J.S. Bach’s Unaccompanied Suites for

Cello, and his Life up to that Point

by

Johann Sebastian Back was born on March 21^st, 1685, in Eisenach, Thruingia to Johann Ambrosius Back and Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He came from a family of professional musicians, dating from his great-great-grandfather, Viet Back in Wechmar (zither) to Hans Bach or "Hans de Spielmann," (fiddle) in central Germany, to Christoph Bach (violin) whose brothers, Johannes and Heinrich were also successful musicians, to Johann Ambrosius, his father, a town musician. Johann Sebastian was named after his godfathers, Johann Georg Koch and Sebastian Nagel. He lived with his four brothers, two sisters, parents, and several apprentices who were learning music from his father. The town itself was very musically active, and played host at one time or another to Pachelbel, Telemann, and Heumann. Consequently, Bach was continually exposed to music.

He went to school at the age of eight, and was trained by the cantor for the chorus. Several times a year, the chorus would walk the streets to beg for donations. Although Bach was often absent, presumably due to illness, he was an excellent pupil, and in his hours at home his father began grooming him for a career as a violinist/violist.

Before he reached the age of eleven, one of his brothers and both of his parents had died. After his mother passed away on May 3^rd, 1694, his father remarried and died in late January of 1695. Back and his brother, Joann Jakob, were sent by their stepmother to live with their older brother, Johann Christoph, who was twenty-four years old. At the time, Jakob was an organist at Ohrdruf.

Ohrdruf was a musically inactive city. Bach and his brother were sent to school, although his brother left after a year, at age fourteen to apprentice as a town musician. Bach again sang in the school chorus, which solicited donations and begged in the streets. The money collected was divided up between singers, and as Bach was a soloist, he was paid well enough to take most of the financial burden of his support off his brother, Christoph.

Although, he did extremely well in school, by the time he was fifteen years old, he had grown bored with Ohrdruf. Before graduation, he secured a scholarship to a music academy in Luneburg, then hitch-hiked the three hundred miles to get there. This would be the first in a pattern of changes that occurred in Bach’s life, a chain of lucky events that would allow him to switch locations and influences just as be was beginning to grow bored with the ones currently available to him.

Sometime after his first year at Luneburg, his voice broke. Luckily, his father’s training on the violin allowed him to stay on as a violinist. Additionally, he was allowed to earn money by training the choir in the singing of new pieces of music. It was during this time that he wrote his first compositions for the organ.

One afternoon, while sitting outside a tavern debating whether or not to spend his money on something to eat, several rich travelers threw two herring heads out the window at him. He began to pick the meat off the heads and eat it, and found a large coin wedged into the mouth of each fish. Together, the two coins equaled half a year’s pay. Very pleased, he tucked the money away without ever bothering to speak with his benefactors.

While in Luneburg, he was exposed to famous organist such as Johann Adam Reinken, Dietrich Burxtehude, Georg Bohm, Cincentius Lubeck, and Johann Jakob Loewe. Listening to the work of these musicians undoubtedly had an effect on his growing interest with the organ and his first set of compositions for the instrument.

He stayed in Luneburg for three years before finally returning to Thuringia in 1703. After winning an appointment as an organist in Sangerhausen, a town sixty miles from his home town of Eisenach, and then loosing it due to a bribing of the judges, he became a court musician at Weimar. He was a violinist to Duke Johann Ernst, who kept a famous organist named Johann Effler. Bach stayed only a few months before being appointed to test and prove a new organ being built in Arnstadt. As was customary, after he had declared the instrument good, he gave a concert to display its qualities. The townspeople were so pleased with his playing that they offered him the position of organist. He accepted and was formally appointed on August 14, 1703 at St. Boniface.

Aside from playing at church services, he also trained the boys of the local school to sing. The boys were badly disciplined and Bach found them unruly and disrespectful to him. One night, while walking home with a female cousin, he was attacked by one of the choir boys with a stick. After pulling a sword, the boy’s friends dragged him away. Finally, because training the boys was not stipulated as part of his work agreement, his refused to do so. The church complained, but eventually let the matter drop.

It was not the first time the church or the township allowed Bach a leniency that would not have been shown to another musician, nor was it the last. There was a long tradition of having a Bach playing in the land, becoming so much a part of the community that musicians were referred to as "the Bachs" even after the family had left the area. Bach was paid outrageously well, and when the church was unable to pay his salary, they took fund from a home for the elderly and infirm to do so.

In Autumn of 1705, he took four weeks leave to go to Lubeck and visit friends. While there, the position as organist for St. Mary’s became available, and Bach spent months agonizing over whether or not to take it. The current organist was about to retire, and had a thirty-year-old unmarried daughter who, it was understood, would be married to whichever man decided to take the position. Whether Bach was concerned with avoiding prostituting himself or was involved already with the cousin in Arnstadt who he would eventually marry, he ultimately decided not to take the position.

He returned to St. Boniface twelve weeks after he was expected, and was called before the town council to explain his prolonged and unauthorized absence. As usual, he was not reprimanded, and when he announced that he would be marrying his cousin, the usual legal fee was waved. The marriage was made possible by an unexpected inheritance he received from his uncle’s estate.

Shortly after his marriage, Bach left Arnstadt to take a position as organist at St. Blasius in Muhlhausen. He stayed only nine months before petitioning for a dismissal. The Bach name was not established in Muhlhausen as it was in Arnstadt, and Bach and his wife were treated as inferiors by the townspeople.

Next, Bach moved to Weimar to serve that grand duke as an organist and chamber musician. The current organist, Johann Effler, had been a friend of Bach’s when he visited Weimar before, and was now becoming infirm. To keep from disgracing him, the grand duke asked Bach to work only as a chamber musician until the old man’s death, at which time he took over the position of organist. He worked in the grand duke’s service from 1707 until 1717, and composed the bulk of his works for the organ, many of which pushed the art of the instrument to new heights.

Although the grand duke respected Bach greatly as a musician, he had a deep hatred of Duke Ernst, whose family was a friend of Bach. After relations between the grand duke and Duke Ernst deteriorated entirely, Ernst forbid Bach to speak with the family. Bach disobeyed, and was consequently overlooked for the position of Capellmeister in favor of a moron. Offended, he petitioned for his dismissal until the Duke was so offended that he placed Bach under house arrest for almost a month, at which point he gave in to the man’s inherent stubbornness and allowed him to leave.

Bach then accepted a position in the musical establishment of Prince Leopold in Cothen. Leopold was passionately devoted to music, and spent as much as a fourth of his income on employing an ensemble of fine musicians. He and Bach got on very well together, as Leopold was interested in everything musical and never stifled Bach’s desire for expansive thought. It was during this time that Bach composed the Brandenburg Concertos, the last of which is thought to have been written with specific limitations in mind so that the Prince might be able to play it.

When Prince Leopold traveled to Carlsbad, he took a number of musicians with him. Bach was one of these, and upon returning from one of these trips in 1720, he discovered that his wife had taken ill, died, and been buried while he was away. He remarried a year and a half later, to a woman named Anna Magdalena, with whom he had more than a dozen children.

In 1723, Leopold married as well. He became completely obsessed with his young, pushy wife, and began to loose interest in music, prompting Bach to leave Cothen.

Also during his time at Cothen, Bach wrote six suites for solo violin, and six for cello. Because he rarely ever dated his work, it is impossible to know which set was written first, but from the similarities of style it is quite reasonable to assume that they were written during the same period. These six suites represent the pinnacle of Bach’s achievement with violin and cello.

The suites for cello are arranged in almost identical fashion. Each begins with a prelude, which Bach was once criticized by town officials for the excessive length and breadth of. Then follows an Allamande, a slow, processional dance that Bach often started with a short upbeat and wrote in double time. Next comes a fast, lively dance called a Courante in triple time, which is followed by the Sarabande, also in triple time, but most in the style of the Allemande.

At this point, the suites differ. The first two contain two minuets, leisurely walking dances, the second pair have Bourrees, skipping dances, and the last two suites include graceful walking dances called gavottes. Although each suite is written with a fully thought-out beginning, middle, and end, there is a certain arch created by playing all six together. The level of difficulty in the sixth suites is significantly higher than that in the first, obviously indicating that they are to be contemplated in order. The cello suites are considered as practice pieces to be studied for technical precision and attainment of skill, and are rarely if ever performed in public.

Although the first suite it obviously intended as an introduction, it has all the qualities of a complete work. The Prelude uses broken chords and while keeping within the limitations of a prelude, creates significant tension. The Allemande and Courante, although written mainly in sixteenth notes, are exercises in phrasing and musicality while remaining exceptionally clear. Following a well-rounded Sarabande which makes liberal use of the cello’s tone in double-stops and chords are two Minuets, both of which encourage the natural musical expression of the form in their composition. The suite concludes with a Gigue, divided into two parts. The first is a statement of the theme, the second builds upon this theme while developing simultaneously a counter-theme within itself.

The second suite begins with a Prelude riddled with unexpected stresses. The culmination points are wrapped within multiple ideas that, without repeating, form a complete transition from the beginning of the piece to the end. The Allemande is in two parts, the first being more adventurous in terms of double-stops and rhythms, the second with arpeggios. Both parts contain numerous accidentals. The Courante uses extended phrases and running scales while working in a series of four sixteenth notes which are repeated throughout the piece. Wickedly complicated rhythms written into alterations between chordal and linear parts fill the Sarabande, creating tension and helping to suggest multiple voices. The Sarabande’s increased difficulty and use of double-stops is continued and concluded in the first Minuet. The second eases back into a single line and is followed by the Gigue, which uses double-stops as accents and brings back the running scales from the Courante, but requires more concentration than speed to allow the tension to conclude entirely. The second suite as a whole has a disrupted feeling to it, which Bach holds under careful control.

The Prelude to the third suite contains two sections. The first is made up of running scales, the second of arpeggios. The phrasing is such that without careful thought, the piece could easily become monotonous, but Bach arranges his arpeggios to continue building off those just played, and then finishes with a flourish of unexpected chords and fast double-stops. The Allemande uses extensive thirty-second notes among its sixteenth notes, drawing attention to the movement of the passing tones as they skip between a simpler theme. The Courante is written almost entirely in eight notes, but is played at a quick tempo which compliments the repeated idea and its inversions. The Sarabande proceeds much more slowly, the majority of measures beginning with a chord which resonates through the rest of the bar to sound against the theme. The Bourrees are played together as one piece, despite the change in key, and are two of the most well known suite movements. Their cheer is drawn with simple eight notes which fall into a concise and satisfying pattern. The concluding Gigue switches between sets of sixteenth notes and periods of varied rhythms while keeping up a lively effect.

The Fourth suite’s prelude opens with and spends it first half playing with arpeggios, which are broken up and rearranged during the second half. The Allemande echoes back to the simpler arrangements of the first suite, written with relatively few accidentals. It is followed by the Courante, which must be played more slowly because of its mixture of eighth-triplets and sixteenth-notes. The main theme is repeated frequently. Bach wrote the Sarabande of this suite in dotted rhythms, rather than the usual Sarabande rhythm and filled it liberally with chords, double-stops, and unexpected rhythms. The first Bourree is full of sixteenth notes followed by lilting quarter notes and has a very pleasant quality. The second Bourree is only twelve measures long, and might have been written as a second section for the first rather than an entirely different suite movement. The Gigue gives absolutely no time for pause or hesitation, it is arranged of triplet eighth-notes that form the two- and four-measure themes. The piece is played extremely fast and considered the most difficult and most masterful of anything Bach wrote for cello.

The fifth suite was intended to be played on a cello turned to C, G, D, G, the top string being wound a whole step lower than is customary. Bach’s intention with this tuning was to allow particular chords to be played, in which the top sting, the G, is open. Many cellists are dissatisfied with the new tuning and decide to change the written chords instead. The first beat of many of the measures in the Prelude contain these chords, which resonate throughout the rest of the measure, again implying more than one voice in a single line. The second section of the Prelude, which is unusually long, has the structure of a fugue. A slower Allemande follows, played more slowly, often feels on the verge of collapse, and strict attention to tempo and phrasing must be paid it in order for the piece to keep attention. The Courante calls back to many of Bach’s keyboard Courantes, which were written for church services, and carries the same severity. The Sarabande is unexpectedly short and perfectly succinct in its use of arpeggios to create a harmonic structure. The two Gavottes are less intense, created with multiple principal rhythms. The Gigue finishes the suite on a light note, repeating a comfortable rhythm and excluding double-stops.

The last suite was originally written for a "viola pomposa." Some sources say that Bach himself invented the instrument, which was tuned like a cello except for a fifth string tuned a fifth above the fourth. It was held on the arm, and often fitted with a ribbon or strap to make holding easier, and it was invented for the purpose of making high-pitched, rapid passages easier to play with better tone. It is probably to believe that the "viola pomposa" was the same instrument as Bach’s violoncello piccolo, due to the fact that Bach was wrestling with the instrument at Cothen, at about the time the sixth suite was written. Another indication is that the earliest known copy of the manuscript stipulated a tuning identical to the standard tuning of a violoncello piccolo.

The Prelude contains a continual repetition of eighth-note triples, which avoid becoming monotonous by long development of phrases and semi-conclusions. The movement reaches in a great arch from beginning to end. The Allemande is full of double-stops, sixteenth and thirty-second notes, and the modulations are often unexpected. A simple rhythm is established in the Courante, which gives it an easy-going feel, and is followed by a Sarabande with a conspicuous number of sixth intervals. The Gavottes carry two-measure phrases and remain cheerful, and the set of suites conclude with a Gigue that resembles hunting music and races to the finish.

The six suites for unaccompanied cello were written at a time when the technique of polyphonic playing was fully developed, but nothing had been written for solo strings. Bach’s work was stunning in its complexity and scale, and remains so even today.

The genius of the suites is their implication of more than one voice speaking simultaneously through a solo. Despite the fact that each of these works is meant to be played by a single cello, which at the most can sound two notes at once, the melodic lines and passing tones work together to imply and create the illusion of multiple voices and contrapuntal harmony. Every note necessary to complete the modulation is included, making any attempt at writing an accompaniment part gratuitous. The piece accompanies itself.