Anner Bylsma, an eminent Dutch cellist and a groundbreaking figure in the early music movement, the postwar effort to create performances closer to what past audiences may have actually heard, died on July 25 in Amsterdam. He was 85.

The cause was a cerebral hemorrhage, his family said.

Mr. Bylsma played a wide repertory on both period and modern cellos, from Baroque concertos by Vivaldi and Boccherini, a composer he championed, to sonatas and chamber works by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Messiaen. He was especially known for his accounts of Bach’s six suites for solo cello, which he recorded twice, in 1979 and again in 1992.

He also won acclaim for trio performances with the recorder virtuoso Frans Brüggen and the harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt, both of whom became important conductors. All three were leading figures of the early music movement. The movement, calling for the use of period techniques and instruments, became an established part of the concert scene and has since influenced the wider classical music world.

Mr. Bylsma’s 1979 recording of the Bach suites was widely credited with being the first performed on a period instrument using gut strings, which were typical of cellos of earlier eras. Pablo Casals’ historic recordings of these scores in the late 1930s, after long neglect, had brought them to wider attention. Today they are the most performed works for solo cello.