six

Six suites.  Six movements each.  Bach gave these works a higher degree of mathematical order than he did the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, with their varied numbers and kinds of movements.  For the solo cello suites he used the standard baroque dance suite structure – allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, adding between the last two a two-part minuet (suites 1-2), bourrée (suites 3-4), or gavotte (suites 5-6), and prefacing those five dance movements with a freer prelude.  A perfect musical square, then:   six suites of six movements.

For Bach, music is numbers, geometry, mathematical pattern.  This is made explicit when, for example, he composes his set of 24 preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, The well-tempered clavier.  What does this mean for the cello suites?  To start with, it clearly justifies thinking of them as a whole.  It is not that there happen to be six of them.  It is that they are a set – a suite in fact – of suites.  I think that this mathematical symmetry makes the suites not only perfect in themselves but emblematically so – they are a world, a universe, of music and of human emotions; everything is there.  It might also encourage us tentatively to ponder the fundamental analogy on which this maths is based, between the suite and the suite movement.  Is the first suite a prelude to the other suites?  Without taking things too far, the analogy might suggest why the great prelude to the sixth suite is based on the triplet rhythms of the gigue.  Or why, uniquely, the fifth suite has a two-part prelude (prelude and fugue) when the fifth movement of each suite has two parts.

The analogy ought at least to encourage us to think across the suites.  Yes, each suite has its own key, and that unity is crucial to the effect of each movement.  That is why I am playing one suite per week over six weeks (and starting at six each time) – measuring time by the unit of the suite.  But what sort of a musical journey through the suites might a diagonal route offer?  What might we learn about this music as a sum of parts by hearing the prelude from the first suite, followed by the allemande from the second, and so on?

Bach’s play with numbers in the suites suggests a way of playing them and playing with them that I would like one day to try.  It justs needs a die.  Throw it – the number tells you which suite to take your prelude from.  Throw it again – that’s your allemande.  Again – your courante.  And so on.  The die-throwing should probably be the job of the audience, so that they make the suite I have to perform.  This method yields an amazing  46,656 (6⁶) potential suites.  Even if we introduce a condition that one movement must be contributed by each suite, we still have a potential 720 (6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) suites.  Working title:  pick and mix.