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Pablo Casals said, “intonation is a matter of conscience��. Only nine works of Bach were published in his lifetime. Casals found the suites in 1890, and for twelve years practiced them every day before he played them in public. Casals charged the suites “with emotion�� and he said, “How could anybody think of Bach as ‘cold�� when these suites seem to shine with the most glittering kind of poetry.�� Casals made the first recordings of the solo suites. At that time the illiteracy rate in Spain was 64% and the average life expectancy was 35 years. February 1936 was the last free election in Spain for forty years. The Catalan language was banned. Casals moves to the French town of Prades. In Prades, Casals started each day with playing from the Well-Tempered Klavier on the piano. Casals recorded the last two cello suites at Abbey Road studios. I’d like to see a photo of Pablo with his cello case walking barefoot on the famed Abbey Road crosswalk. Casals was stunned by US support for Franco, it made clear that WWII wasn’t about the allies fighting against fascism. [The book Nazi Nexus describes in detail the huge collusion between US corporations (Ford, GM, IBM, etc.) and the Nazi war economy]. Franco was supported by the US not because he was anti-Hitler, but because he was a rabid anti-communist. Casals decided to no longer play in any country that supported Franco’s rule. Right on��

In Bach’s day a musician looked forward to one of three employers: a town, a church, or an aristocratic court. Allemande’s are the second movement of every cello suite. Eric doesn’t tell us, but square dance expert John Krumm will tell you allemandes originally were dances with “allemande�� meaning by the hand. Gigues end every suite, after which, as they say, the jig is up. Bach starts working as organist at Arnstadt as a teenager. I bought a cool Roland C-330 church organ, which is modeled after this Arnstadt organ, for my studio. At Arnstadt, Bach gets slapped on the wrist for inserting “strange notes��.

“The Bach suites are unforgiving; the player has nothing to hide behind.�� “The stroke of his bow was like heavy silk.�� “A life devoted to technique.�� Suite five is the only one using scordatura tuning (in this case C G D G). The fifth suite also exists in lute form.

When I think of Sicily, I think of a bloody horse’s head in the guy’s bed from the Godfather. In this book, I learned instead that during a period of only 35 years, Sicily was owned by Spanish Hapsburg’s until 1700, then Bourbon Philip V, Piedmont prince Victor Amadeus II, Charles VI of Austria, and then Spanish Bourbons. That Sicily sure had a busy dance card.

What is strange about this book is the half-assed approach by the author at learning. The author barely tries to learn cello and then decides to learn the Bach Suites on guitar (the one instrument Eric says he can play “competently��) so he finds a TAB version to read. Good grief. Reading classical guitar TAB slowly is the height of Eric’s musical background. I wish the author had gone balls out to study these suites as many of this book’s readers have. I’ve long practiced the Bach cello suites on saxophone, guitar, viola and cello, and I’d like to have heard Eric talk to a boatload of the top pro players on those instruments as to what playing those pieces does for them. I’d loved to hear what Michael Brecker said about practicing the cello suites on tenor sax, or Julian Bream on guitar, or Janos Starker, or Kim Kashkashian on Viola. I use the Jacqueline du Pre edition; did she say anything about the suites while she was alive?

Casals said, “Each note is like a link in the chain, important in itself and also as a connection between what has been and what will be.�� Bach died at age sixty-six. “Some cello instruments were played da spalla, that is, on the shoulder, others, da gamba �� held between the legs like the modern cello��. Half of Bach’s manuscripts are now looking like swiss cheese because he used iron-gall ink and over time the acidic content eats through the page and the note heads fall away. I can picture Bach’s agent saying, “No Johnny, I’m not saying you have the gall to write, I’m just saying you have the wrong gall to write.��

I’m not sure why this book’s cover shows a modern student cello with micro-tuners instead of a Bach era baroque cello like Yo Yo’s unconverted baroque Strad. What art director worth his salt wouldn’t want to go for baroque? For me, more informative than this book were Allen Winold's twin volume "Bach Cello Suites: Analyses & Explorations", and Jerome Carrington's "Trills in the Bach Suites", or Christopher Wolf's 600-page bio "Johann Sebastian Bach".