JAVS Fall 2024

In The Studio

Friedrich Wilhelm Stade’s Viola-Piano Arrangement of Bach’s Cello Suites by Edward Klorman

Over the past century, transcriptions of J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites have become central to the viola training and recital repertoire. This article reports on the earliest known viola publication and performance of the Cello Suites and explains why this edition has been overlooked in previous studies of viola literature. Until recently, the earliest-known complete edition of all six Cello Suites transcribed for viola was the 1916 publication by the Croatian-American violist Louis Svećenski (1862–1926), a founding member of the Kneisel Quartet, faculty member at the Curtis Institute and the Institute of Musical Art (now The Juilliard School), and teacher of Lillian Fuchs. 2 Some three decades earlier, around 1885, the German violist Hermann Ritter (1849–1926) published a viola edition of Suites Nos. 1–4 only. 3 Ritter’s publication is the earliest edition included in Franz Zeyringer’s encyclopedic catalog of viola repertoire. 4 A recent survey of Cello Suites editions by Thomas Tatton likewise cites Ritter as the earliest-known viola edition. 5 It stands to reason that Ritter’s edition has attracted special attention. As viola professor at the Royal Music School of Würzburg from 1879 to 1912, he made enormous contributions to the popularization of the viola, notably in lutherie with the development of the large model “Viola alta” but also through his original compositions, technical studies, and several volumes of repertoire in viola transcription. 6 Through his students and publications, Ritter had a lasting influence on the next generations of German violists. However, another viola edition that antedates Ritter’s by two decades has gone unmentioned, for reasons that will soon become clear. The German organist, conductor,

and composer Friedrich Wilhelm Stade (1817–1902) is probably best known today for his edition of all six Cello Suites—playable on either viola or cello with Stade’s piano accompaniment—originally published c. 1864, with a revised edition dating c. 1871. 7 Piano accompaniments for Bach’s unaccompanied music were commonplace during the nineteenth century. 8 Stade may possibly have been familiar with Robert Schumann’s unpublished piano accompaniment for the Cello Suites, which dates from 1854 and which circulated to some extent through manuscript copies. 9 If compositions for unaccompanied violin or cello were at the time regarded as obscure curiosities or as “academic” music, the addition of piano accompaniment served to make the music more appealing to contemporary audience tastes. 10 Even if Schumann’s was the first piano accompaniment to the Cello Suites to be composed , Stade’s was the first to be published . Moreover, Stade’s publication is historically significant as the third Cello Suites edition of any kind. 11 It was used for a cello-piano recording made as late as c. 1927, suggesting a wide distribution and lasting influence. 12 I examined a copy of Stade’s first edition (c. 1864) in the collection of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute at Baldwin Wallace University (call number M3.1 .B11 K65 v.17). 13 The title page indicates “Ausgabe für Viola” and “Ausgabe für Violoncello” in identical typeface (see Figure 1). The edition is organized into seven volumes, the first of which presented the six sarabandes only, followed by volumes 2–7 that each present one suite. For volumes 2–7, the edition comprises a cello-piano score plus separate parts for viola and cello.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 2, Fall 2024