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The Books: Bach, Casals and the Six Suites for Cello Solo. Read All 4 volumes in iBooks

Bach, Casals and the Six Suites for Cello Solo is the telling of a preeminent, but almost unknown, legend of Western culture…. the Life of Sebastian Bach, his Legacy, the Life of Pablo Casals - the heroic cellist who rescued the Six Cello Suites from oblivion - and the saga and rediscovery of Bach’s magnificent masterpiece… the companion to Steven Hancoff’s remarkable and ground-breaking 3-cd acoustic guitar recording of Bach’s immortal work.

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Volume 1: The Life of J. Sebastian Bach

The Life of J. Sebastian Bach is the story of the great man’s life. Did you know that by the time he was nine years old, Bach had witnessed the death of three siblings, and then in one year the death of his father and then his mother? Or that at the age of 35, after three of his children had died, his wife – Maria Barbara Bach, the love of his life – died? Or that he lived the last 27 years of his life in obscurity, turning out masterpieces even while holding down a day job teaching Latin and leading a boys’ choir? read more

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Volume 2: The Legacy of J. Sebastian Bach

Volume 2: The Legacy of J. Sebastian Bach tells the tale of his death at the hands of a quack, his remarkable family – he fathered five sons all of whom were more renowned as composers in their lifetimes than he was in his! – the 80 years of near-total obscurity following his death, the discovery and bringing to light his incomparable work by the teen-aged Felix Mendelssohn, and finally the gathering together of the more than 1,000 extant works – probably only a bit more than half of his life’s work. As Beethoven said of him: “His name should not have been 'Bach.' ('Bach' means 'stream' or 'brook' in German.) It should have been Ocean.” read more

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Volume 3: Pablo Casals and the Six Suites for Cello Solo

Volume 3: Pablo Casals and the Six Suites for ‘Cello Solo is actually two books in one. First, the dynamic and heroic life of Pablo Casals, and the spectacularly unlikely serendipity of his having stum- bled upon Bach’s Cello Suites when he was only 13 years old, and his artistic vision and perse- verance in working on them and bringing them to life 12 years later may well be the single greatest cultural contribution of any 20th century artist read more

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Volume 4: From Tragedy to Transcendence

Volume 4: From Tragedy to Transcendence consists almost entirely of nine animated videos, and seeks to articulate the mystery of the greatness of Bach: he did not let personal tragedy define his life, nor turn him to negativity. Rather, the miracle of Bach is in his ability to unify the expres- sion of breathtaking beauty, primal emotion, vast power and intellectual rigor, and to do so on a giant canvas. read more