Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Cello Suites
Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach in 1685
into a family of musicians. The early death of his
parents left him in the care of his eldest brother Johann
Christoph, organist in Ohrdruf where he remained for
five years, until becoming a pupil at the Michaelisschule
in Lüneburg in 1700. Three years later he was appointed
court musician in Weimar, but after a few months
moved to Arnstadt as organist at the Neuekirche. In
1707 he moved to a similar position at the Blasiuskirche
in Mühlhausen, where he married his cousin Maria
Barbara. The following year brought appointment to
Weimar as organist and chamber musician to Duke
Wilhelm Ernst, one of the two rulers of the Duchy. In
1714 he was promoted to the position of
Konzertmeister, consolidating still further his position
as an authority on the construction of the organ and his
reputation as a performer. In 1717 he left the service of
the Duke, who briefly had him imprisoned for his
temerity in trying to leave Weimar, and took a more
congenial position as Kapellmeister to the young Prince
Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. At Cöthen he was able to
concentrate on secular music, since the Pietist practices
of the court obviated the need for elaborate church
music. It was only the marriage of the Prince to a
woman whom Bach described as without musical
interests that induced him to seek employment
elsewhere.
In 1723 Bach signed a contract with the Leipzig
authorities as Thomaskantor with teaching
responsibilities at the Thomasschule, some of which
could be delegated, and the charge of music in the
principal city churches. By 1729 he had also taken on
the direction of the university collegium musicum, a
society established earlier in the century by Telemann,
godfather of Bach’s fifth child, Carl Philipp Emanuel,
and the Leipzig city council’s first choice as
Thomaskantor. Bach remained in Leipzig as
Thomaskantor until his death in 1750. His earlier years
there involved him in the composition of a quantity of
church music, while the demands of the collegium
musicum were met by the re-arrangement of earlier
instrumental concertos for one or more harpsichords. He
continued to write extensively for the keyboard and to
collect and edit his earlier compositions, particularly in
the four volumes of his Clavierübung.
Bach wrote his six Suites for unaccompanied cello
at Cöthen, about the year 1720. It is thought that the first
four, at least, were written either for Christian Ferdinand
Abel, bass viol player at Cöthen, or for Christian
Bernhard Linike, more probably the latter. Abel,
appointed to Cöthen in 1715 is not known to have been
a cellist, while Linike was distinguished rather as a
player of the cello and in this capacity had been
appointed to the musical establishment of the court in
Cöthen in 1716, thus rejoining former colleagues from
the Prussian court musical establishment, disbanded in
1713 by Friedrich Wilhelm I on his accession to his
father’s throne. Both musicians were friends and
colleagues of Bach. The original autograph of the suites
is lost and the earliest copy is that made by the
Gräfenroda organist and composer Johann Peter Kellner
in about 1726. This is followed by that in the hand of
Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, made probably in
1727 or 1728 for the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel chamber
musician Georg Heinrich Ludwig Schwanenberger, who
had visited Leipzig at the time and taken lessons in
thoroughbass from Bach, for whose daughter Regina
Johanne he stood as godfather.
Each of the six cello suites opens with a Prélude.
Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007, has an introductory
movement in which the changing harmonies are made
clear in arpeggiated form. The usual Allemande and
Courante are followed by a slow Sarabande, with a
repeated Menuet II framing a G minor Menuet II. The
suite ends, as it should, with a Gigue.
Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008, opens again
with an elaborate Prélude, ending with a series of
grandiose arpeggiated chords. Once again the
Allemande and Courante lead to a Sarabande and a D
minor Menuet I is repeated to frame a D major Menuet
II, before a lively final Gigue.
Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009, has a Prélude
that is marked Presto in a slightly later source. This
opens boldly with a descending scale and an arpeggio
that ends on the resonant bottom string of the
instrument. A relatively elaborate Allemande is paired
with a simpler Courante, followed by a stately
Sarabande, a well-known movement that leads to the
still more familiar pair of Bourrées, the second in C
minor. The suite ends with an energetic Gigue.
The fourth of Bach’s cello suites, the Suite in E flat
major, BWV 1010, opens, like the others, with a
demanding Prélude. An Allemande follows, paired with
a Courante, leading to a contrasting slow Sarabande. A
busier first Bourrée is followed by a second that is
simpler in texture and in the same key. The last
movement is a lively Gigue.
The fifth and six of Bach’s cello suites differ in
various ways from the first four. The fifth, the Suite in C
minor, BWV 1011, was originally written in scordatura,
a practice sometimes found in string music of the
period, with the top A string of the instrument tuned
down to G. The opening Prélude has a slower,
embellished introduction before an extended faster fugal
section in triple metre, its fugal texture largely implied.
An ornamented Allemande is duly followed by its
companion Courante and a slow Sarabande that
strangely avoids the chordal pattern of its predecessors.
A first Gavotte is repeated after the unusual compound
rhythm of the second Gavotte and the suite ends with a
Gigue in dotted rhythm.
The sixth of the suites, the Suite in D major, BWV
1012, is written for a five-string instrument, with an
additional top string tuned to E. It has been suggested
that Bach wrote this more difficult suite for the viola
pomposa, a five-string viola that found occasional use
from 1725 to about 1770. It seems, however, that Bach
designed this work for the violoncello piccolo, a smaller
form of cello, designed for more elaborate solo work
and one that he uses elsewhere. The Prélude opens with
the characteristic sound of bariolage, as the player
repeats the note D on alternate strings. The Allemande
has elaborate figuration and the companion Courante
again exploits the wider possible range of the five-string
instrument. A Sarabande is followed by a pair of
Gavottes, played in alternation, and the suite ends with
the customary and here demanding Gigue.
Keith Anderson