---
title: The Teenager Who Rescued Bach's Cello Suites
description: How Pablo Casals found Bach's Cello Suites in a Barcelona shop at 13, made the first complete recording and became the father of the modern cello.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-09T19:22:37.813Z
updated: 2026-11-09T19:22:37.825Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/pau-casals-bach-cello-suites
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-19657904.webp
categories: Music 
content_type: Feature
region: Spain
publication: The Quantum of Light
schema_type: Article
about:
  - type: Person
    name: Pablo Casals
    description: Catalan cellist, conductor and composer (1876 to 1973), also known as Pau Casals, born in El Vendrell, who made the first complete recording of Bach's Cello Suites.
    jobTitle: Cellist and conductor
    sameAs:
      - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Casals
      - https://www.paucasals.org/en/biography/
---

Pau Casals is often described as the man who invented the modern cello. When he began performing, the cello was mostly heard supporting other instruments. By the time he finished, it was a solo voice that could hold a concert hall on its own, and the music he championed, above all Bach's six suites for unaccompanied cello, had become the test every cellist must pass. He found those suites in a Barcelona music shop at the age of thirteen and spent more than a decade learning them before he let anyone hear them.

He was also a conductor, a composer and one of the great chamber musicians of his age, and he used his fame to stand against Francisco Franco. On 29th December, El Vendrell, the Catalan town where he was born in 1876, will mark the 150th anniversary of his birth with a central concert and civic ceremony. It is the high point of *Casals 150*, a programme run by the Fundació Pau Casals and the Generalitat de Catalunya, with more than 70 events between April 2026 and October 2027. Barcelona is showing *Pau Casals, Music for Peace* at the Palau Robert, and the Palau de la Música Catalana opened its 2026 to 2027 season with a concert in his honour.

## An Organist's Son From El Vendrell

Pau Casals i Defilló, known outside Catalonia as Pablo Casals, was the son of Carles Casals i Ribes, the parish organist and choirmaster, who taught him piano, violin and organ. Pau was playing the violin in public by the age of six. He heard a cello for the first time at eleven, and at thirteen his father bought him a full-size instrument.

## Six Suites in a Shop by the Harbour

In 1890, Casals was looking through music in a shop near the harbour in Barcelona when he found an edition of Johann Sebastian Bach's six suites for unaccompanied cello. Bach had written them around 1717 to 1723, and they were rarely heard in concert.

Casals practised them every day for about thirteen years before he played them in public. Between 1936 and 1939 he made the first complete recording of all six, and those recordings are still in print.

## Exile in Prades and a Refusal to Play

From 1906 to 1933 Casals played in a celebrated trio with the pianist Alfred Cortot and the violinist Jacques Thibaud. In 1939, after Barcelona fell to Franco's forces, he left Spain for Prades, a small French town near the border, and vowed not to return until democracy was restored.

He also refused to perform in countries that recognised Franco's government. In 1950 he came back to the concert platform at the Prades Festival, held for the bicentenary of Bach's death. His best-known exception came on 13th November 1961, when he played at the White House at President John F. Kennedy's invitation. In 1963 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

## The Song of the Birds at the United Nations

In 1956 Casals settled in Puerto Rico, where a festival in his name began, and in 1957, aged 80, he married Marta Montañez. On 24th October 1971, at the United Nations in New York, he conducted his *Hymn to the United Nations* and received the UN Peace Medal. In a speech now remembered by the words 'I am a Catalan', he told the delegates that Catalonia had a democratic parliament before England. Then he played *El Cant dels Ocells*, the Catalan folk song known as *The Song of the Birds*.

Casals died in Puerto Rico on 22nd October 1973, aged 96, without returning to Spain. In 1979 his remains were brought home to El Vendrell.

## His Cello Is Back in El Vendrell

For most of his career Casals played a cello labelled as a Carlo Tononi of 1733, later identified as an instrument made around 1700 by Matteo Goffriller, which he acquired in 1913. This year the cello returned to the Museu Pau Casals in Sant Salvador, El Vendrell, and the 45th Festival Internacional de Música Pau Casals in July was devoted to the cello in his honour.

For any artist, the Casals story makes the case for patience. He spent more than a decade with six pieces of music before he let an audience hear them, and he spent the last 34 years of his life away from the country he loved rather than play for a regime he opposed.

## Frequently Asked Questions

**Q: What was Pablo Casals famous for?**
Pablo Casals, also known as Pau Casals, was a Catalan cellist, conductor and composer, famous for making Bach's Cello Suites part of the standard concert repertoire and for recording all six for the first time between 1936 and 1939. He was also known for his opposition to Franco and his campaigning for peace.

**Q: Why was Pablo Casals exiled?**
Casals left Spain in 1939 after Barcelona fell to Francisco Franco's forces, because he opposed the new regime. He settled in Prades in France, vowed not to return until democracy was restored and refused to perform in countries that recognised Franco's government.

**Q: What was the cause of Pablo Casals' death?**
Pablo Casals died on 22nd October 1973 in Puerto Rico, aged 96, from complications following a heart attack he had suffered three weeks earlier.