JAVS Fall 2024

The text of the viola and cello parts is largely identical, with the viola part transposed up an octave. Both parts contain largely the same slurs, articulations, ornaments, and dynamics, and follow similar page layouts. The cello part also contains fingerings throughout as well as the occasional directional bowing indication (upbow and downbow), presumably provided by some uncredited cellist-collaborator who assisted Stade with preparing the cello part. The viola part, on the other hand, contains no fingerings or directional bowings whatsoever. Seemingly prepared mechanically and without the participation of any violist, the viola part provides no guidance showing how a player might execute some barely playable material in Suite No. 6 in particular, including awkward chords (such as D–A–F-sharp in the opening of the Allemande) and virtuoso passagework in upper registers in the suite’s outer movements. Originally composed for a five-string instrument, Suite No. 6 contains high passages that can be negotiated on a four-string cello using thumb position. On viola, most players regard the suite in its original form (as presented by Stade) to be unplayable without adjustments such as octave displacements or transposition.

The somewhat careless preparation of the viola part notwithstanding, Stade nevertheless took seriously the prospect of performing the Cello Suites on viola and other instruments besides cello. In the city of Altenberg, where he was court organist and Kapellmeister, he founded a Singakademie (concert society) that sponsored two such performances. An 1869 concert of the Sarabande from Suite No. 4 on trombone with Stade on organ garnered a positive review: “[The trombonist’s playing] contained not only power and force, but also a rare softness and songful lyricism of tone.” 14 One year later, a viola performance of Suite No. 1 with Stade’s organ accompaniment likewise made a “magnificent impression,” according to a reviewer, who adds that “the elegiac tone of the viola combines even better with that of the organ than the cello could.” 15 This latter concert—by Stade’s unnamed violist colleague—is the earliest viola performance of the Bach Cello Suites of which I am aware. Nevertheless, there is little evidence that Stade’s edition was widely adopted by violists or that it established the Cello Suites as canonical repertoire for that instrument. Indeed, although Stade’s first edition (c. 1864) was ostensibly published equally for viola or cello, the title ( Sonaten für Violoncello Solo . . .) emphasizes the latter instrument, and the piano score includes only the cello version. Two reviews of Stade’s edition, both published in 1865, discuss it as cello-piano music, without so much as mentioning that the edition included a viola version. 16 When Stade revised his edition c. 1871, he evidently abandoned the idea of a dual viola/cello publication. The title page of the revised edition mentions only the cello, not the viola. 17 A scan of the cello-piano score for Stade’s revised edition can be viewed on IMSLP. It would appear that relatively few exemplars of Stade’s viola part were circulated, or perhaps few have survived, given the scant mention that the viola version has received in the secondary literature. Three recent studies of nineteenth-century editions of Bach’s Cello Suites discuss Stade’s edition without mentioning that a viola part was created for his original, c. 1864 version. 18 Since performances of Bach’s Cello Suites with piano accompaniment have long since fallen out of favor, editions such as Stade’s are known today primarily to musicologists. Yet Stade’s edition exerted an influence on cello performances of the Bach suites for over six decades. It is interesting to consider that Stade—an

Figure 1: Title page of Stade’s first edition (c. 1864). Image courtesy of Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Baldwin Wallace University.

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

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