Bach Cello Suite 1 Torrent
Kym Cavrak
As usual in a Baroque musical suite, after the prelude which begins each suite, all the other movements are based around baroque dance types.[1] The cello suites are structured in six movements each: prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets or two bourrées or two gavottes, and a final gigue.[2] Gary S. Dalkin of MusicWeb International called Bach's cello suites "among the most profound of all classical music works"[3] and Wilfrid Mellers described them in 1980 as "Monophonic music wherein a man has created a dance of God".[1][4]
The suites were not widely known before the early 20th century.[7] It was Pablo Casals who first began to popularize the suites, after discovering an edition by Friedrich Grützmacher (who was the first cellist to perform an entire Bach suite) in a thrift shop in Barcelona in 1889 when he was 13. Although Casals performed the suites publicly, it was not until 1936, when he was 60 years old, that he agreed to record them, beginning with Suites Nos. 2 and 3, at Abbey Road Studios in London. The other four were recorded in Paris: 1 and 6 in June 1938, and 4 and 5 in June 1939. Casals became the first to record all six suites; his recordings are still available and respected today.[8] In 2019, the Casals recording was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[9]
The suites have since been performed and recorded by many cellists. Yo-Yo Ma won the 1985 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance for his album Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites. János Starker won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance for his fifth recording of Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites.
German cellist Michael Bach has stated that he believes the manuscripts of the suites by Anna Magdalena Bach are accurate. According to his analysis, the unexpected positioning of the slurs corresponds closely to the harmonic development, which he suggests supports his theory.[11] His position is not universally accepted. The most recent studies[which?] into the relationships among the four manuscripts show that Anna Magdalena Bach's manuscript may not have been copied directly from her husband's holograph but from a lost intervening source. Thus, the slurs in the Magdalena manuscript may not come from Bach himself and would not be clues to their interpretation.[citation needed]
Recent research has suggested that the suites were not necessarily written for the familiar cello played between the legs (da gamba), but an instrument played rather like a violin, on the shoulder (da spalla). Variations in the terminology used to refer to musical instruments during this period have led to modern confusion, and the discussion continues about what instrument "Bach intended", and even whether he intended any instrument in particular. Sigiswald Kuijken and Ryo Terakado have both recorded the complete suites on this "new" instrument, known today as a violoncello or viola da spalla;[12] reproductions of the instrument have been made by luthier Dmitry Badiarov.[13]
Using the Bach edition prepared by cellist Johann Friedrich Dotzauer and published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1826, Robert Schumann wrote arrangements with piano accompaniment for all six Bach cello suites.[17] Schumann's publisher accepted his arrangements of the Bach violin sonatas in 1854, but rejected his Bach cello-suite arrangements.[18] His only cello-suite arrangement surviving is the one for Suite No. 3, discovered in 1981 by musicologist Joachim Draheim in an 1863 transcription by cellist Julius Goltermann.[17][18] It is believed that Schumann's widow Clara Schumann, along with violinist Joseph Joachim, destroyed his Bach cello-arrangement manuscripts sometime after 1860, when Joachim declared them substandard.[17][18] Writing in 2011, Fanfare reviewer James A. Altena agreed with that critique, calling the surviving Bach-Schumann cello/piano arrangement "a musical duckbilled platypus, an extreme oddity of sustained interest only to 19th-century musicologists".[17]
The cello suites have been transcribed for numerous solo instruments, including the violin, viola, double bass, viola da gamba, mandolin, piano, marimba, classical guitar, recorder, flute, electric bass, horn, saxophone, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, euphonium, tuba, ukulele, and charango. They have been transcribed and arranged for orchestra as well.
Scholars believe that Bach intended the works to be considered as a systematically conceived cycle, rather than an arbitrary series of pieces. Compared to Bach's other suite collections, the cello suites are the most consistent in order of their movements. In addition, to achieve a symmetrical design and go beyond the traditional layout, Bach inserted intermezzo or galanterie movements in the form of pairs between the sarabande and the gigue.
Only five movements in the entire set of suites are completely non-chordal, meaning that they consist only of a single melodic line. These are the second minuet of Suite No. 1, the second minuet of Suite No. 2, the second bourrée of Suite No. 3, the gigue of Suite No. 4, and the sarabande of Suite No. 5. The second gavotte of Suite No. 5 has but one unison chord (the same note played on two strings at the same time), but only in the original scordatura version of the suite; in the standard tuning version it is completely free of chords.
Suite No. 5 was originally written in scordatura with the A-string tuned down to G, but nowadays a version for standard tuning is included in almost every printed edition of the suites along with the original version. Some chords must be simplified when playing with standard tuning, but some melodic lines become easier as well.
This suite is most famous for its intimate sarabande, which is one of the few movements in the six suites that does not contain any double stops (chords). Mstislav Rostropovich described it as the essence of Bach's genius. Paul Tortelier viewed it as an extension of silence. Rostropovich, extending Tortelier's "silence" to an extreme, would sometimes play the Sarabande as a recital encore at a metronome marking of 32 or slower, one note per beat, with no vibrato and no slurs, each note standing alone in a "well of silence". Yo-Yo Ma played this movement on September 11, 2002 at the site of the World Trade Center, while the names of the dead were read on the first anniversary of remembrance of those lost in the September 11 attacks.
Cellists playing this suite on a modern four-string cello encounter difficulties as they are forced to use very high positions to reach many of the notes. Performers specialising in early music and using authentic instruments generally use the five-string cello for this suite. The approach of Watson Forbes, in his transcription of this suite for viola, was to transpose the entire suite to G major, avoiding "a tone colour which is not very suitable for this type of music" and making most of the original chords playable on a four-stringed instrument.[23]
This suite is written in much more free form than the others, containing more cadenza-like movements and virtuosic passages. It is also the only one of the suites that is partly notated in the alto and soprano clefs (modern editions use tenor and treble clefs), which are not needed for the others since they never go above the note G4 (G above middle C).
Playing around with alternative tunings can be a lot of fun. A very interesting one to look at is ADGC. This tuning brings the bottom of your bass's range a 4th higher. At the same time it adds notes to the high end. This increases the expressive possiblities of the bass guitar. The shift in range of ADGC tuning brings the bass guitars range closer to the cello's. Why Study Classical Music on Bass Guitar?It Will Improve Your TechniqueBach's cello suites are full of arpeggios, scales and chords. All the stuff you need to practice anyway, bundled in beautiful masterpieces. Why practice boring exercises when you can play some of the most amazing music ever written?
Six Cello Suites, BWV 1007-1012
The Six Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach belong to the Old Testament of cello literature. Every cellist who looks at the music immediately feels how naturally the notes are draped around the strings of the instrument. Yet there are many questions and discussions about these Suites a Violoncello Solo senza Basso. Did Bach really write the music for cello, or at least for cello alone? And when did he write it? At the court at Köthen or earlier?
Following the sombre mood of Suite no. 5 in C minor, the lightness and radiance of Suite no. 6 is even more striking. The key of D major, which often symbolises triumph and festivity in the Baroque period, is confirmed straight away in the first bar of the Prelude with bouncy excitement. This cheerful movement that skips along in two-eight time is followed by an atypical Allemande, which is introvert and quiet. But this time too, the heart of the suite is formed by the slow Sarabande with its succession of heavenly chords. Here, the performer has to conceal the effort it takes to play these gliding notes. To emphasise the good mood, the second Gavotte is not in the contrasting minor key for once, but remains dominated by the major. And the Gigue is the superlative of virtuoso bliss.
Location
All the cello suites are recorded at remarkable locations in Amsterdam. We recorded this Suite no. 6 in the Gashouder of the former Westergasfabriek gas factory. The Gashouder was built in 1902 and was the largest gasholder in Europe at the time. The gas was stored at the top of the Gashouder in a steel tank that could be extended to a height of forty metres. It is now a listed building, and the huge hall without pillars not only looks magical, but also provides wonderful acoustics.
The story of the Suites for Unaccompanied Cello is one of genius and tragic neglect, with a triumphant and long-lived epilogue. There is perhaps no other single set of compositions that have had more of a lasting impact in music history than the cello suites. But it took nearly two centuries for it to happen. Here's how it happened:
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