Johann Sebastian Bach — Senza Basso (The Cello Suites, in Anna Magdalena Bach's Copy) — Notebook

Bach's six suites for cello solo, as Anna Magdalena Bach copied them out. Then pages of your own.

The document

Bach's own score of the cello suites is lost. They survive in copies by other hands, and Egon Voss, who edited them for Henle, judges this one the closest to the lost original. Anna Magdalena Bach, his wife, made it in Leipzig between 1727 and 1731, for Georg Heinrich Ludwig Schwanberg, a former pupil of Bach's, together with a copy of the sonatas and partitas for violin. Schwanberg wrote its title page: 6 Suites a Violoncello Solo senza Basso. It is kept at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and this notebook reproduces it complete.

Inside the notebook

First, a short guide: what a suite was; what senza basso means; who the copy was for, and who wrote what on it; Anna Magdalena, singer and copyist; why the suites survive only in copies, and why their slurs are still argued over; the two suites written for a retuned instrument, with the tunings drawn out; and the whole copy on a single page.

Then the manuscript: its 39 written and ruled pages in order, from the title page to La Fin. des Suittes and the two pages left empty after it, every page at the same scale, 78% of its size.

Then the pages are yours: 67 pages of staff paper, ruled after the empty page 38 of her copy.

A4, spiral-bound, it lies flat.

Johann Sebastian Bach · Six Suites for Violoncello Solo, BWV 1007–1012 · copy by Anna Magdalena Bach · Leipzig, 1727–31 · Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Mus.ms. Bach P 269