Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1686–1750) Sylvius Leopold Weiss was the last great star in the story of the lute. He was not only the greatest player of the eighteenth century – possibly the greatest ever – but also the most gifted and prolific composer for the instrument, leaving behind him a remarkable corpus of around 650 exquisite pieces. Though he is relatively little-known today, in his lifetime Weiss was greatly revered by musicians and the aristocracy alike, and was ranked with outstanding contemporaries like Bach, Handel and Scarlatti. Born in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), Weiss was introduced to music by his lutenist father and gained his first position as a performer in 1706. From 1708 to 1714 he worked in Rome in the service of Prince Alexandre Sobieski, learning a great deal about Italian music and almost certainly meeting Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti. When his employer died in 1714, Weiss headed north again, visiting Prague, London and various other cities before landing the prestigious post of chamber musician in the court of Dresden in 1718. He remained based there for the rest of his life, though made numerous trips to other cities, building a widespread reputation as a matchless performer, improviser and composer on both the lute and theorbo (a large cousin of the lute, often used for orchestral playing). In 1728 he visited Berlin, impressing the future king Frederick the Great and giving lute lessons to Frederick’s sister Wilhelmine. She later wrote in her memoirs that Weiss “has never had an equal, and those who come after him will only have the glory of imitating him”. In 1739 he met J.S. Bach in Leipzig, though it is probable that these two masters were acquainted already. Some of Bach’s lute works are said to have been written for Weiss, and Bach transcribed one of Weiss’s lute pieces for harpsichord and violin. According to one commentator the two masters even engaged in a competition, performing and improvising fugues and fantasias – Bach on the keyboard, Weiss on the lute. Weiss’s time at Dresden must have been relatively comfortable. By 1744 he was the highest-paid instrumentalist in the court, and he was also a much sought-after teacher, with lutenists flocking from far and wide to try and master the famous “Weissian method”. His life wasn’t without its upsets, however: in 1722 an enraged French violinist bit Weiss’s thumb so hard that it was almost severed, making playing impossible for much of that year, and in 1738 he was arrested and imprisoned for “offensive” behaviour towards a senior court functionary. He was released only when the music-loving Count Keyserling, commissioner of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, stepped in with a character reference. In the second half of the eighteenth century the lute disappeared from the European musical scene and Weiss’s work, written down in a format that was incomprehensible until relatively recently, remained ignored from the time of his death until the late twentieth century. The 1980s and 1990s saw an increased interest in his music, but as it’s written entirely for an archaic instrument it seems unlikely that Weiss will ever receive his due as one of the most significant composers of Baroque Germany. Works for Lute Apart from the accompaniments of a handful of lost ensemble works, Weiss’s surviving output consists entirely of pieces for solo lute. Like Bach in his instrumental music, Weiss combined elements of the French and Italian styles, but the approaches of the two composers are markedly different. Weiss’s pieces tend to be more rhapsodic and lyrical than Bach’s, and less contrapuntally dense. His style is highly recognizable, making frequent use of unusual harmonic progressions and daring modulations, and integrating melodic passages, arpeggiated figures and subtle counterpoint to great effect. The majority of Weiss’s pieces are sonatas, written in the form of the suite. Most have six movements, and feature a sombre allemande, a sprightly courante and a lyrical sarabande. The early sonatas are enerally bright in spirit and possess a virtuosic flair, while later examples are characterized by emotional gravity and lengthy developmental movements. Weiss also wrote many single-movement works, the most famous of which is the Tombeau sur la mort de M. Comte de Logy. Written as a tribute to a count who was one of the best lutenists of his time (and an influence on the young Weiss), the Tombeau is a stately and profoundly melancholic work, full of funeralmarch motifs and sombre melodies.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 02:48:53 +0000
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