[1] The cello suites are structured in six movements each: prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets or two bourrées or two gavottes, and a final gigue.

[1][4] Due to the works' technical demands, étude-like nature, and difficulty in interpretation because of the non-annotated nature of the surviving copies and the many discrepancies between them, the cello suites were little known and rarely publicly performed in the modern era until they were recorded by Pablo Casals (1876–1973) in the early 20th century.

They have since been performed and recorded by many renowned cellists and have been transcribed for numerous other instruments; they are considered some of Bach's greatest musical achievements.

Yo-Yo Ma won the 1985 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance for his album Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites.

János Starker won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance for his fifth recording of Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites.

Unlike with Bach's solo violin sonatas, no autograph manuscript of the Cello Suites survives, making it impossible to produce modern urtext performing editions.

Analysis of secondary sources, including a hand-written copy by Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena, has produced presumably authentic editions, although critically deficient in the placement of slurs and other articulations, devoid of basic performance markings such as bowings and dynamics, and with spurious notes and rhythms.

According to his analysis, the unexpected positioning of the slurs corresponds closely to the harmonic development, which he suggests supports his theory.

[13] The cellist Edmund Kurtz published an edition in 1983, which he based on facsimiles of the manuscript by Anna Magdalena Bach, placing them opposite each printed page.

[14] However, Kurtz chooses to follow the Magdalena text exactly, leading to differences between his and other editions, which correct what are generally considered to be textual errors in the source.

[17][18] Writing in 2011, Fanfare reviewer James A. Altena agreed with that critique, calling the surviving Bach-Schumann cello/piano arrangement "a musical duckbilled platypus, an extreme oddity of sustained interest only to 19th-century musicologists".

[20] The cello suites have been transcribed for numerous solo instruments, including the violin, viola, double bass, viola da gamba, mandolin, piano, marimba, classical guitar, recorder, flute, electric bass, horn, saxophone, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, euphonium, tuba, ukulele, and charango.

Scholars believe that Bach intended the works to be considered as a systematically conceived cycle, rather than an arbitrary series of pieces.

In addition, to achieve a symmetrical design and go beyond the traditional layout, Bach inserted intermezzo or galanterie movements in the form of pairs between the sarabande and the gigue.

Only five movements in the entire set of suites are completely non-chordal, meaning that they consist only of a single melodic line.

The prelude, mainly consisting of arpeggiated chords, is the best known movement from the entire set of suites and is regularly heard on television and in films.

The Prelude of this suite consists of an A–B–A–C form, with A being a scale-based movement that eventually dissolves into an energetic arpeggio part; and B, a section of demanding chords.

4 is one of the most technically demanding of the suites, as E♭ is an uncomfortable key on the cello and requires many extended left hand positions.

[22] The prelude primarily consists of a difficult flowing quaver movement that leaves room for a cadenza before returning to its original theme.

As the range required in this piece is very large, the suite was probably intended for a larger instrument, although it is conceivable that Bach—who was fond of the viola—may have performed the work himself on an arm-held violoncello piccolo.

Cellists playing this suite on a modern four-string cello encounter difficulties as they are forced to use very high positions to reach many of the notes.

[24] Jarvis proposes that Anna Magdalena wrote the six Cello Suites and was involved in composing the aria from the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988).