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ABOUT THE PROGRAMBENJAMIN PESETSKY
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Suite No. 2 in D Minor for Solo Cello, BWV 1008
Bach’s six solo suites are the companions of every modern cellist. Some are simple enough to play after just a few years of study, others wait for a higher level of technical mastery. But none of them are ever static in a cellist’s mind or fingers: they change and grow from concert to concert and from year to year.
They also combine musical sophistication with convenience. A cellist needs nothing but a cello to play them, indoors
or outside, at weddings and memorials, in conservatories and concert halls, in airports and hotel rooms. Each suite has a different mood, and there is one to fit any occasion imaginable.
The Suite No. 2 in D Minor may be the broodiest and most lonesome of the set. The Prelude is filled with questions, quite unlike the First Suite’s famous opening with its comforting rolling harmonies. The Allemande is stark, building toward the urgent Courante. These first three movements are especially close, conspiring together on a forward trajectory.
The Sarabande takes a step back. Like all Bach’s Sarabandes, it is poised and contemplative, but this one is especially glum, carrying only the faintest erotic charge of the
original Spanish dance, which had roots in colonial South America. Next come two Minuets: the first heavy-footed and reproachful, the second lithe in the parallel major key.
A handful of low notes suggests a bass line, nudging the melody forward with wide dissonances. The Minuet I is repeated after Minuet II.
The Gigue seems to answer the Prelude’s questions, though it doesn’t offer a particularly comforting conclusion. The minor
key casts pessimistically over this vigorous dance, which visits the relative major just briefly in the second half. It ends on an upward arpeggio: the only one of the six suites to end on an ascent and not be brought down to earth.
Bach wrote the cello suites sometime before 1720, likely during his time as Kapellmeister in Köthen, though they may have earlier origins. In Köthen he worked for Prince Leopold, a young aristocrat Bach said “both loved and knew music.” Though his principality was small, Leopold built one of the finest instrumental ensembles in Europe, hiring six accomplished musicians, including at least one cellist, from Berlin four years before Bach’s arrival.
In the previous decades, the cello had rapidly developed
from a hulking bass violin into an elegant, medium-sized instrument. The invention of wire-wound gut strings made it possible to produce lower pitches at shorter, more manageable lengths, allowing for nimble solo playing. Bach was clearly writing for a skilled cellist with the latest equipment, and in Köthen he had such players close: the musicians in Prince Leopold’s Kapelle were a tight-knit bunch who rehearsed in Bach’s apartment.
Around 1721, Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, copied out the cello suites, leaving us with one of two important sources for them (the other by Johann Peter Kellner, Bach’s student). Only a copy of the Fifth Suite, in an embellished transcription for lute, survives in Bach’s own ink. Ambiguities in the sources, and small differences between them, contribute to the suites’ reputation for interpretive puzzles.
Still, this perception is a bit misplaced, emphasizing less than the primary concern of most players. The suites are clear in their ideas even when particular details are thin on the
page. Cellists are more likely to ask what they can do with these ideas, how they can shape and clarify them, both for themselves and for their listeners in the setting at hand.
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The Music at Tippet Rise