The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin ✔✔✔

Subtitled "J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the search for a Baroque Masterpiece.

I am presently leading some worship services at Trinity, and I'm using Music as my theme, so I read this book - which I purchased in Peterborough two years ago - to give me a refresher on the life of J.S. Bach, which was timely, and certainly about 80% more information about Pablo Casals, whom I had known merely as one of the world's greatest cellists, and that he had played in Washington for JFK back in the early 60s, than I previously had had.

It was an interesting read, both for reading about these two great musicians, but also for their creative life, and how these Cello Suites came to life only in the 20th century by Casals. The connections between the 18th century and the 20th were very interesting, and the author, who describes his own attempts to sing in a Bach cantata with no previous choral experience, and absolutely no music-reading experience, made this a very readable book.

Eric Siblin was a pop music critic for the Montreal Gazette, and had had his fill, as he says, of music is his head that he didn't want to have there, so the Cello Suites offered " a way out of a jam". He travelled extensively throughout Spain and Germany, attended a Bach festival, interviewed other cellists, and, as I mentioned before, immersed himself as completely as he could in the music of Bach.