Silvius Leopold Weiss
(1686-1750)
Sonatas for Lute
Volume 3
No. 2 in D major; No.
27 in C minor; No. 35 in D minor
Silvius Leopold Weiss
is just beginning to be recognised as one of the most important German
composers of the first half of the eighteenth century. The delay is perfectly
understandable: a composer whose œuvre is confined to a single genre, solo lute
music, is bound to be thought of as interesting to specialists only. Yet in his
day this lutenist, an exact contemporary of J.S. Bach, was regarded with awe
similar to that accorded the great Leipzig organist by listeners and
fellow-composers alike. The two were even compared by contemporary writers,
especially for their legendary skill in improvisation, and Weiss was honoured
as the highest-paid instrumentalist in the glittering musical establishment at
the Saxon Electoral and Polish Royal Court at Dresden, and lived there in some
comfort and security. Bach, whose by no means comfortable job in Leipzig was a
daily grind of teaching and composing to order, also held a largely honorary
position in Dresden as Court Composer, although he did not make regular
appearances there as a performer. As far as posterity is concerned, Weiss's
principal misfortune is to find himself in the company of a figure now universally
acclaimed as perhaps the greatest of all composers. Bach casts a long shadow
even over contemporary talents as remarkable as Domenico Scarlatti, Handel,
Telemann, Rameau and François Couperin, to name but the most prominent. What
chance against such competition in the music-history stakes is there for a
composer whose output is exclusively for an obsolete instrument? To make
matters worse, Weiss's music is entirely preserved in lute tablature, an arcane
form of notation that, outside the domain of purely academic study, demands the
reconstruction of historically-accurate instruments and the relearning of
playing techniques that are only hinted at in contemporary documents and
treatises. Only now, perhaps, with the steady progress in lute-playing (and
lute-making) that has gone on since the 1970s, can the listener begin to
appreciate what is most special in the music of this highly imaginative and
sensitive composer. This is music that, like that for keyboard by Scarlatti or
Couperin, or for solo violin or cello by Bach, is not only technically
demanding and utterly idiomatic for its instrument, but often highly
expressive, with some wonderful and characteristic dramatic gestures.
Weiss's music differs
from Bach's in some significant ways. The most immediately striking disparity
is in the length of the movements. In this he strayed much further than Bach
from the classic French models that one might expect from a lutenist raised in
the seventeenth century tradition, basically a French one. Weiss, however, had
one great formative experience denied to Bach he spent the years 1708-14 in
Italy in the service of the Polish former royal family, at a time when Italian
music was in the ascendancy, and Italian opera in particular was the rage of
Europe. It seems that this Italian period, working alongside musicians of the
calibre of the two Scarlattis, Alessandro and Domenico, and the great Corelli,
and probably visiting Venice to hear Vivaldi, was crucial in forming the unique
style of Weiss's lute music. In it, we hear not just the formal balance and
sophistication of French music, but also the robust architecture of Corelli's
concertos, the dramatic harmonic shifts and expressive cantabile melodies
associated with the recitatives and arias of Scarlatti's operas; to this can be
added a ready familiarity with the energetic and imaginative idioms of
Vivaldi's music. In combining French and Italian idioms, Weiss frequently went
beyond the formal choreographic restraints of the dance-movements of the
conventional baroque suite. It seems highly unlikely that anyone ever attempted
to dance to Weiss’s music, and it is most improbable that he was employed to
perform in dance-ensembles. His
courantes, modeled on the Italian corrente rather than the French
variety, are often virtuosic in character, and frequently extend to over eighty
measures, a procedure utterly alien to Bach. Minuets, too, can sometimes be of
unusual extent, with a bewildering wealth of new melodic ideas presented in
succession; again, the contrast with Bach could hardly be greater.
The music here
recorded spans a wide period of Weiss's career, although it is hard to be
definite about dating. Sonata No. 2 in D major probably comes from the
earliest years of Weiss's employment at the Dresden Court (1717-50), since it
is found near the beginning of the London MS, which contains a number of dated
pieces in roughly chronological order from 1717 to 1721. The Prélude to
this sonata had some popularity as a separate item, and is a nice example of
the genre, not too technically taxing for the amateur player, but with enough
harmonic interest and dramatic twists to make it a satisfying challenge. The Allemande
and Courante are in very contrasting styles, with the solemn memory
of the former's gravity and langorous melodies being lightly dispelled by the
rapid fingerwork of the lively Courante, which imitates violinistic bariolage
(a rapid string-crossing technique) in a perfect adaptation to the lute.
One of Weiss's characteristically humorous Bourrées (this French genre
was derived from a rustic peasant dance) is followed by a beautiful Sarabande
in which Weiss's expressive gift for melody and sonority is prominent. A
simple Menuet and an ingenious Gigue complete a sonata which is
one of several in which Weiss explores the strong and bright sound of D major
on the baroque lute.
The sound of the lute
at this period is quite strongly affected by the key of the music, since the
rank of bass strings always needed to be tuned to the scale of the tonic key.
The first chords of Sonata No. 27 in C minor, probably from the early
1720s, reveal a much darker colour, with a wistful, almost tragic aspect to the
music. The Allemande uses the lutenistic convention sometimes called the
style brisé (broken style), in which chords are continually spread, with
melodic notes in all voices sometimes being delayed a little to expressive
effect. Unusually, there is no Courante in either version of the sonata,
which continues with a Gavotte in which the gravity of the music is
further emphasized by its low tessitura. The Rondeau that follows is in
a style that may pay homage to the earlier lutenist, Count Losy, who wrote a
number of such pieces; it, too, seems unable to shake off the ominous quality
of C minor. By contrast, the lovely Sarabande, an excellent example of
Weiss's cantabile (singing) style, is an interlude in the sunny relative
major key of E flat. With the Menuet, we return again to the depths of C
minor and again Weiss keeps the music low on the instrument; this is possibly the
least cheerful Menuet in the lute repertory. The sonata's final
movements are a Rigaudon and an Angloise, the second of which,
being in E flat, is lighter in character, although the music is still low in
range. Paradoxically, this Angloise (English dance) is entitled La
belle Tiroloise (‘The beautiful Tyrolean girl’), a confusion of
nationalities that should not prevent us enjoying one of Weiss's most
interesting middle-period sonatas.
With the Sonata No.
35 in D minor we move quite a long way, chronologically, to Weiss's last
creative period. Assuming, as we are forced to do, that he wrote the piece in
its surviving fair autograph copy soon after its composition, we can surmise
that it may have been composed as late as the early 1740s; the handwriting bears
a close resemblance to that in an autograph album (1741) in which Weiss
accompanied his signature with a tablature example of an enharmonic modulation.
Even without such external circumstantial evidence, this is clearly the work of
a master at the height of his powers, and takes many of the characteristic
features of Weiss's composing style further than in almost any of his other
works. The key of D minor is the 'home' key of the baroque lute, and
combines a richness of sonority (due to the fact that all the open strings were
tuned to the chord of the key) with an expressive nobility tinged with
minor-key melancholy that Weiss seems to have been temperamentally disposed to
exploit whenever possible. The sonata is very much on the grand scale, and seems
to sum up the experience of a composing and performing lifetime. The Allemande,
while not exceptionally long in number of measures (37) is marked Adagio
instead of the more common andante, and it uses the entire range of
the instrument and virtually every technical and expressive device in the
lutenist's repertory. It is an astonishing movement in terms of harmony; after
the first repeated section the second opens with a few measures of the most
extreme chromatic modulation, touching on keys as distant as B flat minor and A
flat minor before returning via C minor, B minor and A minor to a
cleverly-disguised reprise of the movement's opening. The Courante is
certainly long in notes (151 measures), but is so structurally well-conceived
as to seem perfectly balanced with the remarkable movement that preceded it.
The Paysane, like the bourrée a dance derived from the music of the
common people that Weiss seems to have relished, is marked by another
characteristic feature of the composer, a habit of extending musical phrases a
little further than the listener expects them to go, usually by carefully
contrived sequences that are often less symmetrical than they seem at first.
Weiss's cantabile style is again prominent in the F major Sarabande, whose
texture is often wonderfully rich and sonorous; again, the second half
modulates extensively, most notably in a sequence of four-voiced chords whose
bass line descends chromatically from D to A, the 'chromatic tetrachord' which
is a well-known element of the language of the musical lament. The Menuet introduces
new ideas rather in the manner of a concerto rondo of the next
generation of composers and the final Allegro seems even more in the
style of the concerto. One can almost imagine the sound of an accompanying
string orchestra in this music, which combines the energy of Vivaldi with
Weiss's melodic and harmonic individuality in a movement of much virtuosity
which acts as a perfectly-judged finale to this wonderful sonata.
Tim Crawford