Customer Reviews

Complete Suites for Unaccompanied Cello and Sonatas for Viola Da Gamba (Dover Chamber Music Scores)

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

 

 

This is a clean, inexpensive copy of the Bach Gesselschaft edition, much less error prone than some of the the Gesselschafts. The only real problem here is the peverse clef choice. The cello parts are written with bass clef, occasionally using an alto clef when it goes up high, while the gamba sonatas use bass clef with the tenor clef for high parts. This is opposite of standard practices. As a viol player, I can read the cello parts with no problem (apart from the occasional drop below the range), but the tenor clef is completely confusing. There are alternative versions of the cello suites in the appendix with tenor, but the viol player is out of luck.

This edition is great, and with the articulations written in, it makes the piece much easier to learn and internalize.

Dover Publications are very good. Lots of room for notes. : ) Excellent price.

If you don't happen to have the complete Bach Gesellschaft edition in your library, you can get bits of it very cheaply. This is indispensable music. Even I, a guitarist, find I have to have this around. These suites are often played on other instruments, including guitar. Ever since they were rediscovered by Pablo Casals in the early part of the last century, they have been the sort of music that lies at the heart of what music really is. Music for solo cello is a bit like an anti-MTV--not just empty spectacle, but everything except the absolute essence of music has been removed.

There is a seriously funny moment in one of Patrick O'Brian's novels of the British Navy when Aubrey says to Maturin regarding some odd music he had found in a London shop: "Bach had a father!" Of course they had been playing things by J. C. Bach, one of J. S. Bach's sons known as the 'English Bach'. It is funny because Maturin's reaction makes it clear that it is an accepted fact that nearly all of us have fathers. But the passage continues with some lovely writing about Bach's music. And yes, as I recall, the oeuvre in question is a cello suite. Or was it a violin partita?

In any case, buy this book. It is the greatest music, it is cheap, it is an unimpeachable edition and you are helping keep back the forces of darkness.

I cannot actually rate the quality of the book (so I gave 5 stars to Bach), but I wanted to comment about another's review, that he/she wished there were more dynamics and markings. As I understand it, Bach provided virtually no dynamics, on purpose, for these pieces. This is why various CD's by differing artists can show quite a bit of difference in playing style. I've heard comparative playback of some of these by various celloists, and it is quite interesting. Bach left these out purposely, so feel free to provide your own interpretation.