Introduction and Overview
In this course of this blog, I’ll be detailing the steps toward creating your own edition of the Bach Cello Suites. It’s a fascinating exercise—one that I’ve done many times myself and with my students—and it results in a deeper and closer connection to these masterpieces. I’ll be using the Fourth Suite in E-flat major BWV 1010 to show all of the steps while posting periodic excerpts of myself playing. I’ll also be posting this on Instagram, where you can follow me @viola_bratsche.
I’ve spent a lot of years thinking about, teaching, and playing these suites, and have given a number of presentations about this very project. You can view a powerpoint here, which is available on the Presentation tab of this website.
To briefly set up the problem: There exists no manuscript of the Cello Suites in JS Bach’s hand. Our understanding of the suites comes from four handwritten manuscripts from the 18th century and the first printed edition from the early 19th century. All of the sources contain fairly similar (but not exact, as we’ll see) pitches and rhythms, but they diverge greatly in the slurs and articulations. Making a judgment as to which is the “best” version is an impossible task, as they all have their strengths and weaknesses and show different flavors of the music. Rather, I find that it’s useful to systematically see where they agree and disagree, in hopes of approaching the since lost autograph manuscript. If, for example, all four sources have a slur over the same group of notes, we can assume with relative certainty that the slur appeared in Bach’s autograph manuscript. While this does occur, it’s not as frequent as one would hope, so a lot of close study is needed.
For this project, I’ve developed a fairly systematic way of comparing the sources to find where they agree and disagree. After identifying this, the fun (and sometimes frustrating) process of decision-making begins. There’s a lot to consider, but it should engage all parts of your musical ideas: meter, harmony, performing ease, modern vs period instruments, expressive intention, and so on.
This blog will detail those steps and examine any issues as they arrive. The end result will be my new edition of the E-flat suite, complete with a performance. By embarking on this process with the suites, I’ve found that I get to know them on a much deeper level than if I had played someone else’s edition. The slow process of studying them this way reveals the incredible depth and variety in each suite.