I do not play cello; nor do I have any background in music theory. Rather I have been trying to learn classical guitar and eventually the Prelude to the First Cello Suite was assigned. I found about a half dozen different guitar transcriptions that all varied and I could not understand why nor put together enough understanding of the piece to make it more than many measures of moving notes to try to memorize - and forget about being able to do any nice phrasing or dynamics. So I jumped at the chance to purchase this when I saw it for sale.
What Dr. Winold has done in this pair of books - one text, the other annotated musical examples keyed to the text and including all six suites in their entirety (note to guitarists - in bass clef and in the original cello keys, of course!) - is provide a miniature course in music theory and composition. He walks through each suite movement by movement and defines the overall structure of the dance forms Bach used for the suites; he compares what is here by Bach with other music of the same time frame; he goes over how musical tension can be created and then resolved within the music; he describes how groups of notes can be repeated in a piece and ways that the patterns can be varied as phrases are developed; he shows how various harmonies and counterpoints are implied rather than fully stated since the cello can typically only play one note at a time. (It is in how they convert this implication of harmony for cello into the multiple notes that a guitar can play at once that the guitar transcriptions all seem to differ - with precedent since Bach did the same thing when he transcribed such music to lute or keyboard.)
I find it fascinating. The books may be a broad overview of music theory with not quite enough material to fully cover any one topic, but there are enough references to additional information that it enables you to get excited about something here and then go learn more - and not so much info presented that you forget that you started looking into all this to better appreciate what are really some wonderfully sounding pieces of music!
If I knew how I'd send a thank you note to Dr. Winold for the month of pleasure I've had with these books.