About The Bach Cello Suites for Guitar:

The six Suites for Violoncello solo, BWV 1007–1012, were most likely written between 1717 and 1723, when Bach was Kapellmeister (music director) at the court of Köthen in Germany. They are among the most frequently performed solo works ever composed and one of Bach‘s greatest achievements, but they were never a fixed text. Bach‘s own manuscript is lost. What survives are four hand-written copies, one by his wife, one by a contemporary organist, two by later scribes, and they all disagree with each other on notes, rhythms, and especially on slurs.

Although written for cello, the six Suites are wonderfully suited to guitar. Bach himself arranged Suite No. 5 for lute, and that manuscript, BWV 995, survives in his own hand. He transposed it down a fourth, from C minor to G minor, to fit the range of the instrument. Suite No. 5 appears here in that same key, and the rest of the book follows the same logic: Suites 1 through 5 are transposed up a fifth, which puts the open strings and the bass register where a guitar can better use them. Suite No. 6, already in D major, needed no transposition at all.

Single note lines that imply two or three voices, arpeggios that spell out whole harmonies, harmonic shifts that will tickle your brain, and a thorough technical workout for your fingers: The foundations this music builds transfers to everything else you play. And it‘s simply incredibly beautiful music.

This third edition is a complete rewrite of the transcription. Readers of the first two editions told me what was not working, and the two things that came up most often were that the tablature was hard to read and the fingerings were a bit awkward. Both have been rewritten from scratch. The tab is larger and cleaner, the fingerings are more practical, and now there‘s suggested fingering notation throughout. If you sent feedback, it is in here. Thank you for that.