Recovering “Bach’s edition” of the solo cello suites

There are numerous editions of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (BWV 1001–1006) prepared by various violinists including multiple ones claiming to be Urtext editions (“original editions”). How can there be more than one Urtext edition? In fact, what is desired is “Bach’s edition” of the solo violin works. There exists a beautiful fair autograph score in JS Bach’s hand of the solo works. With less than two handfuls of emendations (and one amendment) from other manuscripts all the notes, bowings, trills and dynamics are known with fingerings and breaking of chords usually clearly implied by the notes themselves. The only “free” variables for performance, then, are the tempi of the movements. I discuss how even these are essentially determined by tempo words given in Bach’s autograph and the maximum tempo at which certain passages can be played/the minimum tempo at which a long series of slurred notes on one bow must be played when combined with the yoking of tempi across movements by implied proportional tempos. I discuss how this proposition can be experimentally tested. For Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello (BWV 1007–1012) the situation is complicated as we do not have a JS Bach autograph, rather contemporaneous manuscript sources prepared by his wife Anna Magdalena Bach, one of his students and later sources which are not completely concordant especially with regard to slurs, but for other aspects of the pieces also. However, I show that as for the solo violin works, we can come close to Bach’s edition of the solo cello Suites. I also discuss some features of the pieces such as a “Beethoven-esque” recapitulation in miniature in the Prelude to the Sixth Cello Suite (BWV 1012/1).