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Silvius Leopold Weiss (ca. 1687 - 1750) |
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"Both as virtuoso performer and as composer Weiss can be regarded as the greatest lutenist of the late Baroque and a peer of keyboard players such as J.S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. He left the largest corpus of music for lute of any composer in the history of the instrument. Most of the hundreds of pieces which survive are grouped into six-movement sonatas with the sequence allemande, courante, bourrée, sarabande, minuet and gigue (or allegro)...In the course of his career Weiss wrote increasingly extended movements and began to coordinate thematic motifs with the harmonic structure in a manner strikingly similar to Classical sonata form. Bach clearly had great respect for Weiss’s sonatas since he arranged no.47 as a duo for harpsichord and violin...As well as solo sonatas, Weiss is known (from Breitkopf's and other catalogues) to have composed several concertos and much chamber music for the lute and a number of lute duets; unfortunately none of these concerted pieces has survived in complete form. Occasionally a single tablature lute part has been discovered; in such cases only speculative reconstruction is possible. "1 Resources text and audio files (links will open in a new window):
1 'Silvius [Sylvius] Leopold Weiss', The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online ed. L. Macy <http://www.grovemusic.com> back | close window
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Silvius
Leopold Weiss was the leading lutenist/composer of the German Baroque
periods. Born near Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland), in 1687, Weiss
was introduced to lute playing by his father. His brother, as well as his
son, also played the lute professionally. In 1708, Weiss accompanied the
Polish Prince Alexander Sobiesky to Rome and remained there until his
patron’s death in 1714. In Rome he would undoubtedly have met and
associated with some of the most important and celebrated musicians of his
time, such as Arcangelo Corelli and Allesandro and Domenico Scarlatti. In
1718 he became chamber lutenist at the court of the Elector of Saxony in
Dresden, where he remained until his death in 1750. Dresden was at the
time reputed to have the finest musical establishment in Central Europe,
and among Weiss numerous and famous musical associates there were the
violinist Pisendel, the flutist Quantz, and the composers Heinichen, Lotti,
and Hasse. He also traveled extensively and formed friendships with many
important figures in the musical world at the time, notable Johann
Sebastian Bach.