open

The opening:  open G string, open D string, a first finger on the A string, then open A string, and so on playing the same notes for that first bar, the G and D strings at no point stopped, at no point stopped from ringing on.  We are simply playing the home triad of G major, and the same chord opens two of the other movements of this suite.  Bach has chosen the key because its first and fifth notes (tonic and dominant as we say) are open strings.  The open string is the purest and most resonant sound the instrument makes.  Touch an open string and it carries on resonating for a long time.  Play a stopped note and the note dies much more quickly.  As far at least as the instrument is concerned.  A resonant acoustic will pick up any note and let it ring.  At its simplest, the performance of these Bach suites is a collaboration between the acoustics of my viola and those of the space in which I am playing, a negotiation between resonance and decay.  What I do is affected by the acoustic.

Bach grounds all but one of the suites on open string keys.  First G major.  Then D Minor, a key which also has open strings as its first and fifth but, as importantly, has its lowest tonic almost at the bottom of the instrument’s range, a tone above the C string.  Then C major, and time for the biggest sound the instrument can make because there is a simple chord using all four strings, the bottom two open, the top two stopped, and the highest note a C.  Then E-flat major, the odd one out:  an open string as the third of the chord, but the chordal possibilities reduced and so a different kind of writing called for.  Then C minor, and an ace up the sleeve, as Bach tunes the top string down to a G, so we have two open string dominants to play with.  And finally D major, but written for an instrument with an extra, fifth string at the top, and so most often played down a fifth, in G.

This emphasis on open string keys, I think, tells us that we need to use open strings as much as possible in performance, and this goes against training, where changes of hand position are used to avoid string crossing.  We get a glimpse of the lack of such changes that Bach expected in the way he writes out the fifth suite.  The notes for the top string, which is tuned down a tone, are simply written up a tone.  It only works if you don’t try to play any of them on the next string down by shifting up a position or two:  he is expecting us to stay in first position, and to use open strings.

David Ledbetter (Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works) has observed that Bach avoids using the open C string for C major in the prelude to the first suite.  When we finally get the C string in bar 21 it’s in an inverted dominant seventh chord of D, a wonderful dissonance.  Let the big C major chord out of the bag before its own suite and it will upset the balance.  In performing this suite I’ll be thinking about open strings, letting them ring out in the resonant acoustic of Christ’s Chapel, but also playing with stopped strings for effect at times.  That may include the very last note of the suite, depending on how I feel in that moment – whether when I get there that last G feels like an ending or an opening.