Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major

Although we have no clear idea why, and for whom, Bach wrote his suites for solo cello, there are one or two clues in the music itself. The wide-ranging “Prelude” to the Suite No. 3 sounds suspiciously like a teaching exercise, albeit an inspired one, making music out of scales and arpeggios and testing the agility of the bowing arm with some tricky chords and teasing turns of phrase. After a jumpy, exuberant “Allemande”, the “Courante” sounds like another instructive movement, testing a player’s ability to traverse the instrument rapidly and bring to life what, on paper, looks like a rather undifferentiated flow of notes. After the stately “Sarabande”, Bach adds a pair of beautifully balanced “Bourrées”, the first (which is repeated after the second) with a delightfully squared-toed gait. The “Gigue” has a positively rustic feel, with some witty sawing effects and jarring harmonies. About J.S. Bach's Cello Suites Works for an unaccompanied solo instrument—especially the cello—were rare in Bach’s day and were much more likely to have been improvised than painstakingly written down. The six solo Cello Suites (BWV 1007-12) were composed during Bach’s time at the court of Cöthen (1717-23). Although it is unlikely that they were conceived as a set, all six works follow a similar pattern. To the traditional suite—allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue—Bach added an introductory prelude and tucked in a pair of fashionable modern dances (minuets, bourrées, or gavottes) before the final gigue. Not published until 1825, it wasn’t until they were recorded by Pablo Casals in the 1930s that they began to enjoy widespread popularity.