#SoundtrackSaturday: Pablo Casals plays Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello {Memories of my Melancholy Whores}


Soundtrack Saturday is a meme hosted by The Hardcover Lover. I wanted to join in something book-music-related but had a hard time finding anything that specifically jibed with my idea. So I decided to just join in this existing meme and sort of make my own tweaks to the rules.




At four o'clock I tried to calm my spirit with Johann Sebastian Bach's six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello in the definitive performance by Don Pablo Casals. - p. 17

I recently read Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and couldn't get Bach's first cello suite out of my head when it was mentioned.

I first heard this piece played by Misha Maisky. It's a popular and very recognizable piece, so when you click play, you'll likely go "ahh, yes." I was so taken with the piece, I ended up scouring Youtube and came across even more renditions, including those of Mstislav Rostropovich and Yo-yo Ma.

Wilfrid Mellers described these suites as "Monophonic music wherein a man has created a dance of God." [via]

Above, enjoy all six cello suites or enjoy the first showing rare earlier footage of Pablo Casals in action.


More about Pablo Casals:




Synopsis of Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit--he has purchased hundreds of women--he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known.


Read the Nobels 2016
Find out more about Read the Nobels!
Read my review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores.

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© guiltless readingMaira Gall