Edward Klorman
@eklorman.bsky.social
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62 posts
Mozart's Music of Friends (2016)
J. S. Bach: The Cello Suites (2025)
Prof of Music at UW–Madison
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![[This slide contains still images of characters from Blood+ and Neon Genesis Evangelion playing Bach’s Cello Suites.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreicxesgcoycs7djqtcv4joukga2plndwm2nwshibft5buya5pjzreu@jpeg)
![Viola da Gamba: Harmonic vs. Melodic
The French viol player Jean Rousseau (1644–99) distinguished between the “harmonic” style (jeu d’harmonie) of viol playing and the “melodic style” (jeu de mélodie). In the former, the viol conveys both melody and harmony, sometimes through chords and double stops, as well as through registral leaps that distinguish the bass line from the upper voices. In the latter, the viol plays the melody and requires extrinsic accompaniment.
Whereas Rousseau advocated the melodic style, Sieur de Machy (fl. c. 1660–90) considered a viol player playing only melodies to be comparable to “a man who plays perfectly on the harpsichord or organ, [but] only with one hand.” In practice, the distinction between the two styles was sometimes blurred, as some collections were composed to be playable either solo or with continuo accompaniment.
Music in the pièces de viole tradition—either by French composers or by Dutch and German composers who inherited and extended it—was likely part of the musical atmosphere at Cöthen while Bach composed the Cello Suites, given the influence of French music and culture on German courts and the presence of the outstanding gambist Christian Ferdinand Abel.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreihgxr5gt572lduhqcmkxualvi3h4aad55mnsie2gbgmmfppyfof6q@jpeg)
![A Gavotte en rondeau by Sieur de Machy
[An excerpt from a musical score for solo viola da gamba is reproduced here.]
This Gavotte en rondeau from Sieur de Machy’s Pièces de violle (Paris, 1685) exemplifies de Machy’s harmonic style, in which the viol expresses melody, bass, and accompaniment. The texture and style might remind some cellists of the Gavotte from Cello Suite No. 6. It is conceivable that, in composing suites for unaccompanied cello, Bach developed an original synthesis of the German solo-violin tradition and of French pièces de viole.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreidqzy4g7lpygdrvbso6jp5v47k4c7nrzsgm3gw33nkm6pnkvgn2by@jpeg)
![More on Interpretive Style
Occasionally, critics offered more nuance about the emotional quality of a cellist’s interpretation. An 1865 review of a performance by Louis Lübeck contrasts the special qualities of his sarabande to his dryer, perfunctory approach to other movements: “Mr. Lübeck performance three violoncello pieces by Seb. Bach clearly and correctly. However, it was not until the Sarabande—which, in contrast to the proud character of this Spanish national dance, was much closer to our [German] way of feeling and looking at things due to its almost modern, rapturously elegiac and soulful melody—that he succeeded in achieving a deeper and more emotional involvement and a greater warmth of tone to a highly commendable degree, which the audience appreciated through rich applause.”
Hugo Becker, writing in his cello treatise of 1929, complained of a sentimental, emotionally charged style of Bach performance, railing specifically against the continuous vibrato that was increasingly in vogue among a younger generation of players: “The whining, effeminate Bach playing of many over-sensitive cellists often has an intolerable effect. Serious classical music cannot bear any erotic vibrato; it needs a feeling for style, nobility, and dignity, without any loss of warmth. It is a sign of weakness of a performing artist if his means of expression in vibrato are exhausted.” Evoking unsettling, fascist overtones about degeneracy and effeminacy, Becker’s remarks paint a clear picture of an Apollonian ideal in Bach performance and of changing aesthetics at the dawn of the recording era.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreif7sxl4qgek6dzprxkwc4fzmkxoyric4anlvk7ico6xorxxqsf7pm@jpeg)
![Telemann’s Gulliver’s Travels Suite: An Extreme Comparison
An exaggerated instance of this principle can be found in G. P. Telemann’s “Guilliver’s Travels” Suite, TWV 40:108. Telemann represents the giants of Borbdingnag with a gigue notated in 24/1: [An extract from the first edition of Telemann's Gigue is reproduced here.]
By contrast, he represents the diminutive Lilliputians with a chaconne notated in 3/32: [An extract from the first edition of Telemann's chaconne is reproduced here.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreigaxntwc4afbwoxpagzrr2n2hubpguj3tuddczr6z2apsbahpp7oe@jpeg)
![Tempo Markings Traceable to Bach
Cello Suite No. 5 exists in a version transcribed for lute known as the Suite in G Minor, BWV 995. In the autograph manuscript of the lute version, the Prelude’s fugal section is marked “très viste” (very fast). This is the only tempo marking that survives in the composer’s hand. [An excerpt from Bach's autograph manuscript, showing the marking "très viste," is reproduced here.]
The florid Allemande from Suite No. 6, written with a time signature of “C” and using extensive thirty-second notes, is designated “Adagio” in a manuscript copy by J. P. Kellner (Source B) and “molto Adagio” in two later anonymous copies (Sources C and D) both made from a manuscript belonging to C. P. E. Bach. This tempo marking is likely authentic to the composer, who is the only person who could have influenced the exemplars for all of these manuscript copies.
Kellner indicated “Presto” for the Prelude from Cello Suite No. 3, which is composed mainly in sixteenth notes. Since this tempo designation is found in no other source, it is uncertain whether it is Kellner’s invention or whether it may have been present in his source.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreiaw5swpz3dyworzctg6nnozfohn7nph7zp37t7v56xilz5omfdav4@jpeg)
Edward Klorman
@eklorman.bsky.social
· Sep 18
![Henri Honegger and Max Oróbio de Castro
Honegger—a student of Julius Klengel, Pablo Casals, and Diran Alexanian—played the complete cycle in 1946 in London’s Cowdray Hall and, over the next decade, toured the program across England, the Netherlands, and the United States. A critic reviewing the Cowdray Hall cycle expressed doubts about the six suites as a suitable recital program. But other reviews were more enthusiastic: a pair of 1949 recitals in The Hague were hailed as a “clear, compelling presentation of the composer’s intentions,” rather than a “Romanticized Bach” or a “quasi-spiritualized” and “sterile” one. A review of a 1955 cycle in Wigmore Hall found that his “outlook is so musicianly that his renditions always give genuine satisfaction.” His 1959 box set, recorded over two days, has recently been reissued on CD.
Oróbio de Castro, a student of Isaäc Mossel and Casals—performed the suites in Amsterdam and The Hague in 1948–50. A reviewer from The Hague described his concerts as “an initiative that requires not only craftsmanship but also artistic courage.” Another generally positive review of the same concerts characterized his Romantic style of playing as “representing more the emotional life of a nineteenth-century [composer] than that of Bach or his contemporaries.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreiaawfpvmntw6wm7be3gbdbl7lllq5uabpwi7iipwtgnewxx44hw74@jpeg)
Reposted by Edward Klorman
![Mixed Reviews
Starting around 1860, when the Cello Suites first began to be performed in concerts, critical and audience reception was mixed. For many listeners, music for cello alone seemed like curiosities somewhat resembling études more than concert repertoire.
In 1868, when Alfredo Piatti performed three solo-Bach movements at the Monday Popular Concerts in London, a critic for The Musical World wrote: “Compared with the six sonata for violin without accompaniment these violoncello solos are light and unpretending. Nevertheless, they are interesting, if only because they are Bach’s. The first and last (in C major) are little better than exercises for the acquirement of mechanical facility, more suitable to the studio than to the concert-room, for which they were clearly never intended; but the second (in G minor [sic]) is melodious and replete with sentiment.”
The American composer Edgar Stillman Kelley, who got to know Suite No. 1 through Robert Schumann’s now-lost piano accompaniment, described what he regarded as the deficits of the unaccompanied version: “[The Allemande], in its original [unaccompanied] form, is the least interesting of the entire suite, being for the most part a series of scale passages with an occasional arpeggio and now and then a trill.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7nqk3quyjajojmuvmfdsuojo/bafkreicifwemo3vbu73a6zdpmetwd6ecfvbwyim4ldmwozixau6v3b2c7y@jpeg)
Edward Klorman
@eklorman.bsky.social
· Sep 3
