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Bach Cello Suites Compared
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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 RE: Bach Cello Suites Compared (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
First Anner Bilsma, An important Dutch cellist who made this recording in 1978-
Later he found a score containing Bach's (?) originaly intended bow-strike strategy. This completely changed his view on the pieces, after witch he recorded them again. The Dutch television docu about the project (de streken van Bach) combined that project with his quest to play a Stradivari. The cello suites are indeed a lifetime of pleasure/study and an other cellist recently recorded them for the 5th time. I don't think Anner has much to add to the suites, nor on his own power, nor with the help of those old bow-stategies.
Early music always has been subject to changing opinions and every generation has it's own view on how to treat it (based on a couple of leading performers). My father can tell exactly when a record was made because he experienced many of those chancing opinions first hand. He plays the lute version of the suites himself for over 60 years now. He started on the guitar (40ties), then upscaled to Bolin's alto guitar (70ties) and finely to the Lutes (90ties). Before specializing in flamenco he was a world level performer of early music from the baroque/renaissance, playing various types of instruments for various settings, mostly at home, sometime on stage/record (both solo, in duets and with ensemble). In the same way PDL was raised with life flamenco from the very start, i was raised with life played Bach suites from before i was born and the Bach suites are probably the very first language i ever learned. They are indeed a lifetime of pleasure (or a long sit when played wrong, witch happens in most cases).
Quite often when i try to compose classical music myself it ends up sounding a little bit like Bach (it's early influence made it part of my system). My first attempt to compose music myself included constructions like
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1~0---------------1-----------1------1---------1~0-------------------------0---------0-------0---
---------2--1--2-------------------------------------------2--1-------/--1--------------------------
------------------------/3-2-3-----2---------/1--------------------4----------------2--------0------
0-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------/3-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The funny thing is that you can re arrange the notes to something sounding like Piazzollla in seconds (also part of my musical fundaments)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--1~1------------1-------1---------1~0-----------------------0---
----------------2----------------------------2----1-------1~2------
---------2--3----------2---------/1-------------------4-------------
--0-------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------0----------------
You can indeed say totally different things with (almost) the same notes..... isn't it fun.
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Date Jan. 31 2013 6:14:06
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Bach Cello Suites Compared (in reply to estebanana)
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Ricardo,
I like Yo yo Ma, but I hesitate to post lot of him because he is a really visible well known figure. I wanted to bring to light Bilsma more because he's really important, but so few outside the cello world know him. Ma's recordings of the suites are good, how can they not be? On his first recordings he plays his Montangana cello, which has a distinctive sound. His playing is not far reaching to extremes, but stays pretty much on the primary text of the Anna Magadalena manuscript. I have a CD of his first recordings and I play them when I work. In particular I like his energetic bowing and the way he gets a lush sound which is still gruff and dirty enough to be interesting.
The thing I was discussing with guitarbuddha, which switched to private correspondence, is the way guitar players can handle the bowings. The romantic interpretations which are handed down from the fingerings and bowings of 19th century cellists are a different animal than the later reevaluation of the original bowing marks in the AMB manuscript (Anna Magdalena Bach) The example is that a passage that might have four slurred notes and twelve detache' notes in AMB might be played as two groups of 8 slurred notes in Hugo Becker's late 19th century bow indications.
Is sounds inconsequential unless you think about playing them on guitar where all those slurred notes present a real problem. So the issue is how to take the bowing indications in those works and play them on guitar. Many modern cellists follow to the note the AMB manuscript, but the difference between the players who are studying period performance styles and modern playing styles is significant.
In the bowing alone the style changes automatically when a player adopts a period bow because the bows that are pre 1760s operate a different way than the "modern" Tourte bow circa 1800-ish. The earlier bows tend to accentuate the middle of the bow draw and a blooming of the sound happens, in the parlance of the period bowed instrument players a "swell". This makes the character of the music sound different from the approach that many generations of players who used a modern bow developed. The modern bow gives certain advantages, but is also not the equipment that this music was composed on or for.
To hear Bilsma almost deconstruct that #5 prelude in his 1978 recording gives a bright contrast to the lushly developed long slurred passages of the romantic interpretations. Which I still like. So I posted it to show that in Bach's time detached bowing was more the rule than slurred bowing, with the swell sound in the middle of the attack. (Attack is a misnomer because bowing is not 'attacking' kinesthetically speaking. ) With that information I thought he might get some insight as to how the suites work by unseating the romantic interpretations which are the ones most commonly heard today.
There are many other things to know about them both from the romantic vs. baroque performance practice dialog and the point of baroque vs. modern cello set up. One of the most interesting things to come to light from a players and luthiers perspective is that the gut strings of the Baroque and earlier periods were created to give the instrument equal tension from each string! The gauges were made to more or less have the same tension from string to string. This was part of how the music sounded and how the instrument responded under the bow and left hand. The reason why this is important is because composers, like Monteverde or Vivaldi for example, were hearing this particular envelope of sound and sonority on the instruments and based their music and its effects on those premises. And Bach as well in the cello suites. So in the service of going back to the primary sources, how compositions were composed and how those composers worked, some of this background might be helpful for a guitar player trying to see what is there. I thought maybe hearing how the period players go at this stuff might open up some ideas.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Feb. 1 2013 1:52:42
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gj Michelob
Posts: 1531
Joined: Nov. 7 2008
From: New York City/San Francisco
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RE: Bach Cello Suites Compared (in reply to estebanana)
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Steven, I gave you my old cello, a fine bow and the best available edition of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello… 2 years ago… I think you are now well ‘overdue’ to post at least the first few bars of the [and well known] prelude –Suit I- by now.
I had the pleasure to meet Yo Yo Ma at Julliard, with my then cello teacher, and also to see him perform privately the suites at the Aspen Master Class he held. I fear that we tend to doubt those who achieve great popularity, in a rather odd feat of envy and diffidence. However, Mr. Ma is indeed one of the greatest Cellists, continuing and improving where others [Casals and Rostropovich] left off, not contradicting their work.
Please listen to Mr. Ma's rendition of the Sixth suite, in D major, at least Prelude and Allemande… this is possibly some of the best work that crazy composer has ever produced. Fingering and chords [when barring with the Thumb on the higher octaves] are excruciatingly difficult as they are lavishly beautiful.
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gj Michelob
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Date Feb. 1 2013 16:14:30
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Bach Cello Suites Compared (in reply to gj Michelob)
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GJ,
I hope you did not take that I was disparaging the great Yo Yo Ma, but the truth of the matter is for every Yo Yo Ma there are 50 other cellists who are just as good who are not able to have high profile international concert careers. The principal cellist of any major orchestra has to have the abilities to play the hardest concertos as a soloist. As far as Yo Yo he is a great among the greats without doubt, and I would take any opportunity to see him if I could.
I think YoYo's playing is more generally romantic than baroque, although he did switch to baroque cello for two years around 1999 and 2000 to make some recordings in Europe on a period instrument. I choose not to use him as a contrast to Bylsma because I feel so many other great cellists are not known outside those who follow cellists. It's like saying Vicente Amigo is the only guitarist without hearing Antonio Rey. Or vice versa.
I like YoYo Ma's recording's of chamber music a whole lot. I like the recordings Ma made playing with Issac Stern a bunch and listen to them often. I also like his performances of the big concertos, especially the Elgar, which, many will say is still owned lock stock and barrel by Jacqueline du Pre's seminal recording...well I like his too.
I could not say enough about the things I like about Mr. YoYo. And I have a set of his recordings of the suites which I listen to at the moment more than Fournier or Casals or Rostropovich. But envy no, I can't be envious of a person like that, I can wish I had a better childhood where my talents were nurtured instead of overlooked. Where a safe space was created for me to practice, but that did not happen. But I have nothing but respect for those who were lucky to have been able to take a natural aptitude and develop it. I woulda coulda shoulda been a great cellist, but I'm not. End of Story.
The cello I'm happy to report is at the end of a process of being tuned up. Three months ago I removed the top to treat the back seam which was open and would not be glued back unless it was accessible from the inside. It had been open for some time and I first did a triage job of rubbing some glue into it and getting it to stick. It was always apparent that the top would have to come off and the seam be treated properly.
After I got the top off I could see why there were woody buzzes here and there, the linings were a complete shambles. The worker who assembled the cello did not even take time to bend the lining correctly and jammed them in around the C bouts breaking them in several places!~ I patched as best I could and pared back splintered lining wood; I was able to consolidate the shards in some cases and now at least all the broken pieces are not moving. It was not in the cards to totally replace them as it was just too much work for the moment. At some point there are diminishing returns.
The bass bar has been reshaped, it had a funny peak in it like a ski mountain and it was really fat. I planed a bit off the top to give it a good curved profile and sweep from end to end and thinned it slightly. While I had the top off I took the graduations and thought about them and the weight/flexibility of the top. After some of deliberation I decided to regraduate the top. Top it turned out was made of Pine instead of Spruce, which makes sense now because whenever some violin snob would look at it they would tell me it was plywood. I would argue back that it was solid wood, enough of that....the top was really thick, and heavy. In some places on the outer areas of the bouts the top was 7 mm thick! Really beefy and the top is made of strong wood heavier than spruce. I felt at ease bringing those areas down to 3.5 to 4-mm where they really needed to be.
Most importantly I reset the neck and carefully reworked the neck relief, which was humpty-dumpy up under the A string. The neck is in almost perfect position giving a fingerboard projection of 80 mm to bridge, 81 mm one being ideal here. Before that it was about 75mm which is woefully too low and was causing the A string to be way to high with a normal height bridge.
So this is very exciting now, I'm thinking to fit it with a new Belgian style bridge instead of a French bridge to see if I can get it to brighten up and project more. I think with the bass bar trimming and graduations a new light well cut bridge will make it play better then ever. I also made a carbon fiber end pin and discarded the steel end pin and choose a lighter tail piece. Those heavier tailpieces keep the bridge in check and don't allow as much free movement of the bridge.
So as soon as I get the whole thing together I'll see if I can practice enough to show how it sounds. But I'll always be grateful to you GJ because the day you gave me the cello was a great day which sparked off a new interest in my first love.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Feb. 1 2013 22:31:43
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Bach Cello Suites Compared (in reply to gj Michelob)
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quote:
I am pleased to see it is now in competent and loving hands.
Yes you put it in good hands. It did need some work, but I was happy to put in the time and effort. I played for about a year before opening it up and doing the work. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Having an open back seam does not help the sound one bit because the sound post does not have a proper resistance from the back, which in turn determines how the post rocks the top. The bridge pushes the post, but if it has flexible restistance the sound past loses energy due to just pushing one side of the back more than the other. The back should be a whole not a slightly divided entity, the system is not working at top capacity if the seam is moving with the post.
I've had four cellos, and all of them have been instruments I've had to work on. The first one was a school cello, the second bought from little old lady in Riverside and it needed to be restored. It was a German 7/8 size cello...Kinda wish I still had it. The one after that was German cello that had been dropped and the top shattered. it was given to me because it was not worth the time to fix for anyone else. So I took it up and pieced it back together. I was so far gone it never looked rght. I took it to If---n to find some fittings for it and they really sneered at it.  Eventually as I got into building guitars I gave it away to a painter in exchange for a nice painting.
So I am very happy to have the ''Old Viol' as you say and I think it's potential to sound well is very good. I have one cello on the table I'm building for myself and another that is a mid grade 1911 student cello that needs extensive work also. I think it is German, but someone smashed the ribs pretty good on the right side of the lower bouts and someone else glued the top on and carried out repairs with white glue! Uhhg. Another cello that that is so problematic that a shop did not want to deal with it. But these are good for me at this point because I'm practicing some advanced repair work on instruments where the stakes are not high. The white glue job is undone and the Massive cleats on the top cracks installed with white glue are now removed. The whole edge of the top needs to be backed with spruce, a moderately difficult task, but once it's done that cello will be ready to go.
Little by little I'm getting back into cello repair work, which is very agreeable to me and you helped precipitate this by handing me the old viol.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Feb. 2 2013 20:54:15
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