A century later, composers are still writing works based on them. But once they become known, they became one of the most influential works ever written. It took more than 200 years for the world to get to know these miraculous suites. The number of recordings of the suites exploded, as did their popularity and influence. Suddenly there was an expectation that every cellist should know the suites, and indeed no true virtuoso of the cello could be legitimate without actually producing a recording of them. When Casals began recording the cello suites in 1936, the ground shifted under the endpins of all cellists. As a result, more music was written for unaccompanied cello in the 20th century than for any other solo instrument, save the piano. Once Kodaly and Reger wrote their works, other composers jumped on the bandwagon. The same year, Max Reger wrote his own suites for unaccompanied cello, and the dam was broken. Zoltan Kodaly incorporated what is perhaps Bach's most radical technique in the cello suites - scordatura (an alternate tuning of the strings) - into a remarkably compelling sonata for solo cello. (Photo: Library of Congress) Cellist Pablo Casals.įor the first time in almost two centuries, a major composer decided to write a work for unaccompanied cello. He took them home, began to play them, and fell in love. There, Casals stumbled upon an old copy of Bach's Cello Suites. The development of the cello as a solo instrument continued without Bach's influence for another century, during which, again, virtually no music for solo cello was written.Ī 13-year-old Catalan wunderkind cellist by the name of Pablo Casals went for a stroll with his father, and they stepped into a second-hand music shop. But in spite of their publication, they were not widely known by anyone besides a few cellists who viewed them as exercises - if they viewed them at all. The suites were discovered and finally published in 1825. Virtually no unaccompanied works for cello were written in the 18th and 19th centuries. Joseph Haydn did write a couple concertos for a cellist in his orchestra, one of which was lost and not rediscovered until the 1950s. Like other virtuosos, he wrote his own music, but very few others joined him.
Luigi Boccherini was the only notable exception to the near-universal neglect of the cello as a solo instrument. (Photo: Public domain image) Johann Sebastian Bach.
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