Cello Suite no 1, in G major – Bach
“Homage to J.S. Bach“ (1912)
__________
for Lynne, who’s been catching up
on her Bach, recently
the cello had been a peripheral instrument,
supplying accompaniment, merely, until
Bach gave it wings, in new employ as
Kapellmeister for Leopold, Prince of
Anhalt-Cöthen, a Calvinist, who decried
music in his churches, Bach turned to
secular music mostly during this period,
instead of to the cantatas and oratorios,
the ecclesiastical stuff, he’d in earlier
services been composing, not at all,
however, unproductively, for he produced
during this new period the template
essentially for the entire modern epoch –
the “Well-Tempered Klavier”, all of his
piano literature, the Two- and Three-Part
Inventions, his Toccatas, his Partitas, the
sublime Cello Suites, his equally profoundly
inspirational Sonatas for Unaccompanied
Violin, are the basis upon which our
contemporary music still stands, these
pieces are still the Everests to climb for
contemporary instrumentalists, you need
only to listen to know why, by a semi-tone
a cellist can fall apart, destroy the entire
experience, distort an otherwise
transcendental possibility, like a climber
can tragically lose hir life
listen to Mischa Maisky, to my mind the
very Zeus of 20th-Century cellists,
perform Bach’s 1st Cello Suite, and
deliver incontrovertible proof of that,
however Olympian, claim
R ! chard
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