Waart, Edo de. 56 Wachmann, Eduard 56
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- WORKS (selective list) choral
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- (1) Johann Jacob Weiss
- (2) Silvius [Sylvius] Leopold Weiss
- (3) Johann Sigismund Weiss
- (4) Johann Adolf Faustinus Weiss
Weismann, Wilhelm(b Alfdorf, Württemberg, 20 Sept 1900; d Leipzig, 14 May 1980). German composer and editor. He studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory (1919–21) with Heinrich Schlegel and Heinrich Lang, among others, and at the Leipzig Conservatory (1921–3) where his teachers included Max Ludwig and Sigfrid Karg-Elert; he also studied musicology with Hermann Abert. As an editor, he held positions at the Zeitschrift für Musik, Leipzig (1924–8) and Peters, Leipzig (1929–65, chief editor 1959–65). He taught theory and composition at the Leipzig Musikhochschule (1946–55, 1961–72, professor 1948). In 1969 he became a corresponding member of the Berlin Akademie der Künste. Weismann was particularly highly regarded for his collected editions of Gesualdo's madrigals (1956–63) and his critical editions of 18th-century works. As a composer, he wrote primarily vocal music. His works for voice and piano comprise: simple strophic folk-like songs, usually with variations; ballad-like compositions; and declamatory settings with piano accompaniment. His early impressions of Italian 16th- and 17th-century madrigals, particularly those of Monteverdi and Gesualdo, left their mark on his extensive body of choral writing. While the early madrigal cycles show a close connection with their historical models, later cycles exhibit greater freedom. WORKS(selective list) choral
other works
WRITINGS‘Ein verkannter Madrigal-Zyklus Monteverdi’, DJbM, ii (1957), 37–51 ‘Zur Urfassung von Mozarts Klaviertrio kv564’, DJbM, iii (1958), 35–40 ‘Die Madrigale des Carlo Gesualdo Principe di Venosa’, DJbM, v (1960), 7–36 ‘Der Deus ex machina in Glucks Iphigenie in Auli’, DJbM, vii (1962), 7–17 BIBLIOGRAPHYMGG1 (W. Vetter) S. Köhler: ‘Klarheit und Ausdrucksreichtum: Betrachtungen zu Wilhelm Weismanns Vokalmusik’, MG, vi (1956), 442–4 H. Döhnert: ‘W. Weismann’, Musiker in unserer Zeit: Mitglieder der Sektion Musik der Akademie der Künste der DDR, ed. D. Brennecke, H. Gerlach and M. Hansen (Leipzig, 1979), 192–200, 422–5 D. Hellmann: ‘Der Komponist Wilhelm Weismann und seine geistliche Vokalmusik’, Musik und Kirche, lx (1990), 320–23 VERA GRÜTZNER Weiss.German family of lutenists. (1) Johann Jacob Weiss (2) Silvius [Sylvius] Leopold Weiss (3) Johann Sigismund Weiss (4) Johann Adolf Faustinus Weiss EDWARD R. REILLY, DOUGLAS ALTON SMITH, TIM CRAWFORD Weiss (1) Johann Jacob Weiss(b c1662; d Mannheim, 30 Jan 1754). He was in Breslau from at least 1686, and about 1708 became a court lutenist in the Palatine chapel in Düsseldorf. When the court moved to Heidelberg (1718) and later Mannheim (1720), Weiss moved with it. He was still at Mannheim at the time of his death, but was not active in the chapel for the last two decades. No compositions by him are known to survive. Weiss (2) Silvius [Sylvius] Leopold Weiss(b Breslau [now Wrocław], ?12 Oct 1686; d Dresden, 16 Oct 1750). A son of (1) Johann Jacob Weiss, he was trained by his father and in his seventh year he performed for Emperor Leopold I. By 1706 he was in the service of Count Carl Philipp of the Palatinate, who was then resident in Breslau. His earliest datable sonata, no.7 (1706), was written while he was on a visit to the court of the count’s brother in Düsseldorf. He spent 1710–14 in Italy with the Polish Prince Alexander Sobiesky. The prince lived in Rome with his mother Queen Maria Casimira, who engaged first Alessandro and later (1709) Domenico Scarlatti as her music director. Thus Weiss doubtless worked with the Scarlattis, and probably was exposed to the music of Corelli and other composers in Rome. After the prince’s death in late 1714 Weiss returned to the North. He reentered the service of Carl Philipp, now Imperial Governor of the Tyrol, perhaps as early as 1715. By 1717 he was listed as a member of the chapel at the Saxon court in Dresden. He was formally appointed to the chapel in August 1718 with a high salary, and by 1744, he was the highest-paid instrumentalist at the court. Weiss’s activity as a performer nearly came to a premature end when in 1722 he was attacked by a French violinist named Petit who attempted to bite off the top joint of his right thumb. Handwritten notes by Weiss found in continuo parts to operas by J.A. Hasse which were performed at court between 1731 and 1749, suggest that Weiss was regularly involved in ensemble performance (see Burris); this activity may have been as important as his duties as a solo performer. Weiss’s travels took him to many other courts for short visits. He was in Prague in 1717 (and again in 1719); in September 1718 he was sent in the company of the Saxon Crown Prince Frederick Augustus with eleven of the court's best musicians to Vienna where again he played for the Emperor. In 1722 he performed at the Bavarian court in Munich with the flautist P.G. Buffardin. Together with Quantz and C.H. Graun, Weiss went to Prague in 1723 to play in the orchestra in Fux’s opera Costanza e fortezza celebrating the coronation of Charles VI. In 1728, along with Pisendel, Quantz and Buffardin, he accompanied Elector August to Berlin, where he made a profound impression on the future King Frederick the Great and his sister Wilhelmine, herself an accomplished lutenist, to whom Weiss gave lessons. Weiss was much in demand throughout his career as a teacher of both amateurs and professionals. He taught Prince Philipp Hyacinth Lobkowitz and his wife in Bohemia and Vienna and in Dresden he trained several distinguished professional lutenists, including Adam Falckenhagen and Johann Kropfgans. With Kropfgans he visited J.S. Bach in Leipzig in 1739; this was likely not their first meeting nor their last since Bach came numerous times to Dresden to see his son Wilhelm Friedemann and to hear the court musicians. Despite his high salary, Weiss’s material circumstances may not have been particularly comfortable. He married Maria Elizabeth (c1700–59) about the time of his appointment in Dresden and together they had 11 children. At his death seven of them were still living and his impoverished widow appealed to the Elector for aid. 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). The structure of these sonatas, called Suonaten or Partien, remained remarkably unchanged from the earliest to the latest period, although substitutions for one or more of the movements are common. Some begin with an unbarred prelude or a fantasia; Weiss’s practice was probably to improvise the prelude and most were never written down. The style of Weiss's music is, like Bach’s, a German fusion of French and Italian influences. It is not as densely contrapuntal or chromatic as Bach's – the baroque lute (particularly the diatonic arrangement of the basses) does not permit it – but Weiss’s harmonic usage is highly sophisticated and involves modulations to remote keys, particularly in the later works, by means of diminished seventh chords and enharmonic changes. His allemandes and sarabandes are often serious or melancholy while the fast movements are exhilarating, displaying a virtuosity which, like Corelli’s, serves the forward drive of the music rather than the desire to dazzle. In his own day he was famous for his ‘Weissian method’ of playing (Baron), which probably refers to his masterly fingerings and idiomatic legato style. 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 (BWV 1025), composing new material for the violin part and constructing an introductory fantasia using lutenistic motifs that may stem from Weiss. 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. For illustration see Tablature, fig.7. WORKSEditions: Silvius Leopold Weiss, Sämtliche Werke für Laute in Tabulatur und Übertragung, i–iv, ed. D.A. Smith (Frankfurt, 1983–90), v–x, ed. T. Crawford (Kassel, 2000–) [SC] Silvius Leopold Weiss, Intavolatura di liuto, ed. R. Chiesa (Milan, 1967–8) [CH]Deutsche Lautenmusik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: Solowerke von Esaias Reusner und Silvius Leopold Weiss, ed. H. Neemann, EDM, 1st ser., xii (1939) [N] The Moscow ‘Weiss’ Manuscript, ed. T. Crawford (Columbus, OH, 1995) [CR]Silvius Leopold Weiss: 34 Suiten für Laute Solo, ed. W. Reich (Leipzig, 1977) [facs. of MS in D-Dlb; incl. SC nos.33–60] Music for the Lute: Ernst Gottlieb Baron and Sylvius Leopold Weiss, with introduction by A. Schlegel (Peer, 1992) [facs.of MS in B-Brl] [SCH] Catalogue in BrookB [repr. of 1769 Breitkopf catalogue], cols.369–75 [60 numbered partitas and 6 Partite Grande] [B]Catalogue in Klima (1974) [K] Catalogue in appendix to Smith (1977) [S] sonatas(for solo lute unless otherwise stated)
concertos
other(for solo lute)
Weiss (3) Johann Sigismund Weiss(b ?Breslau [now Wrocław], after 1690; d Mannheim, 12 April 1737). Brother of (2) Silvius Leopold Weiss. He was described by Baron as not only a lutenist ‘but also an excellent gambist and violinist and composer’. Probably he too was trained by his father. In 1708, with his father, he was appointed lutenist at the court of the Elector Palatine in Düsseldorf; he remained at the Palatine court (which subsequently moved to Heidelberg and finally Mannheim) until his death. After Elector Johann Wilhelm died in 1716 the court music positions became unstable. In 1718 a lutenist, ‘Mr Weys’, gave weekly chamber concerts in London for several months and played for the king, possibly seeking a position at Court. This was probably Sigismund rather than his elder brother. By 1732 he had been promoted to director of instrumental music, and in a personnel list of 1734 is cited as both Konzertmeister and theorbo player. He married in 1726, and remarried two years after his first wife’s death in 1732. His compositions have received little attention. According to Neemann, his chamber works and concertos rank him as a significant predecessor of Johann Stamitz at the Mannheim court. WORKS
Weiss (4) Johann Adolf Faustinus Weiss(b Dresden, 15 April 1741; d Dresden, 21 Jan 1814). Son of (2) Silvius Leopold Weiss. Since he was born only nine years before his father’s death, he could have benefited from the latter’s instruction only to a limited degree. From 1750 to about 1757 he lived at Königsberg in the home of Count Kayserlingk. In 1763 he was appointed chamber lutenist at the Dresden court, and remained in that position, with a meagre salary of 200 thalers (his father’s had been 1400), for the rest of his life. In 1772–3 he visited Italy, the Netherlands and England; Frederick the Great heard him in Berlin in 1775; and in 1789 he played before the court of Duke Frederick of Mecklenburg-Schwerin at Ludwigslust. He made a favourable impression on the duke’s wife, Princess Luise Friederike of Württemberg, and arranged for her a manuscript collection of lute pieces. Although, according to Neemann some of his compositions (most of which have been lost since World War II) reflect the style of his father’s suites, which he is reported to have played very well, Faustinus lived at a time when the popularity of the lute in Germany had been almost entirely superseded by the guitar and when the galant style had replaced the Baroque. These changes are reflected in the pleasant but undistinguished character of the few pieces that survive. WORKS
BIBLIOGRAPHYBrookB MGG1 (J. Klima and H. Radke) WaltherML E.G. Baron: Historisch-theoretisch und practische Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten (Nuremberg, 1727/R; Eng. trans., 1976, as Study of the Lute, 1976) J.C. Gottsched: Handlexicon oder Kurzgefasstes Wörterbuch der schönen Wissenschaften und freyen Künste (Leipzig, 1760) H.L. Volkmann: ‘Silvius Leopold Weiss, der letzte grosse Lautenist’, Die Musik, vi (1906–7), 274–89 H. Neemann: ‘Die Lautenhandschriften von Silvius Leopold Weiss in der Bibliothek Dr. Werner Wolffheim’, ZMw, x (1927–8), 396–414 K. Prusik: ‘Die Sarabande in den Solopartien des Lautenisten Sylvius Leopold Weiss’, Festschrift Adolph Koczirz, ed. R. Haas and J. Zuth (Vienna, 1930), 36–7 H. Neemann: ‘Die Lautenistenfamilie Weiss’, AMf, iv (1939), 157–89 [with extensive work-list] J. Klima: Silvius Leopold Weiss, 1686–1750: Kompositionen für die Laute: Quellen und Themenverzeichnis (Vienna, 1975) D.A. Smith: ‘Baron and Weiss contra Mattheson: in Defense of the Lute’, JLSA, vi (1973), 48–62 D.A. Smith: The Late Sonatas of Silvius Leopold Weiss (diss., Stanford U., 1977) [incl. index of incipits and concordances for 580 solo lute pieces of S.L. Weiss] D.A. Smith: ‘Sylvius Leopold Weiss: Master Lutenist of the German Baroque’, EMc, viii (1980), 47–58 D.A. Smith: : ‘Editing 18th-Century Lute Music: the Works of Silvius Leopold Weiss’, Le luth et sa musique II: Tours 1980, 253–60 K. Spaar: : ‘A Poet's Description of the Lute Playing of Silvius Leopold Weiss, and a Possible Link between Weiss and David Kellner’, JLSA, xix (1986), 58–67 O. Arnautova: ‘"Moskovskiy manuskript" Leopol'da Sil'viusa Vaysa', Starinnaya muzïka v kontekste sovremennov kul'tori: Moscow 1989, 527–37 D.A. Smith: ‘La ricerca su Weiss: il passato, il presente e il futuro', Bollettino della Societa Italiana del Liuto, iii (1993) C. Wolff: ‘Das Trio A-Dur BWV 1025: eine Lautensonate von Silvius Leopold Weiss bearbeitet und erweitert von Johann Sebastian Bach', BJb 1993, 47–67 K.-E. Schröder: ‘Zum Trio A-Dur BWV 1025', BJb 1995, 47–60 T. Crawford: Introduction to The Moscow 'Weiss' Manuscript (Columbus, OH, 1995), 2–42 T.A. Burris: Lute and Theorbo in Vocal Music in 18th-Century Dresden (diss., Duke U., Durham, NC, 1997) Directory: New%20Grove%20Dictionnary%20Of%20Music Download 14.95 Mb. Share with your friends:
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