{"id":1134,"date":"2015-03-24T08:27:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T08:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/?p=1134"},"modified":"2015-03-24T08:32:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T08:32:04","slug":"the-cello-suites-and-mrs-bach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/2015\/03\/24\/the-cello-suites-and-mrs-bach\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cello Suites and Mrs Bach"},"content":{"rendered":"

PhD researcher Nadya Markovska reflects on controversies of authorship and what this says about our attitudes to performance and composition: <\/em>Bach\u2019s Six Suites for Solo Cello (BWV 1007-1012) are among the most famous pieces\u00a0in the canon of Western music. Recent claims by\u00a0the Australian researcher Martin Jarvis about their authorship have become a media sensation, causing heated scholarly debates in normally restrained musicological circles. Jarvis\u00a0claims\u00a0that the Cello Suites were composed not by Johann Sebastian but by his second wife Anna Magdalena. He\u00a0announced his \u2018new insights\u2019 some time ago, in 2006 to the media and in 2008<\/a> to the Bach community, whose immediate reaction was suspicion and disbelief.<\/p>\n

Now, thanks in part to\u00a0social media and a television documentary Jarvis\u2019s claims are back in the news.<\/a> Everybody seems to be talking about Mrs Bach, possibly the greatest composer we\u2019ve never heard of. The release of the film Written by Mrs Bach<\/em> in December 2014, based on Jarvis\u2019s book with the same title, caused defensive reactions from acclaimed Bach scholars and performers. Judging from the passionate critical analyses <\/a>of the case, it seems that this uproar in the academic circles speaks of a much deeper issue in music studies: musicologists are deeply uneasy about their own business. It is clear that Jarvis\u2019s claim is untenable; he depends far too much on speculation (not a surprise given how little physical evidence of these pieces survives). What I find most surprising, however, is how vehemently\u00a0Bach scholars refute such a poorly argued theory. Why do they take it so seriously? Why take such an angry tone in public?<\/p>\n

Historical background<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Cello Suites are notoriously enigmatic. Despite of their enduring popularity, we know very little about their genesis. It is believed that they were composed around the 1720s, when Bach was working in C\u00f6then under the patronage of Prince Leopold. Many of Bach\u2019s works from this period, including the Cello Suites, share exceptional signs of technical and musical excellence. Among them is the set of Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (BWV 1001-1006), against which many researchers judge stylistic and expressive aspects of the Cello Suites. An original score of the Sonatas and Partitas survives. But the original composer\u2019s score of the Cello Suites has never turned up. Instead, we know them\u00a0via four different manuscript copies (scholars call them Sources A, B, C and D). These were made at different points in the\u00a0eighteenth century by four different copyists. Two of the copies date from Bach\u2019s time. The earliest is from 1726 (Source B) and was prepared by the organist Johann Peter Kellner (1705-1772), one of Bach\u2019s acquaintances. The copyist\u00a0of the other one (Source A) was Bach\u2019s wife, Anna Magdalena (1701-1770) \u2013 indeed, the note on the score \u2018ecrite par Madame Bachen Son Epouse\u2019, which was added by Georg Heinrich Ludwig Schwanenberger, is Jarvis\u2019s point of departure, which he translates as \u2018written by Madame Bach\u2019. The other two copies (Sources C and D) were made later,\u00a0\u00a0in the second half of the eighteenth century. Although they have nothing to do with the composer directly, they demonstrate continued interest in the Suites at a time when Bach was by no means well known. All the four sources suggest different expressive readings of the music.<\/p>\n

\"cello_suites_mixed_examples001\"<\/a>\"cello_suites_mixed_examples_C+D\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Four copies of the opening of the First Suite for Violoncello Solo (BWV 1007)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most striking difference in all these sources is their free treatment of articulation. The earlier ones are inconsistent, even \u2018erratic\u2019. The later ones are more regular. Anna Magdalena\u2019s bowings are the most varied. Overall, the layout of her copy is neat and clear, suggesting that she handled the job with care. But many musicians, and most scholars, find her articulations unusable (in his article<\/a> on the Jarvis controversy the acclaimed British cellist Steven Isserlis calls her copy \u2018error-ridden\u2019).\u00a0They make the music\u00a0look amorphous and unsymmetrical \u2013 certainly not what we would expect from J.S. Bach, whose music has long been celebrated<\/a> for its perfect intellectual geometry. Among performers,\u00a0the legendary\u00a0Dutch\u00a0baroque cellist Anner Byslma<\/a> has long been one of the only ones to take Anna Magdalena\u2019s articulations\u00a0seriously, and performed them for decades in public.<\/p>\n