Customer Reviews

The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When Eric Siblin wandered into a classical musical recital one day in Toronto, he was unaware that the music he would hear would transform his life. On the program were the solo suites for cello by Johann Sebastian Bach, and Siblin, a onetime rock/pop music critic, is blown away by a kind of music he had never heard before, consciously, and might never have deliberately sought out.

This book, the chronicle of series of musical and personal journeys of discovery revolving around the Bach cello suites, is the result. It immediately appealed to me because of my own love for the music -- although unlike Siblin, I'm not a musician of any kind and unlike him, 'classical' music has always been a part of my life. But I kept reading because of my own fascination with Siblin's tale and the way he has chosen to tell it: weaving together three separate strands of a narrative in much the same way that Bach might have woven together musical themes to produce the final work. The first of these strands revolves around Bach himself; the composer's background and how the history of his compositions can be tied to his own life and experiences in a variety of German princely courts of the 18th century. The second is the lifelong love affair between the 13-year-old Pablo Casals (a future superstar cellist), who stumbled across the then almost-unknown cello suites in the back streets of Barcelona, and the music that have ended up becoming some of Bach's best-known and most-loved works. (Without Casals, the suites could have languished in obscurity, rarely played; now they are a part of the cello repertoire that most cellists aspire to perform.) Finally, there is Siblin's own quest to discover more about both Bach and Casals, as part of the process of coming to grips with his own unexpected fascination with the music.

I fell in love with this book both for the caliber of the writing (which is very high indeed) as well as the subject matter. Because Siblin doesn't stick rigidly to discussing Bach and the cello suites themselves, he doesn't get bogged down in the kind of musicological detail that would lose him part of his audience (me amongst them, despite my love for this music, of which I possess three different interpretations...) What appealed to me most is that it's the kind of book that at its heart addresses the enduring impact of great art of any kind has to fascinate its audience, whether those that seek it out (as I did) or stumble upon it (as Siblin did.) At its heart, this is the story of how a piece of music can endure over the centuries and appeal to very different people in wildly different countries and time periods, in contexts its composer couldn't even have imagined.

Definitely an early contender for my favorite book of 2010.... and highly recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in classical music or the arts. And you'll enjoy it twice as much if you listen to each section (the book is broken into sections and movements that mirror those of the cello suites) alongside the music itself.

A philosophy lecturer of mine once remarked that the recently converted make the most passionate fundamentalists. Eric Siblin, a professedly retired rock critic (I'm not sure how one "retires" from a pastime) makes a good example. Stumbling across a performance of Bach's Cello Suites some years ago, Siblin was captivated, converted, and has since leapt into the study and exploration of these narrowly (but profoundly) celebrated pieces with great gusto. (Interestingly, I could find none of Siblin's rock criticism online anywhere. I was curious to see how good it was.)

Being no more familiar than Siblin was with the Cello Suites, I bought myself a recording (Pierre Fournier's) and had it on high rotation while I read. For fellow neophytes, then, these are pieces for an unaccompanied tenor instrument that itself usually (but not always) fulfills the role of an accompaniment to a "treble" instrument like a violin. Bach's six Cello Suites span a couple of hours, and you'd be forgiven for supposing that it would be, therefore, a challenging listen. First go-round, for a non-enthusiast, it is. I must say, though, that having listened to it repeatedly over a week I find it bouncing uncontrollably - and pleasingly - around my head all day. But all the same, I don't think I'm ready to jettison Led Zeppelin just yet. There again, I'm not really the converting type.

At any rate, on account of their inaccessibility the Cello Suites were commonly supposed, for a long while, to be simply rehearsal exercises. Which is where Siblin picks up the story. He explores the Suites in an organised, contrapuntal sort of way, through three lenses, each corresponding to movements in the Suites: firstly Bach's own biography; secondly the musical and political journey of 20th century Cello maestro Pablo Casals, punctuated and framed as it was by the Cello Suites, and thirdly through his own journey, both of discovery of Bach's own music, and through his research for this book. These accounts are interwoven cleverly and playfully and in a way the Baroque master surely would have approved of: according to the structure of the six suites themselves.

The accounts themselves, however, are a little variable.

Bach's biography is patiently and interestingly unfolded. I dare say the genuine aficionado won't find much new or enlightening in Siblin's exposition, but those with a more casual interest will: I hadn't realised, for example, that Bach's life ended in relative obscurity, and that his huge body of work only gained mass appeal long after his death.

And I had never heard of Casals at all. To be sure, Siblin's framing of the Casals story was skillful and its overlay on the cello suites themselves was fascinating. It did feel somewhat wilful: sometimes one can push a construction past the point that it withstands careful examination and I suspect, in his enthusiasm to deliver a pleasing narrative, Siblin has done this. Bach's music might be famous for its almost mathematically careful structure; real life isn't like that. Siblin would have it that Casals, a Catalonian teenager, discovered a publication of the suites and singlehandedly turned the world on to them as a performance piece, and to the cello as a solo instrument. I have a feeling it might not be quite that cut and dried.

The final strand, in which the author himself features, is the weakest. Partly, this is because Siblin himself is a neophyte; he isn't trained or steeped in the classical tradition (part of his story is his attempt to overcome that by taking cello lessons) and hence he has no particular locus standi to back his wild-eyed exegesis of the music, which just winds up sounding like fodder for pseud's corner in Private Eye. It just isn't interesting hearing about a random Canadian's attempts to learn the cello or sing in a Bach Cantata.

Nor does his agenda help: Siblin goes hunting for an Anti-Semitism which almost certainly was illusory, and then has a whale of a time wrestling with the meagre evidence he does find: for example, the anti-Jewish agenda implicit in Bach's St. John Passion. But if there is such a thing, Bach certainly didn't put it there (St. John did), and by any account, including Siblin's, Bach himself had no interaction, let alone interest, in Judaism at any time in his life, most likely never having even met a Jewish person. Yet still Siblin crowbars it in, allowing a patently 20th century gloss to colour his thinking, even absurdly baulking at singing the word 'schnell' in the Cantata, presumably aggrieved at having to use a word frequently attributed to Gestapo officers in Commando magazine. But 'schnell' is simply the German word for 'fast'.

So a curate's egg: the good parts, however, make this a recommended read for a non-specialist interested in a light and entertaining vista onto one of the more challenging corners of Bach's massive oeuvre.

Olly Buxton

This book is a wonderfully crafted combination of biography, history, musicology, detective story and personal discovery. Like the Suites themselves, it has a variety of themes and moods which in the end all fit together in a most satisfying way to connect the stories of Bach, Casals and the writer's passion for the music.

It's neither a heavy tome nor a heavy read but it is nourishing entertainment

Pablo Casals, the great Catalan cellist, happened to purchase a second-hand copy of the 1866 edition of the Bach cello suites (edited by the great Leipzig cellist Friedrich Wilhelm Grutzmacher, who died in 1903) in a bookstore in Barcelona in 1890. There are three 18th century original manuscripts of the Bach cello suites, none of them in Bach's handwriting but all three are contemporaneous with Bach. At least one of them was copied out by Bach's wife, not surprising since she was his copyist. While the title of this book is "the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece," in fact no one was searching for the cello suites, which had never been lost (there are actually fifty-some editions of these suites). Casals did not "search" for the suites, nor did he "find" them. Perhaps in order to plump up some mystery issue to keep readers turning the page, the author does not make this clear until you are far into the book. I found this annoying, as if the author didn't trust the reader to decide that the intertwined lives of Bach and Casals would be interesting enough to hold your attention. In fact, the book has a wealth of interesting details about Bach's life and personality and brings Casals deservedly back into the public eye. Unfortunately, the author's description of the suites themselves is long on descriptive adjectives but short on actual musical interpretation or understanding. The cellist Walter Joachim understandably told the author to learn the cello if he really wanted to understand the cello suites; what he really meant was "try to understand something about classical music." It's admirable that a pop critic became a fan of this music but this quote sums up his lack of basic musical knowledge: "Bach implies harmony.... He hints at it, suggests it, plants the seed of harmony." (p. 56). Clearly some basic music analytical skills are lacking here. In any event, worth reading for the stories of two great men and their times.

A former rock critic, Siblin was inspired upon attending a performance of Bach Cello suites 10 years ago to delve into the history of their composition, as well as their introduction by Pablo Casals into the modern concert repertoire.

While the concept of the book is very attractive, the execution is rather disappointing. The book gets off to a bad start with the author's first of many painful attempts to describe the arc and emotion of Bach's music. The talent to write evocatively and movingly about instrumental music is rare, and it when not done well it can come across as cringe-inducing as a badly-written sex scene. That was my feeling as I read "the cello resumes with aching soulfulness. Thing will not come easily....We peak higher. A new vista opens up, rhapsodic resolution, the descent a soft landing." By the time later in the book that Siblin tells us that certain recordings "turn [his] crank," it is hard to put much stock in his judgment/taste.

At the core of the book the author recounts the lives and careers of Bach and Casals. This is the redeeming part of the book (hence two stars). Most of the information is interesting and fairly well-organized--although at times it suffers from excessive repetition and a fractured time-line. From time to time Siblin overplays a point, such as when he discusses Bach's reputed anti-semitism. Ironically in accusing Bach, Siblin repeatedly invokes grotesque stereotypes and generalizations about Germans that are every bit as ugly as the prejudice he decries.

The real weakness of the book is its third main character: the author himself. As is the case in many recent books purportedly devoted to historical subjects, Siblin inserts himself firmly into the narrative. While this may be fair as he describes his first-hand experience trying to learn the cello, far too many pages are devoted to expounding on himself, his experiences, his biases and his ungrounded opinions. In the end, he fails to make the case that I would really want to know him, and I am left rather stunned by his hubris in hitching himself on for the ride with two great artists.

Eric Siblin explores the history of how each of the six Bach Cello was first composed, discovered or performed. To accomplish this task, the author goes back and forth between the lives of Johann Sebastian Bach and Pablo Casals, the 20th century Catalan cellist who first performed, recorded and popularized the suites. Siblin paints a very compelling picture of life in both Baroque Germany and 20th century Spain and interweaves the history of music with the tumultuous events that defined both time periods. For that reason alone, this book is worth reading.
For a cellist, musicologist or a person interested in music history this book is a masterpiece. It is easy to read and difficult to put down making it ideal either for someone just starting to learn about the history of western classical music or someone well-versed in the subject. It goes into alot of detail about the history and composition of each suite without ever seeming overly technical.
Perhaps most importantly, this book explores why the Bach Cello Suites became such importnt and well known reportiore for cellists today. Surprisingly, they were relatively unknown in their time and Bach left no clear date for their composition or instructions for how to perform them aside from typical Baroque techniques. The mystery surrounding their origin leaves plenty of room for interpretation on the parts of cellists who have come to know and love them which Siblin adroitly makes clear for the reader.

Indeed the Bach Cello Suites are among the greatest of the world's best classical music. And there is no doubt that Johan Sebastian Bach wrote them even though the autograph manuscripts of these works have never been found. Furthermore, indeed Pablo Casals is one of the world's greatest all-time cellists. Additionally, the story of how Pablo Casals helped the world discover the beauty and magnificence of the Bach Cello Suites is a fascinating story. This book attempts to tell the story both behind the composition of the music, and the discovery of the music in the early years of the twentieth century. It also attempts to shed light on the character and life of both Casals and Bach. And finally, it attempts, through the authors own somewhat bumbling exploration of Bach music to illustrate the relevance of both Bach Cello Suites and Bach's music over all in the present day.

It accomplishes all these things to an extent. The presentation has some serious flaws. First of all, the overuse of passive voice gives this book the character of a rambling, disorganized assemblage of anecdotal bits and pieces without cohesion. The author's attempt to make the book sound conversational with the use of contractions and first and second person syntaxes actually make it difficult to identify what is and what is not the author's personal opinion, and some of them are quite speculative and unsupported. It does not claim to be a scholarly work, but a little more polich and poise would have made the entire volume both more pleasurable to read and credible to the reader.

Overall I found the book very interesting, but difficult to connect the various segments of the story together, and this left me somewhat unsatisfied as to the answers to the many very interesting questions the author posed.

Mr. Siblin "3 in one" technique of using the cello suites as a fulcrum upon which to biography JS Bach, Pablo Casals, and to some degree, autobiography of himself. The biographies on Back and Casals are well written, particularly that of Casals, yet suffer from omission of timeline dates and ages that put life events in perspective. However, Mr. Siblin injects a fair amount of narcissism in his view of Bach's music, particularly a number of pages dealing with the uncomfortable anti-Semitism of Bach's lyrics in an Easter Mass, even though the cello suites themselves do not have lyrics. Rather than narcissistic rants on how "difficult" it is for the author to play cello and sing Bach, I would have liked more insight into the Suites themselves from a performance perspective -- how did virtusosi such as Casals and Rostropovich deal with these masterworks differently?

Overall, a good book, a great choice for a weekend summer read.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites are perhaps the most intriguing pieces of music ever written. Largely forgotten for almost two centuries, but incredibly found by the man who would become the world's greatest cellist; written for an instrument for which not many solo pieces had been written; often performed now with a feeling and emotion not common in Bach's music; six suites of music for which many mysteries still linger. In other words, a fine subject for a book.

Eric Siblin, the former pop music critic at The Montreal Gazette, has written here a great book about music. The book is about the suites and their mysterious history, but it's also a mini-biography of Bach and Pablo Casals, the cellist who discovered them at the age of thirteen and was responsible for making them what they are to the world today, which is simply one of the most divine pieces of music ever written. Siblin breaks the book into chunks based on the order of the suites; so six sections with six chapters each. Each section usually starts with a description of the related prelude, an interesting device to set the stage for the section. For example, he ties the melancholy second suite to the death of Bach's first wife, the romantic third to the meeting of his second wife. The first few chapters of each section usually covered Bach, the next few Casals, and then the last was reserved to tie the pieces together through Siblin's own search for the lost original manuscript of the suites (something of a holy grail for musicologists as there is currently no version that has the composer's own instructions for performance, which explains the wide disparity between interpretations) and his emotional exploration of the suites. This exploration included attending a Bach Festival, trying to learn to play cello, and then eventually learning to play the first prelude on guitar.

This is simply a wonderful little book. Siblin is excited about his subjects and it comes through in his writing, carrying us along on his quest. He ably relates Bach's and Casal's biographies within the limited space allotted for each. In fact, the limited space probably helped Siblin stay with the most pertinent points. He also uses vivid and spot-on descriptions of the music, for example, as he does with the `churning mechanism' of the fourth prelude. And for an amateur musician, he speaks credibly about the transcendence of the music, using language that is not too overblown, a common mistake in other music books that I have read. Though there are many mysteries about the Suites still left at the end of the book, I felt satisfied; I felt I knew more about them and the transforming power of music.

One further note, I have owned the EMI recording of Casal's Suites for about ten years and have always loved them. I found it helpful to listen to them repeatedly as I read this book. Not only did it shed a new light on the suites for me, but it also enhanced the reading of the book, tying me in a way to the journey. If you pick up this book, I recommend doing the same. And if you're a lover of music, especially Bach, I would recommend picking up this book.

I pre-ordered this book from Amazon once I had read a few of the Canadian reviews and seen how it had been nominated for the top Canadian non-fiction prize. Though I don't know much about classical music, the story begins in a promising way, with the miracle of little Pablo Casals dragging his father through the busy streets of Barcelona where they found an extremely rare edition of Bach's six cello suites.

Pablo paid a few pennies for this fading volume and tehn practiced it every day of his life. We don't know when exactly he first performed the works in public, but he recorded them in the years after the Spanish Civil War and they became his signature piece. The author, Eric Siblin, traces the life of Casals from its beginning to its end, and we can see how his life paralleled that of Bach to a certain extent (perhaps that is why he was so drawn to this music). Siblin's book is sort of a study of Bach's music, but it is really about career and how political currents cross and complicate careers like a bow moving across a string.

I had no idea how unknown Bach was (until the 19th century when he was championed by Felix Mendelssohn). Siblin really has his work cut out for him because we know so little of Bach. Of all geniuses he says we know less only of Shakespeare than we do of Bach, but to Siblin's credit he is able to pull together a rounded portrait by concentrating on the ducal milieux a court musician had then to traverse. And by always going back to the music, often impressionistically. One suite is sad, so Siblin associates it with the tragedy of losing a beloved wife, etc.

It's as a detective story that this book stumbles. And that wouldn't be so bad except this aspect is foregrounded on every other page--even in the book's title, "The Search for a Baroque Masterpiece." One fully expects the storyline to turn on the discovery of Bach;s original manuscript, and fellas, I don't want to give away any spoilers, but if you're like me, you'll be bitterly disappointed by this book's lame ending. Otherwise it's a five star read.