Cello Suites, BWV 1007-1012

Johann Sebastian Bach, born on March 31, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany, and passing on July 28, 1750, in Leipzig, was a Baroque composer and musician whose works remain foundational to Western classical music. Raised in a musical family, Bach’s early training included violin and keyboard, and by age 18, he began a prolific career as an organist, composer, and teacher. His professional life spanned roles in Weimar, Köthen, and Leipzig, where he served as Kapellmeister and cantor, producing masterpieces like the Brandenburg Concertos and the Mass in B Minor. Between 1717 and 1723, while in Köthen, Bach composed the Six Cello Suites (BWV 1007-1012) for an unknown cellist, possibly Christian Ferdinand Abel. These suites, blending German, French, and Italian styles, showcase Bach’s genius in crafting intricate, expressive music for a solo instrument, cementing his legacy as a compositional titan.

The Six Cello Suites, written for unaccompanied cello, are a cornerstone of the instrument’s repertoire, each comprising six movements: a prelude followed by five dance-inspired pieces (allemande, courante, sarabande, a pair of minuets/bourrées/gavottes, and gigue). The suites progress in technical and musical complexity, from the accessible G Major (Suite No. 1) with its flowing arpeggios to the virtuosic C Minor (Suite No. 5) with its scordatura tuning and the expansive D Major (Suite No. 6) originally for a five-string cello. These works explore the cello’s polyphonic potential through implied harmonies and counterpoint, demanding precise bowing, articulation, and phrasing from performers. Rediscovered in the 19th century and popularized by Pablo Casals in the 20th, the suites remain essential for cellists, offering both a technical workout and a profound musical journey.

About these editions. No autograph of the suites survives; everything played today descends from four manuscript copies, one of them in the hand of Anna Magdalena Bach, and they disagree with each other about almost every slur. Suites 1 and 3–6 are Cellofun.eu’s text, typeset from those four sources and dedicated by its editor to the public domain. Suite No. 2 is Frédéric Boulanger’s, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The bowings are the editors’. What has been taken off is what was written for a cellist and means something else on any other instrument: fingerings, string numbers, bow directions, and the dynamics they added. Cellofun also draw a second, dashed slur wherever only some of the four sources carry a bowing; those are not reproduced here, so what you see is the one bowing the editor chose. Suite No. 6 was written for a five-string instrument, and appears in the four-string version transposed down a fifth into G, which is how it is usually played.