This chapter traces the transmission, performance history, and reception of J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites up through the dawn of the recording era. Composed around 1720, the Cello Suites circulated for their first century only in manuscript copies and were therefore only known by people with connections to the composer’s students. Various books and reference materials highlight the Sonatas and Partitas and Cello Suites in works lists and appraisals of the composer’s work, but these pieces were not widely played. The first published editions appeared starting in the 1820s, initially presenting the Cello Suites as instrumental studies. Subsequent editions with extensive editorial expressive markings and sometimes with added piano accompaniment aspired to adapt the Cello Suites to suit contemporaneous tastes, serving to usher them gradually into the concert hall. Starting around the 1860s, individual movements or groups of movements (and rarely complete suites) were performed in concerts primarily in Germany, England, and France. These performances were initially met with a mixed critical reception: While some concerts received rave reviews, other critics considered the Cello Suites to be historical curiosities or to be better suited for instrumental study than concert performances.

The Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, reputed to have “discovered” J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites, is better understood as their most influential popularizer. Through his extensive concert tours in the early twentieth century and culminating in his complete recording of the cycle in the 1930s, he solidified their place in concert life and established paradigms that remain influential today. Among these are the practice of only performing complete suites, with all repeats and without piano accompaniment. Casals’s exile to Prades, France, in protest of Franco’s dictatorship, abruptly ended his concert career and established Casals as a humanitarian figure, inspiring later generations of cellists who used the Cello Suites to advocate for peace and an end to human suffering. Examples include Mstislav Rostropovich’s impromptu performance after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yo-Yo Ma’s performance at the US-Mexico border and outside the Russian embassy, and Denys Karachevtsev’s performance on the heavily bombed-out streets of Kharkiv. Cellists have recently experimented with playing the Cello Suites in unusual venues such as subways, mountaintops, and in community settings worldwide. The Cello Suites’ global resonance is evinced by the wide range of art and popular media they have inspired.