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| J.S. Bach, S.L. Weiss and A. Falckenhagen
Sylvius Leopold Weiss is the central pin to the music I have chosen for this recording. He was the friend of J.S. Bach, inspiring him to write music for the lute,and was the teacher of Adam Falckenhagen,one of the last great luteni |
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| J.S. Bach, S.L. Weiss and A. Falckenhagen
Sylvius Leopold Weiss is the central pin to the music I have chosen for this recording. He was the friend of J.S. Bach, inspiring him to write music for the lute,and was the teacher of Adam Falckenhagen,one of the last great lutenists of the eighteenth century.
During the seventeenth century the French had developed the art of playing the lute so far that composers such as the Gaultiers - le Vieux and Denis, Jacques Gallot and Charles Mouton, became celebrities throughout Europe. Many young German, Austrian and Silesian lutenists were influenced by these French lute masters,either directly through taking lessons or through the many manuscript notebooks of French lute music that circulated. Entire families of lutenists emerged across central Europe. Esjas Reusner (1636-1679) in Germany and Count Jan Anton Losy (ca.1645-1721) in Bohemia and Austria became the new masters of the lute and continued to compose in the French style. As the seventeenth century came to a close the lute was going out of fashion in France but the lute and its music were finding new life and flourishing in the courts of Germany, Austria and Silesia (modern day Poland).
The solo lute music of sixteenth and seventeenth century France and Italy was based primarily on dance music, the Allemande, Gavotte, Sarabande, Minuet and Gigue being the most popular courtly dance forms of the time. Composer-lutenists grouped these dances together for solo performance in the form of a Suite, often opening with an improvised Prelude. By the end of the seventeenth century the French Suite became the framework for lute music in German speaking countries. Soon German lutenists began developing their own distinctive style, by combining elements from French and Italian music. By then solo lute music was no longer as popular in Italy as it had been. Solo vocal music now earned the highest praise from the Italian public. Italian singers were in demand from all quarters of society, traveling to England, France and Germany, bringing their sensous flowing melodies. Nowhere was this influence greater than in the German speaking countries, As the Italian style became an integral part of all types of musical compositions, it influenced German lute music and the way lutenists approached lute playing. The difference between the French and German lute styles is in the approach to the instrument. The French approach comes from the standpoint that the sound of a lute decays quickly. Therefore the French used profuse ornamentation and the style brisé (broken style). This technique created the illusion of single melodic lines, intertwining and overlapping, suggesting the interplay of independent voices. By contrast the German approach was that the lute was a cantabile (singing) instrument, capable of a sustained melodic line, like the human voice and the violin, so that German lutenists, Weiss in particular, gravitated towards the Italian style, with its lyrical song-like melodies.
The Bach Suite and the Weiss Sonata that I have chosen are both groups of dances drawn from popular forms. One of the key differences between Bach and Weiss was that Weiss, unlike Bach, had traveled in Italy where he had absorbed many of the italianate musical styles and the Italian aesthetic. Perhaps this is why Weiss preferred the Italian term Sonata rather than Suite, the term that Bach used in French fashion.
By the 1720s the word Galant was often applied to music, used as a catch-word for anything chic, playful, easy, natural, and modern. The ideal was to produce music that was elegant, witty and immediately pleasing to the listener. Sonata became increasingly applied to lute music in this period, beginning with the late works of Weiss and carrying through to the works of Adam Falckenhagen. Although the music of Bach and Weiss reflected this new trend, the music of Adam Falckenhagen is more firmly rooted in the new Galant style. With Falckenhagen, the names of the dance movements - Courante, Gigue, and Allemande, gave way to more modern italianate names - Allegro, Vivace and Largo. The Galant style can be seen as the forerunner of the classical style in western art music, best exemplified by Haydn and Mozart.
Today J.S. Bach is universally accepted as one of the greatest composers the world has known. His music is considered to be “absolute” in its beauty and perfection and defies categorization, let alone comparison. To say that J.S. Bach’s music has inspired future generations of musicians and composers is a gross understatement.
Although Bach’s musical output of vocal, orchestral and solo instrumental music is prolific, he wrote little for the lute compared to his contemporary Sylvius Leopold Weiss. Recent research has shown that Sylvius Weiss was not only regarded as the finest lute virtuoso, leaving the largest corpus of lute music in the instrument’s history, but that he also was judged by contemporaries as comparable to J.S. Bach in composition and improvisation.
J.S. Bach not only re-arranged his own works for various instruments but also made keyboard transcriptions of his contemporaries’ works, including Alessandro Marcello, Georg Philipp Telemann and Antonio Vivaldi. This was common practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Bach himself and others made arrangements of his solo cello and violin works. For example the Fugue in G minor, BWV 1001 for solo violin was transcribed by Johann Christian Weyrauch for solo lute, BWV 1000. It has even been suggested that Adam Falckenhagen was responsible for the tabulature version of the G minor Suite, BWV 995.
We know that J.S. Bach invited Sylvius Weiss and his duet partner Johann Kropfgans to play in his home. The arrangement by Bach for violin and harpsichord BWV 1025 of Weiss’s Lute Sonata no.47 in A major suggests that perhaps Bach and Weiss played the violin and lute together. Bach certainly worked with lutenists, two of whom were his pupils, Rudolf Straube and Johann Ludwig Krebs. Perhaps this circle of of lutenists, together with Weiss and Falckenhagen, inspired Bach to write lute music.
We do not know whether Bach played the lute. Bach probably played his lute music on the Lautenwerk, a harpsichord strung with gut to imitate a lute. The Lute suites in e minor, BWV 996, and c minor, BWV 997, and the Prelude Fugue and Allegro, BWV 998, resemble Bach’s writing for keyboard and were probably intended for the lautenwerk.
In the light of all this evidence I decided to create my own transcription of the Cello Suite no.1, BWV 1007. In writing for the solo violoncello, BWV 1007-1012, Bach used a compositional technique harkening back to the style brisé of the French lutenists of the seventeenth century, so that his cello suites adapt easily to the lute. From the very opening of the suite the arpeggios of the Prelude mimic the lute music of the day and fit ideally to the lay of the lute. The Allemande with its graceful and longing phrases draws the listener into a reverie, while the Courante evokes the dance with its bounding energy. The pensive Sarabande especially resembles a typical seventeenth century French sarabande dance and I have chosen to perform it in the French manner with a petite reprise (repeat of the final phrase). Menuets I and II return from the reflective mood of the Sarabande with elegant and easy melodic phrases that are typical of menuets. The Gigue has a boisterous and folksy quality which brings the Suite to a close.
Sylvius Weiss was born in 1687 (two years after J.S. Bach) into a musical family in Grottkau in Silesia. His brother Johann Sigismund and sister Juliana Margaretha both played the lute and learned from their father Johann Jakob Weiss. At the age of seven Sylvius made his imperial debut for Emperor Leopold I and thereafter spent his life as a court musician to royalty and the aristocracy. By 1710 Weiss was a member of the Silesian Prince Alexander Sobiesky’s entourage, traveling to Italy. In 1718 he was engaged as court lutenist for the Saxon court in Dresden. He was so highly praised by the Elector of Saxony, August the Strong, that he became the highest paid instrumentalist in Dresden. The Dresdner Hofkappelle at this time included some of the most famous musicians of the age, Francesco Veracini, Antonio Lotti, Johann Joachim Quantz and Johann Adolf Hasse and his wife the celebrated soprano Faustina Bordoni (Weiss named his oldest son Johann Adolf Faustinus, after Faustina, the child’s Godmother). Weiss held his position in Dresden until his death 1750, the year his friend Johann Sebastian Bach also died.
Sonata No.36 in d minor by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, written in his own hand ca.1720, is from a manuscript collection in the Dresden Sächsisches Landesbiblothek. This manuscript collection was in Weiss’s possession until his death and contains 34 Sonatas for solo lute as well as lute parts for chamber ensembles. The opening Fantasie movement appears as an unmeasured prelude and was probably one of Weiss’s self-transcribed improvisations. The Allemande and Sarabande evoke a serious and often melancholy mood typical of Weiss and are particularly italianate in character. The Giga and Courante, by contrast, show Weiss as the virtuoso lutenist with quickly paced and fluent melodic motifs that are technically demanding for the lutenist. Here Weiss sets the standard for all lutenists who follow.
Adam Falckenhagen was born in Groß-Dölzig near Leipzig in 1697. He received his first musical instruction in the village of Knauthain, the home of Johann Christian Weyrauch, Bach’s pupil. Falckenhagen studied lute with Johann Jakob Graf, a pupil of Weiss, and later in Dresden with Weiss himself. We know that Falckenhagen was active as a lute teacher in Leipzig while J.S. Bach lived there and Bach is thought to have composed most of his works for lute whilst in Leipzig. Perhaps it was during this period that Falckenhagen produced the transcription of the G minor Suite in lute tabulature.
Eventually in 1736 Falckenhagen settled in Bayreuth where he won the favour of Wilhelmina of Prussia, Margravine of Bayreuth, and was appointed “Virtuosissimo on the lute and Chamber Musician Second to the Kapellmeister Johann Pfeiffer”. Adam Falckenhagen retained his post at court until his death in 1754.
The Sonata no.5 in F major By Adam Falckenhagen is a glorious example of the rococo style (an extension of the Galant style) and demonstrates Falckenhagen’s masterful use of ornamental effects such as vibrato, extended arpeggi, and a multitude of single and double trills.
The opening Largo movement begins with a series of double trills conjuring a pastoral setting, imitating birds. In Falckenhagen’s printed edition of this piece there is a written-out cadenza in the second part of the Largo. I have chosen to use my own cadenza in keeping with the expected practice of the performer improvising his own. Falckenhagen’s cadenza appears as a cadenza in the Weiss Sarabande on this recording. The following movement’s Allegro and Vivace display the easy-going frolicking melodies that were typical of the Galant aesthetic hallmarks of the rococo style, pointing towards the classical style best exemplified by Haydn and Mozart.
© Andrew Maginley 2004
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