Review
`Siblin's book is well-researched, and filled with enough anecdotes to engage even the classical-music aficionado...' --Economist
'...a sprawling but tirelessly enthusiastic effort... how Bach's music can be liberated from stuffiness and kept alive for future generations' --Scotland on Sunday
`genuine and well researched'
--The Times
'joyfully and informatively mixes anecdote and biography...a fitting tribute to one of the classical canon's cornerstones' --Metro
'highly original and entertaining' --Sunday Business Post
'he does a good job of placing the suites in their various historical and biographical contexts.' --Sunday Times
`This quirky, word of mouth success... teases out a history that invites intrigue, mystery and genius.' -- Belfast Telegraph
"...there is no mistaking his passion for this music, for the remarkable story that lies behind its survival..." --Tablet
`His style is folksy and endearing' --TLS, December 13, 2010
`Siblin's intricate book interleaves the stories of Bach, Casals, the suites themselves and his own research. Transposing the shape of his narrative on to the structure of the six suites and their six movements enables him to move lightly back and forth across the centuries.'
--Guardian
Book Description
Product Description
One autumn evening, not long after ending a stint as a pop music critic, Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites. There, something unlikely happened: he fell deeply in love with the music. So began a quest that would unravel three centuries of mystery, intrigue, history, politics, and passion.
Part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the first features Bach and the missing manuscript of these mesmerisingly beautiful eighteenth-century pieces for solo cello; the next, the legendary cellist Pablo Casals and the historic discovery of the music in Spain in the late nineteenth century; and the last, Eric Siblin's own infatuation with the suites in the twenty-first century.
This love affair leads Siblin to the back streets of Barcelona and a Belgian mansion; to interviews with world-renowned cellists; to archives, festivals, and conferences; and even to cello lessons - all in pursuit of answers to the mysteries that continue to haunt this music more than 250 years after its composer's death.
The Cello Suites is a lovingly written, true-life journey of discovery, fuelled by the transcendent power of a musical masterpiece.
From the Inside Flap
One autumn evening, not long after ending a stint as a pop music critic, Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites. There, something unlikely happened: he fell deeply in love with the music. So began a quest that would unravel three centuries of mystery, intrigue, history, politics, and passion.
Part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the first features Bach and the missing manuscript of these mesmerisingly beautiful eighteenth-century pieces for solo cello; the next, the legendary cellist Pablo Casals and the historic discovery of the music in Spain in the late nineteenth century; and the last, Eric Siblin's own infatuation with the suites in the twenty-first century.
This love affair leads Siblin to the back streets of Barcelona and a Belgian mansion; to interviews with world-renowned cellists; to archives, festivals, and conferences; and even to cello lessons - all in pursuit of answers to the mysteries that continue to haunt this music more than 250 years after its composer's death.
The Cello Suites is a lovingly written, true-life journey of discovery, fuelled by the transcendent power of a musical masterpiece.
From the Back Cover
'Insightful [and] engaging . . . Eric Siblin puts us in touch with the joy of discovering a new passion in life'
Toronto Star
'If Siblin is correct that "Bach is what you make of him," then The Cello Suites has made him, if possible, yet more legendary
Quill & Quire
'An erudite and immensely readable miscellany that will give you the sensation of having consumed a library over a weekend or less... To say the author has done justice to his subject is the highest praise of all"
Montreal Gazette
About the Author
Eric Siblin is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker, and was the pop music critic at the Montreal Gazette. The Cello Suites is his first book.
www.ericsiblin.com
