Sylvius Leopold Weiss
Encyclopedia
Silvius Leopold Weiss was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

nist.

Born in Grottkau
Grodków
Grodków is a town in Opole Voivodeship in Poland. It has 8,709 inhabitants and lies 20 km south of Brzeg.Grodków was granted city rights in 1268 by Duke Henryk IV Probus. The medieval city plan was characterized by a rectangular marketplace and four streets leading to the towers of the city...

 near Breslau, the son of Johann Jacob Weiss, also a lutenist, he served at courts in Breslau, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, and Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, where he died. Until recently, he was thought to have been born in 1686, but recent evidence suggests that he was in fact born the following year.

Weiss was one of the most important and most prolific composers of lute music in history and one of the best-known and most technically accomplished lutenists of his day. He wrote around 600 pieces for lute, most of them grouped into 'sonatas' (not to be confused with the later classical sonata, based on sonata form
Sonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...

) or suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...

s, which consist mostly of baroque dance pieces. Weiss also wrote chamber
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 pieces and concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...

s, but only the solo parts have survived for most of them.

In later life, Weiss became a friend of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach , the second child and eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, was a German composer and performer...

 and met J.S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 through him. J.S.Bach and Weiss were said to have competed in improvisation, as the following account by Johann Friedrich Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt
Johann Friedrich Reichardt was a German composer, writer and music critic.-Early life:Reichardt was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, to lutenist and Stadtmusiker Johann Reichardt . Johann Friedrich began his musical training, in violin, keyboard, and lute, as a child...

 describes:

"Anyone who knows how difficult it is to play harmonic modulations and good counterpoint on the lute will be surprised and full of disbelief to hear from eyewitnesses that Weiss, the great lutenist, challenged J. S. Bach, the great harpsichordist and organist, at playing fantasies and fugues."

Sylvius Weiss' son Johann Adolph Faustinus Weiss succeeded him as a Saxon court lutenist.

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