Slow Listening #6
Johann Sebastian Bach, Cello Suites (c. 1717-1723)
For me, Bach’s six cello suites rank among the most intense pieces of music ever created. They’re so fiercely introspective that listening to someone perform them can feel almost invasive, as though you’re intruding on someone playing their musical diary. The way the suites were written completely exposes the performer: there’s only one instrument, one single melodic line, and Bach gave very few performance directions at all. Every choice the cellist makes tells you something about them, about their perspective.
And these are physical pieces too. The suites are sets of dances, and Bach leans in to that — the writing is virtuosic, athletic, the cellist in a constant partnership with their instrument. In some of the best recordings you can hear the player’s breaths in the spaces between notes, the slap of their hands on the fingerboard, the shift of fabric against wood, body moving against body. Even when they’re played in enormous halls, these are deeply intimate works.
Their enigmatic allure is heightened, perhaps, by how very little we know about them. There’s no surviving autograph manuscript in Bach’s hand. Many modern editions have relied primarily on a score written by Anna Magdalena Bach. We don’t know when they were written, or why. They remained very little known until the twentieth century, when cellist Pablo Casals made the first recording of them. We can’t over-determine the “composer’s intentions”, there are no surviving directions or prescriptions to shape how we play or hear these pieces. Instead, they are an invitation for the imagination to roam.
Each suite has a six-movement structure, with every movement a different form of dance:
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Galanteries (variable dance form; Bach chooses Minuets, Bourrées and Gavottes in different suites)
Gigue
Listening Prompt
How would you describe the character of each suite?
What do you find it difficult to be honest about, even to yourself?
Recommended Recording
Anastasia Kobekina: Bach Cello Suites
Ralph Kirshbaum: Bach Cello Suites
Pablo Casals: Bach Cello Suites
Because these pieces allow such wide interpretative scope, I’m going to recommend two recordings today. The first is relatively recent, by Anastasia Kobekina, and the second is a bit older, by Ralph Kirshbaum. Both are exquisite in utterly different ways, and showcase what these works are capable of being. If you want to hear the recording that started it all off, then the Casals 1930s recording is always worth listening to.
If you don’t have time to listen to the full suites, I’d recommend listening to each cellist play the same suite (my favourite is the second, in D minor).