During the past year or so, I’ve been studying this closely and am gradually realising that there is something about the Baroque cello that is another paradox. In the later 17th and earlier 18th century you find that the cello was seldom asked for. The name existed, of course, and you find some scores where it says ‘violoncello’ or violoncino’, but it is very rare. Normally the bass part is written ‘basso’ or ‘basso continuo’ or ‘violone’, and we’ve always assumed that means cello. Now I think it is time to recognise that this is wrong and that it does not mean the violoncello, at least not in the narrow historical sense. In definitions of “violoncello” in German and French lexicons until about 1730 or even later, you only find mentions of the cello being played da spalla, or ‘on the shoulder’. In Venice and Bologna you can find pictures in churches of musicians who play in this way. It is almost as big as our cello today and played like a viola, not of course under the chin or on the left shoulder, which would be impossible, but against the right shoulder with a strap around the player’s neck. The larger examples extend beyond the right shoulder, so the left hand can play comfortably not further down the neck than on a viola. The instrument is almost horizontally positioned and resonates in a totally different way to the traditional cello. I would imagine that in the late 17th century it was mostly used in churches, because I cannot imagine playing virtuoso divisions on it. But gradually more virtuoso things did appear and we know that Giovanni Bononcini and Caldara were appointed to San Marco around 1690 as viola da spalla players. The definition of the cello as being da spalla can be found even as late as a German lexicon of 1758, and in his famous violin method Leopold Mozart tells us that the gamba is played between the legs, going on to make the point that ‘today even the cello is played in that way’, which implies that previously it was not. Many previous writers such as Mattheson (1713) speak of the cello as da spalla. Brossard in France explicitly says that ‘what the Italians call the “violoncello” is what we in France term the Quinte de violon,’ the biggest of the violas used in Lully’s 5-part string orchestra. So the evidence is too striking for us to ignore anymore. What we erroneously call the ‘cello’ was at that time never given that name. It was also a larger instrument that the French called the basse de violon, tuned on B flat; that same instrument existed all over Europe, usually tuned to C like ‘our’ cello. Around 1725 to 1740 people started to make new instruments of this kind smaller to make them more comfortable for the player and a solo repertoire starts to emerge. Then you start to go into the Rococo and the old-fashioned spalla cello goes out of fashion.

So this is the instrument for which you believe the Bach Cello Suites were written?

I’m quite convinced of it. The idea that Bach ‘invented’ the viola pomposa is very doubtful. It is a later invention and Bach himself never spoke of the instrument. He did however write parts in his cantata arias for violoncello and violoncello piccolo, but those parts he or his students copied out never appear in the bass, so the bass players never played them. It would have been so easy to put in the continuo or basso part, but it is never the case. It’s either in the first violin, where it would have been easy for the concertmaster to switch instruments, or on a separate sheet of paper. Initially, I was shocked myself by this new reality, which I thought could not be true. But as I came to realise how seldom the cello was specifically asked for in the early decades of the 18th century, it started to explain the whole situation. Not many instruments survive, there is little iconography, all of which points to the fact that the cello at the time was a rare and not very important instrument. The violone was the bass instrument in an ensemble, and it’s very interesting to find from lists of payments to Corelli’s big Ottoboni orchestra that they were made to violinists, violas, ‘violoni’, and contrabassi. That clearly shows that it is the violone, the big cellos, that are what we today call cellos. I’m increasingly convinced that in chamber works like the Brandenburg Concertos and the cantatas there was no 16ft bass. In bigger works like the Handel oratorios, yes, but not in smaller scale pieces. So in Brandenburg 3, for example, you would have nine players standing: three violins, three violas, and three viole da spalla, along with a violone (the ‘big’ cello on C) and no double-bass. It would make the sound quite different to the one to which we’re accustomed. It’s also notable that in the first versions of Brandenburg’s No’s 1 and 5 there is no cello part, only basso, but by the time he came to write out the beautiful manuscript he dedicated to the Marquis of Brandenburg he says in the preface that he has re-worked them and one of the alterations is the addition of a cello part. The cello part is not more than the concertino bass of the kind you find in a concerto grosso. It doubles in the tuttis, but when the soloists play as in No. 5, it’s not like it is in the first version, where the violone is accompanying, but a concertino in which the cello plays. And I can very well imagine this part played by a spalla.