- Bach most likelty composed his six suites for unaccompanied cello (BWV 1007-1012) during his years as Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen. He probably composed them before 1720.1
- Because Bach’s employer, Prince Leopold, was a Calvinist, Bach was not required to compose or perform liturgical music in this position. (Calvinist worship generally utilized unaccompanied union psalm singing only). Instead, Bach was to provide instrumental music for the court, and so many of his instrumental works date from this period.
- Bach wrote these cello suites at approximately the same period in which he wrote his unaccompanied sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The unaccompanied violin works have a precedent in the works of Heinrich Biber, but Bach seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to write unaccompanied works for solo cello.
- The suites come down to us in a manuscript copied by Anna Magdalena Bach. Her title page for the set reads, “Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso, composées par [?Sr?] J.S. Bach, Maitre de Chapelle” (Suites for Violoncello Solo without Basso Continuo, composed by [?Signor?] J.S. Bach, Kapellmeister)
Sources
- Christoph Wolff and Walter Emery, “Bach, Johann Sebastian,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 12, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278195.
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