The remarkable story of the search to discover the truth about some of the greatest music ever written
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.
Author ProfileEric 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
ReviewsOne of the most extraordinary, clever, beautiful, and impeccably researched books I have read in years,Insightful [and] engaging . . . Eric Siblin puts us in touch with the joy of discovering a new passion in life,If Siblin is correct that 'Bach is what you make of him,' then
The Cello Suites has made him, if possible, yet more legendary
