Some words about The Cello Suites
Eric Siblin sat down with us in Amsterdam's finest Ambassade Hotel - second home to world's literary stars - and answered our Booktunes questions extensively. Get ready for suite no.3, no.4, no.5, no.6 and a lot of inspiring Bach & Casals info!
Booktunes: The Cello Suites are a real Booktunes Book because the narrative combines the storylines just as the music refers to different structures and melodies. We think the reader cannot do without the music here.
Eric Siblin: Yes, I tried to visualize the book almost as an embodiment of the music, as a reflection of the music, that’s why the structure reflects the music.
BT: In the book you write how you became interested in the mystery of the cello suites. How does your background as a journalist and music reviewer relate to this interest of yours?
ES: My background as a journalist has a lot to do with the book. Although I really liked the music when I heard it the first time, it was the journalist in me who said; maybe there is a story, a bigger story behind this music. This idea resulted from the program notes of the recital that I read in Toronto, it was the first time that I heard the suites. An American cellist provided a brief introduction in which he posed a lot of questions. He pointed to a lot of mysteries that filled my head when I left that night and I knew I wanted to write a book about it. I think that was a journalistic feeling.
BT: You play the acoustic guitar. After a tip from your friend Walter you took cello lessons. Can you tell me something about the different feeling you have when playing the two instruments?
ES: Playing the cello is very difficult to learn, but also very beautiful. You hold the instrument against you body, like you are slow dancing, you can feel it resonate. Your body almost becomes part of the instrument. I loved learning how to play it.
After I had written the book I didn’t play the cello anymore. I decided that whatever time I have for making music I devote to an instrument that I already know how to play fairly well. It filled me with a lot of joy to eventually play some little pieces of Bach’s songs. Sometimes I dream about playing these little pieces again. The music that transfixes me, the music of Johan Sebastian Bach was in the palm of my hand, it was really terrific to learn that.
BT: Did playing the cello bring you closer to the answers of the mysteries?
ES: Yes it did. I learned to appreciate it more, I know how difficult it is. In Bach’s Cello Suites the cellist is alone without an orchestra to camouflage what you are doing. Playing The Suites is very challenging I think, also emotionally it’s very challenging to express everything that’s in this music. It’s like the Mount Everest of classical music.
BT: Casals went trough a lot on a political and on a personal level, while playing the suites. Can these life-changing events like the death of a beloved one, political change, be more or less compared to the things Bach experienced when writing the suites?
ES: I think that is a nice interpretation and that there are some commonalities. Time has changed tremendously of course. Bach was born in 1685, Casals in 1876 and was politicised in the 1930’s during the spanish civil war, so the political systems are hard to compare. Though for both musicians politics came in to play and influenced their music. At a personal level they were both affected by politics in certain ways and certainly by love as well, and by musical systems that relied heavily on patronage, the influence of the church, the life in the village. In some ways the life of Casals was quite close to Bach.
BT: You also write about the way the cello can tell different stories, according to who plays the cello. Do Casals’ life events have anything to do with the “realness” of Casals’ recordings?
ES: In abstract terms there is an emotional power in the recordings. Casals refused to perform in any country that had any diplomatic relations with the Franco regime (Casals was banned to the south of France). That was a very overt political statement I think because he was probably the most famous instrumentalist in the world at that point. Politics like Bono (U2), really.
BT: There are people who say Casals is the only one who comes close to the way The Suites should be played.
ES: I think that is a very controversial question and I think the beauty of these suites is that there is no correct way. Casals had a very romantic approach and not all cellists find that attractive. I think there is something very ‘earthy’ and authentic about the Casals’ recordings, he was the first to record the suites and he was a pioneer. He had no models to go by, so he was very much decoding the music. We have to keep that in mind when analyzing Casals’ recordings.
BT: What is you favourite recording of The Suites?
ES: I haven’t heard a bad recording among professional cellists, I think that’s the thing with The Suites; you fall under a spell when you hear it. But keeping that in mind I do have some favourites. I like Peter Wispelwey, a Dutch cellist. He has an approach to the music that is very magical, sneaky and a little idiosyncratic - really really beautiful. And there is a British cellist by the name of Steven Isslerless whom I also like a lot.
There are six suites and each suite consists of six movements. All the suites have their own personalities and each movement has it’s own character. I can highlight a few: Prelude of suite no.1 of course, which is the most familiar piece of the music especially the first twelve seconds. Suite no.2 is, unlike the first one very very sad. Especially the Sarabande is very melancholic. Clearly Bach was feeling something different when writing his first suite. Maybe he was thinking of the death of his first wife Barbara, there is musicological evidence that this was the case. Suite 3 starts off with a Prelude with an incredible exuberance and a sense of joy. The Gige in cello suite no.3 has a phrase in it which sounds to me very much like rock and roll which I think it’s fantastic keeping in mind it's been written two centuries ago. Suite no.4, the prelude all of a sudden has some eastern influences. Suite no.5 unfolds with an incredible sense of mystery and the Sarabande movement of no.5 is very special because it sounds so modern, it sounds like it could have been composed yesterday. I love the Prelude of suite no.6 which is almost like an orchestra, an orchestra contained in one instrument, in this case the 5 strings mysterious instrument Bach wrote it for. The instrument probably was called a violincello piccolo.
When writing the book I was listening to the Casals version, which is a very emotional version. The beauty of Casals version for someone trying to find a story in the music is that the sense of narrative and drama is very strong in this version.
BT: I like the way you describe the last suite, no.6, in your book. Can you tell us something about the last suite and the ending of your book where the lives of Bach and Casals end?
ES: It was very interesting to find a narrative in the music and it was very helpful to use the structure in the music as a guidepost for the book. Very often when I was lost I would listen to the music and it would point me to a certain narrative direction. The end of the music would have to go with the end of the lives of Bach and Casals. Also suite no.6 brought to mind a sense of transcendence. It accomplishes more than the other suites, in a technical way I think. In part because there is an extra string (5 instead of 4). It’s really a going-beyond-everything-that-came before. In the last chapter I also tried to tie up some of the mysteries that have been lingering throughout the book.
BT: You wrote the book like Bach composed his music. You used a particular kind of polyphony by weaving three storylines together. How did you come up with the idea to compose your book this way?
ES: It was a natural organic development. It was clear that Bach should be in the story. It was also clear that when writing about The Cello Suites you should include Pablo Cassals. When I read about the life of Casals, I was amazed about how interesting his life was. Casals lived until he was 96, so he was involved in many interesting corners of the worldhistory. His whole life really was quite dramatic, it would make a good movie. I was careful not to include too many characters; this book is not an encyclopedia of The Cello Suites. I really try to tell a story that would interest a regular reader, somebody who is not an expert in classical music, like I wasn’t when I got this idea.
Classical music can be intimidating for young people I think. There’s hundreds of years of music all in an intellectual atmosphere, so where do you start? I started at this little spot, The Cello Suites, but from there, an entire universe opened up, the universe of classical music. So hat was my intent as well, to write for people who are interested in history and politics, mystery and love and music. So with that in mind I needed to write a story, and that’s how I thought of writing down the story of Bach, the story of Casals, and my story.
In doing research I found out a lot about this piece of music. I found mysteries, I solved mysteries, I found love stories and tragic stories. I really loved researching this book in so many ways. There were several highlights for me. One was being able to hold the manuscript of the original Lute Suite, which is in the Royal Library of Belgium. Other highlights include becoming a member of the American Bach Society and visiting their biannual conventions. I could join up in a social way with a group of people that shared my obsession in a way, so that was great.
BT: Are you currently working on a new project?
ES: Yes but I can’t say a lot about it. It is a book, but it is not about music…
interview by Rosalie van der Meulen / photo by Marcie Richstone