Sylvius Leopold Weiss

(1686 - 1750)

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Introduction

The name Sylvius Leopold Weiss undoubtedly dominates the history of lute music.That he achieved this position is due not only to his being regarded as the finest lutenist of his day, Baron in 1727 writes "because the Weissian method of playing the lute is considered the best, most sound, galant, and perfect of all, many have striven to attain his new method, just as the Argonauts sought the Golden Fleece." But because he was responsible for leaving the largest, both qualitatively and quantitatively, number of compositions for the solo lute of any composer in history. In the early 18th century many German courts employed lutenists as chamber musicians, who also played theorbo continuo in court orchestras. A large number of noble and bourgeois amateurs also cultivated the lute.

Biography

Sylvius Leopold Weiss was born on October 12th 1686 in Breslau, Silesia. (Wroclaw, Poland) Weiss' father Johann Jakob, (1662? – 1754) a well known lutenist taught all of his three children Sylvius Leopold, Johann Sigismund and their sister Juliana Margaretha. That Weiss played the lute at the age of ten comes from a delightful anecdote which originally appeared in Reichardt's Musikalisches Kunstmagazin (1782) and is included in Douglas Alton Smith's 1977 dissertation.

"The great lutenist Weiss in the fiftieth year of his life (1736) answered the question of how long he had been playing the lute with "twenty years." One of his friends, who knew for certain that Weiss already was playing the lute in his tenth year, wanted to contradict him, but he interrupted and said," True, but for twenty years I was tuning."

In following Weiss from 1706 when he made his debut at the court of the Elector Johann Wilhelm of the Palatinate in Düsseldorf we encounter almost every important centre of music and culture in the Baroque period. By 1708 he accompanied Prince Alexander Sobiesky, a son of the Polish King Jan Sobiesky to Italy where they remained until 1714 and Alexanders death. In 1715 Weiss moved to Germany and served for a short time at the Hessian court in Kassel before returning to the service of the Düsseldorf court as a chamber musician.

In 1717 Weiss travelled to Prague where it seems that he wrote his first sonata for Prince Phillip Hyacinth Lobkowitz as indicated by a cryptic note on the score "V.(ostro) E.(ccellenze) H.(yacinth) L.(obkowitz) b.(isogno) di Volare" ( Your Excellency Hyacinth Lobkowitz must turn the page ) Evidence of Weiss' close relationship with the Prince and the Lobkowitz family who were patrons of the arts for generations is also to be found in a letter from Dresden in 1728. In this letter he explains the details of a purchase of tea for the Prince and apologises for not sending any music

Weiss had other links to the Bohemian aristocracy as his two tombeau were written after the deaths of Baron Cajetan von Hartig and Count Jan Antonin Losy von Losimthal. Count Jan Antonin Losy von Losimthal, known to his contemporaries as Comte Logy was the most celebrated German baroque lutenist before Weiss and was almost certainly an influence on the young Weiss, whose early compositions are similar in style. Weiss revisited Prague in 1719 and again in 1723 for the coronation of Emperor Charles VI.

In September 1718, Weiss was one of the musicians