The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
by Eric Siblin
List Price:
Our Price: $21.99
You Save: $2.01 (8%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $7.37 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Eric SiblinEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2009-12-15
ISBN: 0802119298
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Book Reviews of The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
Book Review: An Informed Newbie's View of a Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
It is hard for me to imagine Bach's Cello Suites as absent from my collection of CDs, or from the records that I used to have, or, for that matter, from the role of standards within the huge Bach oeuvre. They are beautiful, jaunty, sad, and puzzling, and meet anyone's definition of fine classical music. The truth is, though, that they dropped away from the world's musical knowledge (only partly because the world was slow to understand how much Bach had given it) and really didn't surface until the twentieth century, when Pablo Casals resurrected them. Even then, they didn't make any impression on music critic Eric Siblin. That's not surprising. Siblin had been a pop music critic in Montreal, "a job that had filled my head with vast amounts of music, much of which I didn't want to be there." Still, in 2000 idle curiosity led him to a performance of the suites, mostly because he chanced to be in a hotel near the recital hall. The performance was a revelation: "music more earthy and ecstatic than anything I'd ever heard." In _The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece_ (Atlantic Monthly Press), Sibling tells the welcome stories of the composer, the performer, and his own growth in understanding of the suites. Part of his "search" is literally for Bach's lost original score for them; that's OK, but it won't ruin your appreciation of the book to know that if he had found the original, there would have been international headlines about the discovery. The better part of the search is his growing musical appreciation and fondness for the suites, and for their historical lore.
Bach was not a musical sensation in his own lifetime. His own contemporary Handel was far more famous, and Bach never approached the sort of superstardom that Mozart or Beethoven would attain. After his death, it was the sons that got the manuscripts of his work. There are stories that some of his handwritten pages went to the padding to wrap around fruit trees, or in a shop for wrapping cheese, or even as detritus in a New York City construction site. The original manuscript of the Cello Suites has never turned up. Bach's wife sometime around 1730 made a copy of the original manuscript to give to a violinist. Her copy went from one musician to another, winding up in a royal library in Berlin in 1841, where it was mostly ignored. The thinking seemed to be that the suites were perhaps technical exercises for cellists, not performable pieces. Then in 1890, Pablo Casals, thirteen years old and a prodigy, was looking for music to play, rummaging through a sheet music store in Barcelona. A tattered copy of the suites caught his eye; he had not known that they existed. They were to change his life. He practiced them every day (a routine he would keep up during his long life), but it was twelve years before he would perform them in public. Casals, in exile from Spain, refused to play in countries that recognized Franco's government; he might have waivered on this pledge in order to enter the US and play at the United Nations, but he would not play the Cello Suites which were his spiritual key signature.
Siblin's book is a lovely tribute to the suites, to Bach, and to Casals, but it is also a rewarding introduction to classical music itself. The classical world was new to Siblin (although he can't help commenting on, say, Bach's influence on Procol Harum, or on hip-hop) and the book would be a fine introduction to give to a young person who might have a first interest in classical music. Siblin's descriptions of the music are good, though abbreviated. Much more fun are his expeditions to put himself into Bach World. Interviewing Walter Joachim, an 80-year-old veteran cellist, he got the advice that he should learn to play the cello. "Not that I could ever be any good, he cautioned. I was too old for that to ever happen. But it would give me some insight." And it does; he got to play some Bach, although not the suites themselves, which were simply too intimidating. His modest results were sobering, but they did bring him closer to appreciating the suites. He joined a choir of amateurs spending a weekend learning to sing a Bach cantata for a one-off performance. Remember what an amateur is literally: someone engaged in an activity for the love of it. Throughout this sparkling book, Siblin the amateur has written intelligently about the Cello Suites as a newbie coming to a fuller appreciation. It is an appealingly fresh view of a pinnacle of music.
More The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece reviews:
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
Summary of The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
One evening, not long after ending a stint as the pop music critic at the Montreal Gazette, Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Cello Suites." There, something unlikely happened: he fell deeply in love with the music. So began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of intrigue, politics, and passion. Part biography, part music history, and part mystery, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: Bach's composition of the suites and the manuscript's subsequent disappearance in the eighteenth century; Pablo Casals's historic discovery of the music in Spain in the late nineteenth century, and his popularization of the suites several decades later; and Siblin's own infatuation with the suites at the dawn of the twenty-first century. His search to learn all he can about the music leads Siblin to Barcelona, where Pablo Casals, just thirteen and in possession of his first cello, roamed the back streets with his father, in search of sheet music. To their amazement, they found Bach's lost "Cello Suites" tucked in a dark corner. Casals would play the suites every day for twelve years before finally performing them in public--and making them his own. As Siblin pursues the mysteries that continue to haunt this music more than 250 years after its composer's death, he asks the questions that have stumped modern scholars: why did Bach compose the suites for the cello, which was considered a lowly instrument in his day? And what happened to the original manuscript of the suites, which vanished after being hastily copied by Bach's second wife? The Cello Suites is a journey of discovery, fueled by the transcendent power of a musical masterpiece--and of the listeners who, like Siblin, have loved it through the ages.Ballet Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Ballet Books
The King's Theatre Collection: Ballet and Italian Opera in London, 1706-1883 (The John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection,Harvard Theatre Collection)by Morris S. Levy, John Milton Ward
Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library; Published: 2006-02-15; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
Les Sylphides-Chopiniana: Personal Reflections on Michel Fokine's Masterpieceby John Gregory
Spa Books Ltd; Published: 1991-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $209.31
Maya PlisetskayaProgress Publishers; Published: 1976-07-01; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Paris Modern: The Swedish Ballet, 1920-1925by Nancy Van Norman Baer
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; Published: 1996-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops:
A History of Ballet, Opera, Theater, and Stories Inspired by Francois Rabelais: The Fountain of French Music, Art and Literatureby Catherine E. Campbell
Edwin Mellen Pr; Published: 2008-12-05; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Reworking the Ballet: Counter Narratives and Alternative Bodiesby Vida L. Midgelow
Routledge; Published: 2007-12-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $85.75
Price in other shops:
Ballet Beyond Traditionby Anna Paskevska
Routledge; Published: 2004-11-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $86.40
Price in other shops:
Following Balanchineby Professor Robert Garis
Yale University Press; Published: 1995-04-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.38
Price in other shops:
Choreography and Narrative: Ballets Staging of Story and Desireby Susan Leigh Foster
Indiana University Press; Published: 1996-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $50.00
Price in other shops:
Ballet: An Illustrated Historyby Mary Clarke, Clement Crisp
Hamish Hamilton; Published: 1992-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $149.99
Similar Books and other products
Simone Dinnerstein - Bach: A Strange BeautyRelease date: 2011-01-18; Music CD
Best price: $8.75
Price in other shops:
Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello SuitesRelease date: 2006-06-06; Music CD
Best price: $7.36
Price in other shops:
Listen to Thisby Alex Ross
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2010-09-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops:
Pablo Casals - Bach: Suites for Cello, 1, 2 & 3Release date: 1990-10-25; Music CD
Best price: $5.64
Price in other shops:
Stradivari's Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfectionby Toby Faber
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2006-04-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.04
Price in other shops:
The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpieceby Eric Siblin
Grove Press; Published: 2011-01-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.52
Price in other shops:
Bach: Cello SuitesRelease date: 2003-10-07; Music CD
Best price: $15.16
Price in other shops:
Bach's Cello Suites: Analyses and Explorations (Vol. 1 & 2) (v. 1 & 2)by Allen Winold
Indiana University Press; Published: 2007-05-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $37.09
Price in other shops:
Bach: Six Suites for Solo CelloRelease date: 2010-05-04; Music CD
Best price: $29.40
Yo-Yo Ma - The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites CompleteRelease date: 2010-07-20; Music CD
Best price: $12.58
Price in other shops: