictory copies made by other hands. Otherwise the problems are much the same. It is probable that both the cello and the violin works were written during the composer’s time at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen but we do not know, and cannot guess with any confidence, for whom they were intended, prodigious musicians though they must have been. It has been suggested that for the cello suites Bach had Christian Ferdinand Abel in mind but, while it is known that the two men were friends at Cöthen and that Abel was a highly accomplished exponent of the viola da gamba, it is not known how much Abel played the cello – an instrument which, unlike the gamba, was more often hidden in the continuo at that time than featured as a solo instrument.

First published in 1825, 23 years later than the violin sonatas and partitas, the cello suites remained little understood – Schumann went so far as to write a piano accompaniments for both the cello and the violin works – and little performed throughout the 19th century. If any one musician is responsible for their present elevated status, as a supreme manifestation of both musical thought and technical resource, it has to be Pablo Casals, who discovered a copy of the Grützmacher edition in a thrift shop in 1889 and worked on his interpretations for 35 years before making his famous (if scarcely “authentic”) recordings.

The layout of the cello suites is much the same in every case - a prelude and then five dance movements, including an allemande, a courante, a sarabande and a gigue (always in that order and always in two sections, both which are repeated). The differences between them are in the fifth movements: the first and second suites offer a pair of minuets, the third and fourth a pair of bourrées, the fifth and sixth a pair of gavottes. Within those conventions, however, there is an immense variety in expression and colour. Of the three suites in today’s programme, No.5 in C minor might have been written for a different instrument – although, in fact, the only difference is that Bach requires the top string to be tuned down from A to G. Even so, the implications of this minimal example of scordatura are clear from the start. Far from sustaining an even flow of semiquavers as in the Préludes of Suite No.1 in G and Suite No.3 in C major, the C minor Prélude is designed as a French overture with a splendidly sonorous slow introduction in 4/4 time and a quicker fugue in 3/8 (the one example of fugal writing in the cello suites, incidentally, as against the three Fuga movements in the violin sonatas).

The C minor Allemande is corresponsingly extended and more thoughtful than the Allemandes of the G major and C major Suites. It is probably because of that shift of gravity to the first movements of the C minor Suite that the Sarabande (the “slow-movement” equivalent in these works) is so much shorter than that of the C major and so much more modestly scored than either of the other two. The Gigue, on the other hand, has a French-flavoured decorous quality quite unlike any of the other five in the set.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

The six suites for solo cello (c 1720) - part two

Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Menuets I & II

Gigue

Suite No. 4 in E flat major, BWV 1010

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Bourrées I & II

Gigue

Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV 1012

Prélude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Gavottes I & II

Gigue

Bach arranged his six solo cello suites in three pairs, the pairing determined by the kind of dance chosen for the fifth movement – minuets in Suites 1 and 2, bourrées in Suites 3 and 4, gavottes in Suites 5 and 6. In the first of his two recitals (see 16 August for a general introduction to these works) Colin Carr played the odd-numbered suites; now he turns his attention to the even-numbered pairs to them. Perhaps the most interesting of the fifth movements – in spite of the claims of the courtly first Menuet in Suite No.2 and the unusually developed first Bourrée in Suite No.4 – is the tuneful pair of gavottes in Suite No.6, the second incorporating an entertainingly rustic bagpipe drone.

But Suite No.6 is exceptional in most ways, the most radical departure from the norm being that, clearly, it is written for a different instrument – possibly the violoncello piccolo which was constructed to accommodate a fifth string, tuned to the E above the A of the top string of the standard cello. Fortunately, there is not one five-note chord in the Suite in D but, because of the extended upper range, it is still excessively difficult to play on the modern instrument. Bach evidently thought of the violoncello piccolo in virtuoso terms, as his use of it in some of his cantatas seems to confirm. Certainly, there is no more brilliant or more colourfully scored Prélude than that of the Suite in D, not even that of Suite No.4 in E flat with its cadenza-like middle section. Similarly, there is no Allemande to compare with the extended and highly elaborate second movement of Suite No.6, not even its melancholy equivalent in Suite No.2 in D minor.

Of the courantes, the shortest but not the least remarkable, because of its startling dissonance in the second bar, is that of Suite No.2 in D minor. The most developed, and the most demanding for the modern cellist, is that of No.6 in D, where it is followed by a Sarabande which makes inspired use of the expressive voice of the upper string poised over a beautifully scored chordal texture. Not that it outshines the elegantly decorated, elegiac D minor or the poignantly melodious E flat major Sarabande. As for the gigues, while the D minor is exceptional for its dramatic use of the darker colours of the instrument and the E flat major highly resourceful in its moto perpetuo triplet figuration, the virtuoso example is the exhilaratingly exuberant D major.

Gerald Larner ©2006