Silvius Leopold Weiss

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Silvius Leopold Weiss (here written “Weiſs” and with the wrong date of birth), quoting Johann Ulrich von König : “Only Sylvius should play the lute”.

Silvius Leopold Weiss , sometimes Sylvius Leopold Weiss or Silvyus Leopold Weiss (born October 12, 1687 in Grottkau , † October 16, 1750 in Dresden ) was a German composer and lutenist .

Life

Silvius Leopold Weiss was probably born in Grottkau in 1687, as recent research suggests, and not in Breslau in 1686 . His father Johann Jacob Weiss, a lute and theorbo player , taught him how to play the lute , as did his two younger siblings Johann Sigismund and Juliana Margaretha, at a young age.

Silvius Leopold Weiss worked in Breslau as a lutenist with Karl Philipp von Pfalz-Neuburg . In 1706 he traveled to Düsseldorf via Kassel to the court of Elector Johann Wilhelm , his employer's brother. He stayed there for almost a month. Presumably through his mediation, his father and brother found employment in the Palatinate court orchestra in Düsseldorf (proven from 1709). In Mannheim they belonged to the court orchestra of Elector Karl Philipp von Pfalz-Neuburg, who succeeded his brother.

It was probably not until 1710 that Silvius Leopold stayed in Rome in the wake of the Polish Prince Alexander Sobieski , where he met famous musicians of the time, including Alessandro Scarlatti , his son Domenico and Johann David Heinichen . It is questionable whether he also met Georg Friedrich Handel there, since Handel left Rome in 1708. The stay in Italy had a great influence on the musical development of the lutenist Weiss. In 1714 he probably returned to his previous employer, Karl Philipp, who was residing in Innsbruck at the time .

Memorial stone for Silvius Leopold Weiss on the Old Catholic Cemetery in Dresden. The original tombstone was lost.

Around 1717 he was heard for the first time at the court in Dresden . In August 1718 he was employed there as a royal chamber lute at the court of the Elector of Saxony , Augustus the Strong . He was one of the best-paid musicians at court in Dresden, where he stayed until the end of his life. In 1723 he traveled to Prague accompanied by Johann Joachim Quantz and Carl Heinrich Graun to take part in the coronation opera Costanza e fortezza by Johann Joseph Fux . In 1736 Weiss turned down a job at the Viennese court, which would have earned him the extraordinarily high salary of 2000 thalers. There is evidence of two encounters with Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig in 1739 and 1740. As a “lutenist from Düsseldorf” who gave a concert at the Köthener Hof on August 17, 1719, Weiss could have met Bach earlier, especially since Bach's son Wilhelm Friedemann as an organist at the Dresden Sophienkirche, he also had contact with the Dresden court and Weiss.

Even if some of his students, such as Ernst Gottlieb Baron , Wilhelmine von Bayreuth or Adam Falckenhagen , and also his son Johann Adolf Faustinus (1741–1814) kept the lute art alive, Weiss was considered the best lutenist of his time and in retrospect was the last great one Lutenist of European reputation.

Weiss died in Dresden in 1750 at the age of 63, where he was buried in the Old Catholic Cemetery .

effect

Weiss was one of the last great and technically outstanding lute virtuosos who was admired by his contemporaries for his art of improvisation. He has written more than 600 works ( preludes and baroque dance movements) for solo lute. Most of the time they were put together to form " sonatas " (not to be confused with the later classical sonata, which is based on the sonata form ) or suites . Unfortunately, none of his ensemble works for lute and other instruments have survived in their entirety.

Weiss composed exclusively for the lute, which he adapted structurally to his ideas ( German baroque lute ). In addition to the solo pieces and duos, he has also written chamber music with lute and lute concerts. From the chamber music and the concerts , however, only the lute parts (in tablature ) have been preserved. The voices of the other instruments have been lost.

Silvius Leopold Weiss and Johann Sebastian Bach were good friends. In 1739 he and his son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and the lutenist Johann Kropfgans (1708 – until after 1769) were guests several times in the apartment of the Leipzig cantor . Johann Friedrich Reichardt reports that Weiss and Bach improvised competitively with one another:

"Anyone who knows the difficulty of the lute for harmonious evasions and well-executed sentences must be amazed and hardly believe it when eye and ear witnesses assure that the great Dresden lutenist Weisse with Sebastian Bach, who was also great as a piano and organ player, fantasized in the bet and executed fugitive sentences. "

- Johann Friedrich Reichardt

Weiss' works remained manuscripts for a long time. It was not until the 20th century that his musically rich and technically demanding pieces became known through publications.

Editions of works (selection)

  • Silvius Leopold Weiß: Complete works for lute in tablature and transcription , 10 volumes in 16 parts; Volume 1-4 ed. by Douglas Alton, Frankfurt: Peters 1983–1990; Volume 5-10 ed. by Tim Crawford, Dieter Kirsch, Kassel: Bärenreiter 2002–2013 (= Das Erbe Deutscher Musik, special series 10–16)
  • Ruggero Chiesa (Ed.): SL White: Intavolatura di Liuto, dall'originale del British Museum London. Zerboni, Milan 1976.
  • Jonathan Rubin (Ed.): Silvius Leopold Weiss - L'Infidele, Sonata for Bar. Lute. Tree Edition, Lübeck 2002.
  • Silvius Leopold Weiss - 6 Sonatas from the Dresden manuscript. Tree Edition, Lübeck 2005.
  • Michel Cardin (Ed.): 5 Duo Suites for Flute & Lute. Tree Edition, Lübeck 2008.

literature

  • Robert Eitner :  White, Sylvius . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, p. 583 f.
  • Karl Prusik: compositions by the lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss . Dissertation at the University of Vienna 1923 ( online )
  • Hans Neemann: The lutenist family white. In: Archiv für Musikforschung 4, 1939, pp. 157–189.
  • Kenneth Sparr: The art of Silvius Leopold Weiß as reflected in contemporary literature. In: Guitar & Laute 9, 1987, No. 6, pp. 15-17.
  • Lothar Hoffmann inheritance law: the lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiß and Johann Sebastian Bach. In: Guitar & Laute 9, 1987, No. 6, pp. 19-23.
  • Stadtlexikon Dresden A-Z . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1995, ISBN 3-364-00300-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frank Legl, Between Grottkau and Neuburg - News on the biography of Silvius Leopold Weiss . Yearbook of the German Lute Society IV, 2000, pp. 1-40
  2. ↑ Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht (1987), p. 20.
  3. ↑ F. Blume: Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. In: Music in the past and present. 1 (1949-1951), col. 1048.
  4. ↑ Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht (1987), p. 19.
  5. ^ Johann Friedrich Reichardt: Autobiography . In: Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung . First vintage. No. 71 . Berlin 1805, p. 281 ( archive.org [accessed June 10, 2019]).
personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Silvius Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weiss, Sylvius Leopold; Weiss, Silvyus Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and lutenist
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1687
PLACE OF BIRTH Grottkau
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1750
Place of death Dresden