The whole point of historically-informed performance is to try to use modern scholarship to go back to the sounds, instruments, and playing techniques that, to the best of our knowledge, were used by Bach himself, in contrast to playing on a modern instrument with modern strings and modern playing technique.Īll this notwithstanding, if you want to learn to play Bach, you should tune your modern cello to A=440 and play it in the modern fashion with your modern bow. It is not as loud and cutting, but it has a character of sound that early music fans love.

A Baroque cello with sheep-gut strings has a different sound than a 'modern' cello. Such a 'baroque' cello would be designed, braced and set up differently than a modern cello, and would use a different kind of bow as well, and would be played in a different style - for one thing, using a great deal less vibrato than 'modern' cello players use. I'm quite sure that many examples you can find on YouTube are of a musician playing in A=415 furthermore, such a musician would be playing a specially-designed Baroque cello with period-correct strings made of sheep gut, not modern strings made of steel. It is generally accepted by modern performers of early music in the historically-informed style that A=415 was the tuning that Bach himself used for the string pieces he composed. These days many musicians who play Baroque music such as Bach tune their instruments down to the lower pitch of A=415, which is exactly one half-step below the modern standard of A=440.

Cello standard tuning