For cellists, the Bach Suites can be such a source of cognitive dissonance: It looks easy yet it is not. There’s no “right way” to interpret Bach yet there are rules to follow. You think you’ve mastered a movement yet you may keep returning to it throughout your life with improvements and different interpretations.
I’ve been a Bach avoider for much of my cello life and I pretty much kept it a secret because I would hear other cellists of varying abilities describe their “love affair” with playing and listening to Bach and I didn’t feel that way at all. It brought me a lot of discontent and anxiety. However, as a teacher of cellists I realized that I had to face my fears. Approaching Bach as a learner and with a fresh attitude, I feel like I have insight to share. Just like the Bach Suites, I also plan on this particular blog being fluid; a changing document as I add to or change my opinions or discoveries.
Friend or Foe - Just like most young cellists, I started learning the 1st Suite Prelude. (Just for the record, I am going to say that the Prelude of the 1st Suite is incredibly difficult because it is so exposed and well-known that it inherently has a high standard of excellence built in). Because I also had a recording of Yo-Yo Ma playing the Bach Suites, it was very disappointing to feel like I was not achieving a decent level of excellence because of my young limitations as well as lack of sufficient equipment and environment; I’ll explain this in a moment. It negatively affected my feelings about Bach for many years because I refused to play Bach badly; after all I knew what “good Bach” sounded like. It wasn’t until I started working with Bach again that I realized that it wasn’t a dislike for it; it was an avoidance of it because I felt I couldn’t do it justice. If you have the same feelings for Bach that I did, realize that it takes time, technique, and stylistic understanding to feel comfortable with it on a certain level if you tend toward a high level of Bach excellence. As an example, several professional artists who have recorded Bach do a 2nd or 3rd recording of the suites later in their lives as their understanding and learning evolve. If you have always been a lover of Bach either through listening to or playing Bach, I count you as one of the lucky ones to be comfortable with your own performing evolution of the suites!
Equipment/Environment - When you listen to Bach Suites recordings, generally there are two things happening: they are playing in an environment that increases the reverberation or resonance of the cello, the cello has excellent resonance to begin with... or both.
My little German cello I owned previous to my current cello had a nice sound, but lacked in resonance. A good cello rings in overtones that gives it that rich, multifaceted sound. With my little cello, I ended up practicing in the bathroom or garage to enhance the sound because Bach in my living room felt one-dimensional and flat. This was disappointing to say the least and made the suites feel like more of an etude. If this is true for you, practice in a different environment if possible or look into upgrading your instrument. A Bach Suite or movement you feel comfortable with is always a good test piece when purchasing a cello or bow. Generally a good bow will only affect control in this case.
Style Considerations - I encourage you to own a variety of versions of performers playing the Bach Suites. Not only for you to listen to as a means of learning what you like or as a model for your own playing, but also to see the variety of styles that Bach is played in. Not one of those professional recordings is generally “wrong,” but people have opinions of how Bach should be played. Keep in mind that they are strictly opinions. Early 20th century performers that played the Bach violin partitas sometimes had a very classical or romantic sound to their recordings, but as time has moved on, performers have formed preferences of baroque to romantic and everything in between. Peter Wispelway has more of an authentic baroque style whereas I feel that Mischa Maisky has a recording where there seem to be more rococo/romantic elements. Pablo Casals was the first modern cellist to popularize the Bach Suites and is worth listening to also.
There are purists that want to play Bach the way it would have been performed when he was alive. Some people have differing opinions on whether he was considered classical or baroque. With baroque style, you can play with a baroque cello/bow and gut strings. If attempting the 5th or 6th Suite, you need a 5 string instrument or play the thumb position adaptation. Or you play with a combination of this equipment depending upon what you want the outcome to be. By the way, you can put gut strings on a modern instrument and grip your modern bow higher on the stick to get that baroque bow sound by changing the weight distribution. You can even play on a violoncello piccolo da spalla which is basically a small cello that you play on your shoulder like a violin or viola. I encourage you to look up performances of Bach on this instrument as it is very unique. This style of baroque also means no vibrato and using authentic editions such as the Anna Magdalena version. She was Bach’s second wife and this version is the earliest edition available. The dance movements of a baroque style performance would also keep a consistent tempo, because tempo changes would make it difficult for dancers to follow.
Bach performed on modern instruments is also very lovely and acceptable. Mischa Maisky, Yo-Yo Ma, Zuill Bailey, and Lynn Harrell are all professional cellists that perform a more modern adaptation of Bach. They use their modern instruments with steel/tungsten strings and modern bows. A little vibrato is used to soften the sound on longer-held notes and more variation in tempo can be used with the dance movements.
Learning Bach - Generally if you take lessons from a teacher, you will be doing the things your teacher asks you to do. You will learn the edition/bowing/style that your teacher is familiar with. Depending on your teacher, you may also be restricted to the teacher’s opinions of styling even if you feel differently; it’s the cost of learning. However, I would like to focus on working with Bach individually or tips that can be utilized with the approval of your teacher.
Resonance and Tone - I feel that the most important aspect of playing a Bach Suite is correct intonation. Try an experiment: Play a “C” on your “G” string and keep your eyes on the “C” string. When you play the higher octave “C”, the “C” string should vibrate so that you can see it quite well. Now adjust your intonation on the same note and watch how it affects the vibration of the “C” string. Essentially the outcome is that the “C” string doesn’t vibrate much or at all when the note is played out of tune. Your cello is full of these sympathetic vibrations at different pitches and frequencies. When you play impeccably in tune, your cello will tend to create a beautiful resonant sound that we all covet when we hear professionals play.
I have quoted a professional cellist in the past saying that if you do not play the Haydn Concerto No.2 in D Major with ease, the piece will be ruined. I would say this is true for the Bach Suites. Because humans are bipeds and the left side of the body and the right side tend to want to work in tandem, if you have tension in either arm or hand, it will adversely affect the tone and fluidity of the suite you are playing as the tension translates to the other side of the body. One example of this is the Prelude of the 3rd Suite. Just over half-way through that movement, there is a part that needs to be played in a low-ish thumb position that can be tricky. Because it is tricky, tension can arise in the left hand therefore affecting the fluidity and ease of the bow. It becomes uneven and choked sounding. Do your best to learn the left hand with ease and alleviate awkward bowings to minimize tension.
Bowings/Editions/Style - An often-asked question in cello forums is which edition to purchase or own of the Bach Suites. Most professional cellists I have heard recommend the Barenreiter Edition edited by August Wenzinger as their “go-to” edition. If you are going strictly baroque, be forewarned that the Anna Magdalena edition seems to have odd phrasing/bowing. I would recommend having several editions of Bach Suites on hand. The reason is this...once you leave your teacher or you are no longer under the tutelage of a teacher, multiple editions of Bach make great references when making bowing changes and incidentally, bowing changes help to inform the phrasing of the piece. I’ve used the Barenreiter, Janos Starker, Zuill Bailey, Schirmer/Frits Gaillard editions as references. I’m going to outline the process that I took to work with the Bach Suites. I have my teacher’s bowings for the 3rd suite which I like and do not wish to change at this time, but I wanted to rework the 1st Suite.
My teacher had given me a version of the Prelude to the 1st Suite that slurred 8 notes together for the most part. Generally he used this as a cello choir version, but I had difficulty getting consistent note lengths on my up-bows, especially on the first 8 measures, so finally I decided to rework it. Vandersall has an edition that is completely blank of bowings and phrasing so I decided to write my own adaptation onto the Vandersall edition. Using all of the editions that I had, and because the first 8 measures were problematic, I tried playing the bowings from each of the editions until I found one that I liked and worked best for me. It was a combination of slurred and detache’ repeated in each measure from the Barenreiter Edition. I couldn’t just replace those 8 measures and leave the rest of the movement the same as my teacher’s edition because the styles and phrasing wouldn’t match. I found similarly notated measures and changed those to match. I then looked at the rest of the measures to pattern bowings with slurred/detache combinations and tried them out to make sure they sounded consistent with the style; individually, within the phrase, and within the movement itself. If I had an ascending or descending scale, I could connect or slur those as long as I returned to the style I had chosen.
Additional Advice on Style - Bach was an organist and it was useful for me to look at the 1st Suite the way an organist may see it. Organists often use a drone or held note on the lower registers to sustain sound while moving the hands. Use of chords fills out the organ sound coupled with lines of melody or ornamentation intermittently (think Toccata and Fugue in D written for the organ by Bach as an example). Something else to remember is that organists use “finger crawling.” That means that they carefully move their fingers from one note to the next to minimize or eliminate a break in the sound as they transition from one note to the next. Otherwise you get a calliope sound. Consider the first measure of the Prelude of the 1st Suite. Bach utilizes the resonance of the open G and D strings to create a chord sound ( G, D, and B) that rings while the left hand plays the rest of the measure. Consistently, that open G is used throughout the first 8 measures with implied chords comprised of the first 3 notes of each measure. Other open strings are utilized at the beginning of other measures and can be played with a tenuto to elongate the chord idea or drone throughout the measure. Separate bows should provide a detache’ sound to mimic the “finger crawling.”
Movements within the Suites - Bach also wrote the movements with a specific purpose as outlined below as a basic outline:
Prelude - introductory piece and generally open to artistic license
Allemande- German court dance
Courante - Triple meter dance generally faster than a Sarabande
Sarabande - Triple meter dance.
Menuet - Social dance that has French origins.
Gigue - Or giga is a lively dance similar to the English jig.
Bouree - Lively French dance similar to a gavotte
Gavotte - Medium-paced dance originating in France in 4/4 beginning on the 3rd beat.
These are generally the names of movements within the Bach Suite and if you notice a pattern, all of them are dance forms with the exception of the Prelude. It is useful to not only listen to recordings of Bach Suites but demonstrations of these dances are available to view online through YouTube and other video services for further research.
Hopefully this gives a general overview and plan of action/explanation for working through the Bach Suites. As I mentioned before, I would like to add to or clarify points in this blog article as time moves on and as I work through the suites and find additional points worth mentioning. Keep an eye out for more information in the future. As a reformed Bach avoider, I have come to learn to love playing and listening to the Bach suites. I wish you love and joy in your playing and performing of the same.