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  • Performing Bach's Cello Suites

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    Jeffrey Solow
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    Today’s cellists face demands different from those of the past. Players used to specialize: it was acceptable to perform only a certain kind of music or to play only one’s own compositions and arrangements. The modern cellist is expected to play everything—an increasingly daunting assignment as the repertoire grows—and to interpret each composition in its appropriate style—a concept that hardly existed before the twentieth century. In Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello, bowing and articulation (both slurs and non-slurs) form the essence of style and are consequently the most contentious interpretive elements. Indeed, controversy over the choice of bowings, and hence over what is deemed ‘appropriate style,’ at times approaches religious warfare. Hard-line devotees of authenticity decry modern-style performances as misunderstanding Bach’s musical rhetoric while adamant modernists accuse authentic performers of sacrificing music on the altar of style. No wonder that some cello teachers advise their students to avoid playing solo Bach in competitive situations if at all possible—however you play it you are bound to offend someone. What is a cellist to do? Here is how I see it.

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    Today’s cellists face demands different from those of the past. Players used to specialize: it was acceptable to perform only a certain kind of music or to play only one’s own compositions and arrangements. The modern cellist is expected to play everything—an increasingly daunting assignment as the repertoire grows—and to interpret each composition in its appropriate style—a concept that hardly existed before the twentieth century. In Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello, bowing and articulation (both slurs and non-slurs) form the essence of style and are consequently the most contentious interpretive elements. Indeed, controversy over the choice of bowings, and hence over what is deemed ‘appropriate style,’ at times approaches religious warfare. Hard-line devotees of authenticity decry modern-style performances as misunderstanding Bach’s musical rhetoric while adamant modernists accuse authentic performers of sacrificing music on the altar of style. No wonder that some cello teachers advise their students to avoid playing solo Bach in competitive situations if at all possible—however you play it you are bound to offend someone. What is a cellist to do? Here is how I see it.

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    439 views2 pages

    Performing Bach's Cello Suites

    Uploaded by

    Jeffrey Solow
    Today’s cellists face demands different from those of the past. Players used to specialize: it was acceptable to perform only a certain kind of music or to play only one’s own compositions and arrangements. The modern cellist is expected to play everything—an increasingly daunting assignment as the repertoire grows—and to interpret each composition in its appropriate style—a concept that hardly existed before the twentieth century. In Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello, bowing and articulation (both slurs and non-slurs) form the essence of style and are consequently the most contentious interpretive elements. Indeed, controversy over the choice of bowings, and hence over what is deemed ‘appropriate style,’ at times approaches religious warfare. Hard-line devotees of authenticity decry modern-style performances as misunderstanding Bach’s musical rhetoric while adamant modernists accuse authentic performers of sacrificing music on the altar of style. No wonder that some cello teachers advise their students to avoid playing solo Bach in competitive situations if at all possible—however you play it you are bound to offend someone. What is a cellist to do? Here is how I see it.

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    Performing Bachs Cello Suites Jeffrey Solow I identify three questions that confront today's cellists concerning the

    Bach suites. These are 1. What is the accurate text? 2. How would the suites have been played in Bach's time? 3. How should they be performed now on a modern cello? Bach probably wrote the Six Suites for Cello circa 1720 to be paired with the Sonatas & Partitas for violin. His original manuscript has disappeared but four 18thcentury sources have survived: Anna Magdelena Bach (c. 1730); Johann Peter Kellner (1726); anonymous (actually by two copyists) sometimes known as 'Westphal' (after 1750); and anonymous (after 1750). Bach's autograph manuscript of the fifth suite transcribed for the lute (c. 1737) has survived. These sources have virtually no dynamics or tempo indications (Bachs lute version of the fifth suite says the fugue should be Trs Viste very fast) and they frequently contradict each other in terms of notes, rhythms, slurs and articulations. Thus, playing the suites is rather like performing a Shakespeare play from a text that is missing 70% of the punctuation (and the punctuation that is present is unreliable), gives the acts and scenes but is missing the identities of 80% of the speakers, has zero stage directions, and employs words that have changed their pronunciation over time. Musicological and forensic research coupled with logical analysis and reflection can lead us to reasonable guesses regarding question #1, but without Bach's manuscript, we cannot know for sure. Regarding the second question, no matter how much was written about performance style during the 18th-century and has been written since, words are not sounds. Unless someone invents a time machine, we will never know how the suites were played back then. All of the real debate centers on question three. (Adding a question 3a, "How should the suites be performed today on a baroque cello?" does not change things much. Virtually all musicologists and 'authentic' baroque performers ignore the fact that Bernard Christian Linicke, the cellist for whom Bach probably wrote the suites, was born in 1673, making him almost fifty when the suites were composed. It is very likely that he played with an underhand bow grip, thus giving many overhand baroque-bowing ideas limited relevance.) My view is that if the suites are to be successful on a modern cello, they must be considered transcriptions. The case is the same as with playing harpsichord music on a modern pianoit is a pointless exercise if the pianist merely tries to imitate a harpsichord. The editors of the new (2000) Brenreiter Urtext edition (which, in the absence Bach's holograph, cannot properly be called an urtext edition if, indeed, any edition truly can), make two tacit assumptions with which I disagree: that all cellists would (or should) wish to play the suites in an 'authentic' 18th-century style; and that cellists should try to play all of the written slurs as literally as possible. Even if we could know for sure what slurs Bach intended, bowings would still be an issue. Many 18th century bowings (whether they were conceived for an underhand or an overhand bow grip) do not work on a modern cello. I do not advocate ignoring what we can learn from studying the original sources that we have: the choice of bowings can greatly influence the character of an entire movement. I do have a difficult time believing that such a great improviser and virtuoso performer as J. S. Bach would expect

    any cellist to slavishly follow every slur he wrote (let alone slavishly follow hypothetical slurs). The music is the important thing. Bach's transcription of the fifth suite for the lute, an instrument without a bow, proves this point. Ultimately, any performance will not succeed or fail because of the choice of an edition or because of bowings unless those bowings are chosen ideologically instead of musically. Character, rhythm, timing, phrasing, tempo, energy, and flow are the crucial elements of a performance and these choices cannot be relinquished to editors and musicologists. They are the responsibility of the player.

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