Song Exploder - Yo-Yo Ma - Prelude, Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

Yo-Yo Ma is perhaps the most famous and well-loved cellist in the world. He was born in Paris in 1955; his family moved to the U.S. when he was seven. He played for President Kennedy that year. He played at Carnegie Hall for the first time when he was 16. He’s won 18 Grammys, and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. For this special episode of Song Exploder, Yo-Yo Ma talks about the Prelude to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major. He discusses learning, performing, and recording the piece across 58 years of his life. songexploder.net/yo-yo-ma

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. My name's Yo-Yo Ma. The Prelude came into my life when I was four years old. It was literally the first piece of music I learned. I think I've performed the prelude a hundred times, maybe more, and 58 years later, I'm still learning from it. Yo-Yo Ma is perhaps the most famous and well-loved cellist in the world. He was born in Paris in 1955.

His family moved to the US when he was seven. He played for President Kennedy that year. He played at Carnegie Hall for the first time when he was 16. He's won 18 Grammys and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. For this special episode of Song Exploder, the last episode of this year, Yo-Yo Ma is going to break down this piece, which he didn't create, but he's performed so many times. It's the prelude from Johann Sebastian Bach's cello suite number one in G major. It's one of the most famous pieces of music written for the cello.

Yo-Yo Ma first recorded the Bach cello suites in 1983 at age 27. He recorded them again in 1998, and now at age 62 he's recorded them for what he says might be the last time. It's for an album called Six Evolutions, Bach cello suites. Yo-Yo Ma spoke to me about what's changed over the years, about the way he approaches this piece of music. But first, a little history. For that, I turn to author Eric Siblin, who wrote an award-winning book on the history of Bach's cello suites. My name's Eric Siblin, and I'm the author of the cello suites, J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals,

and the search for a Baroque masterpiece. The date that's traditionally used to refer to the composition of the cello suites is 1720, but the reality is that that's a guesstimate. Because Bach's original manuscript went missing. It's one of the many mysteries that surrounds us colossal music. In the early 18th century, there wasn't a lot of music written for solo cello. It was very much a background instrument, sort of plodding in the background, like an unadventurous bass line for the most part. So for Bach to write solo music for the cello was super radical at the time.

Bach died in 1750. He'd been a successful composer, but not massively famous during his own lifetime. He was respected in many circles, essentially musical circles, a musician's musician, he was. And he hadn't made any plans to preserve his own work. It wasn't until decades after his death that his music started to become popular. And so many pieces of his canon didn't see the light of day for a long time. And one of the pieces of music that took the longest to see the light of day was the cello suites. They were discovered one day in 1890 by the cellist Pablo Casals.

He was only 13 years old. He found a second-hand copy of the cello suites in a bookstore in Barcelona. He bought the music. He took it home and immediately started to tackle it. And this was something that wasn't easy because unlike cellist today, he didn't have umpteen recordings of the cello suites. He didn't have teachers who could show them how to play it. He had nothing but these notes on paper.

And the way Bach wrote notes on paper wasn't the way, say, Beethoven or many later composers. wrote music, namely, he left out a lot of instructions, suggestions of dynamics. Do you play it loud or soft here, etc. So it was in some ways very much up to the performer. The music's a bit like an inkblot test. And that makes it fun and exciting. It's like there's no original, there's only cover versions of the cello suites. Now Casals became the greatest cellist of his time, so he went a long way towards popularizing this music. In 1936, Pablo Casals recorded the cello sweets, was the first time anyone had ever recorded them. When I interviewed Yoia Ma, I played this for him.

I was wondering, do you remember the first time you heard this recording? I grew up with this recording. This was, for cellist, this was the exemplar of saying, okay, the boss sweets, these are they. What I get from listening to that is a sculptural approach. You know, you can hear him sort of tapping his fingers onto the fingerboard. It's very tactile, it's very physical. You know, he's carving out notes and this is what I grew up with. I haven't heard these in years, so it's really incredible to have a chance to hear it.

Who introduced this piece of music to you? My father, he loved Bach. He was in Paris during the Second World War, and they had blackout nights, no lights, and he played violin. So during the day, he would learn the Bach sonatas and partitas off of violin by heart. And then at night, because you can't do anything else, he played the music. So you started playing the cello and this music when you were four years old. You must have had to play like a quarter-sized cello.

I had a 16th-sized cello. Oh, that's so cute. Yeah, it's really cute. So in Paris, there was no chair that was low enough. So my first lesson took place at the violin dealer's place, and I sat on three telephone books. That's just too cute. So how does a four-year-old kid start playing Bach Suite?

It sounds hard, but if you actually think of it, the beginning of the suite goes, these are open strings and you put one finger down. And then again, open string. That's a pattern that anybody can learn. So that's day one out of 42 measures. So the next day, you use two fingers. That's day two.

And so on and so forth. So it's actually quite simple. So I had an early start. And by the time I recorded for the first time, I'd already been playing them for 24 years. I want to play the first version that you recorded of this in 19, How does it sound to you now?

Very good cello playing. The notes are very evened. You know, everything is just very measured, very competent. Yeah, good cellist. It feels like a backhanded compliment a little bit. Well, you know, it's good playing. But I try and do forensic musical analysis. Okay, what does this evidence say?

What does this person know? What do they care about? The person cares about having a nice sound. This person likes to make things look good, right? But this music, it starts your imagination going, where's he taken us? And then I see, well, there's this stop in the middle. Has that person thought about that great interruption?

Does that person hear the pedal point that's in there? I'd say maybe subliminally a little bit, but not something that is front and center. It's basically, let's get this over with and stop. No silence, no silence, let's go. So you get someone's priorities when you listen. You always get someone's priorities. If you know what the instrument, it is really wonderful to be able to say, oh, okay, this person cares about this, cares less about that, and you get someone's value system.

This music, the structure of it is totally clear. So in order to bring this to life, you actually have to breathe life into it. And that pause, it's something totally violently unusual. It screams out at saying, something happened. Okay, I want to play that same spot, the moment where there's that break in your new recording in the 2018 version. What does your forensic analysis tell you about the person who's recorded that version? There's more attention to changing landscape. There's less emphasis on, say, let's make a beautiful sound, and there's different kinds of texture.

There's greater fragility. there's more attention to the bits of landscape that says, hmm, wait, look at that. Check that out. So what does all this mean? Like a great book that you read several times during your life, each time you read it, it's the same book, but you certainly get very, very different material from the same story. He says, oh, I didn't see that.

Oh, I didn't notice that before. What is that? So there's an evolutionary process. There's no question that with life experience, as you experience loss and love and tragedy, you are slightly changed. And as a musician, you make your living from being sensitized to these changes and digest them

and make sure that you are always giving your full self to whatever you're doing, which means that any experience that you've, had has to be somehow revealed in the process of making music. And I think that almost forces you to make yourself vulnerable to whatever is there to be vulnerable to. Because that actually is your strength. I'm not trying to prove anything other than this is the best I can do. I make mistakes, but it's like that vulnerability to say, you know, I accept I'm not perfect. The reason I want to record this, perhaps for the last time, is that I feel this is what I can

contribute. This is the best that I can do for the music that's written for my instrument. Here's Yo-Yo-Yo-Maz's 2018 recording of the prelude from cello suite number one in G major by Johann Sebastian Bach in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about. Yo-Yo Ma and the Bach cello suites. You'll find a link to buy or stream the music and a link to buy Eric Siblin's book, The Cello Suites, J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the search for a Baroque masterpiece. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll

be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Winerobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April,

and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light,

and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, Rishi-kash.co. Or just go to songexploader.net slash live. That's songexploader.net slash live. Thanks. My thanks to a few people who helped with notes on this episode, Alison McAdam, Julie Shapiro, David Weinberg,

Helen Zaltzman, and Christian Coons. Production Assistance by Nick Song. Carlos Lermott creates original illustrations for every episode of Song Exploder, which you can see on the Song Exploder website or Instagram. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radio from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts, you can learn about all of our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can also find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder.

My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Until next year, thanks for listening.