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HOME > EARLY MUSIC channel CHANNEL > Bach & Weiss "Suite for lute and violin in A Major" |
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2008-04-14
World premiere
Sony 2001
Sony 2001
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Francesco Calligioni: Violoncello
What does a genius do in his spare time?.What did J.S. Bach
do when he wasn't writing cantatas, teaching schoolboys, conducting
rehearsels or being harassed by church officials?
He invited Sylvius Leopold Weiss - propably the greatest lutenist of all time -
over for a visit!
Something musically extraordinary took place when these two got together.
The would "compete in fantasias and match fugue for fugue," as Bach's
biographer Nikolaus Forkel describes it. The most amazing thing reported
by eye- and ear-witnesses was that neither could defeat the other!
That means Weiss could improvise on the lute just as well as Johann
Sebastian Bach on the harpsichord, an achievment that struck even their
contemporaries as incredible.
How must it have sounded when two such great musicians improvised
together, an undertaking outside their normal sphere of musical activity,
and one which would ordinarily have gotten them in trouble?
How did a Baroque musical genius improvise when playing informally,
simply for his own enjoyment?
For a long time we could only make the vaguest assumptions, but with
the discovery of the origins of the Trio Sonata in A Major, BWV 1025,
all that has changed. The authenticity of this trio sonata was long in doubt,
because the harpsichord part displayed some features atypical of a Bach
compositions. The mystery was solved when the harpsichord part was
compared with a Sonata in A Major for solo lute by S.L.Weiss.
They correspond almost exactly, with only a few changes in the bass,
specific to the respective instruments, and an additional bar in Bach's
harpsichord version. So the harpsichord version must also have come
from Weiss! The violin part in itself is a thoroughly unconventional
(to the point of being incomprehensible) compositions by Bach.
It only makes musical sence when you here it played simultaneously
with the lute sonata on which is based.
Taking into account these circumstances and the style of writing
-higly unusual for Bach- it becomes apparent that what we have here
is the lower part of an improvisation based on a piece for lute by Weiss,
one which could only have come into being at one of the happy musical
evenings at the Bach home.
Lutz Kirchhof, Weilburg, 2000
(music selection by Dimitris Pappas)
