Beschreibung:

Lute Important eighteenth-century manuscript of German, Austrian and French lute music, CONTAINING 249 PIECES FOR THE SOLO LUTE BY OVER 24 COMPOSERS, in French tablature, INCLUDING AROUND 50 PIECES BY SILVIUS LEOPOLD WEISS, THE GREATEST COMPOSER FOR, AND PERFORMER ON, THE LUTE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, WHOSE MUSIC WAS AN INSPIRATION FOR JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH containing mostly dance music by S.L. Weiss, Baron, Bohr, Durant, Emond, Falckenhagen, Fuchs, Gallot, Ginter, Gleinich, Hinterleithner, Igner (or Ilgner), Kresch (or Kress), Kühnel, Lauffensteiner, Losy, Meusel, Mouton, Muffat, Orlser, Pichler, Prahl and Weichenberg, the manuscript written by a single scribe, in brown ink, in French tablature, on up to eight six-line staves per page, with time-signatures, with a later manuscript title-leaf ("A Collection of Allemandes Courantes, Fantasias, Fugas, Gavottes, Menuets, Paisanes, Sarabandes &c. In tablature for the Lute..."), with some small corrections on p.11 186 pages (numbered '2'-'187'), oblong folio (c.20 x 26.5cm), 8-stave paper, watermark including of fleur-de-lys and letters WR, ruled margins, some pencil annotations to p.78, engraved portrait of S.L. Weiss by Bartolomeo Folin after Balthasar Denner affixed to verso of later title, ownership inscriptions to front pastedown ("T.W.Taphouse 3 Magdalen St. Oxford"; "Arnold Dolmetsch. 7 Bayley Street London. W C"), Dolmetsch Library stamp and pencil shelfmark ("II B 2") to front pastedown, autograph note by Dolmetsch to third front free endpaper ("Exchanged for a Lute on Dec. 10 1898 A. D."), printed label of London International Inventions Exhibition (1885) to later title, conservator's label to lower pastedown (dated August 2003), modern boards, retaining nineteenth-century front pastedown, no place or date [Vienna or Prague, c.1750 or later?], original first leaf lacking, small paper loss to lower outer corner of pp.148/149, later title, first two and last two leaves strengthened and repaired, last two leaves on guards, browning to edges ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LUTE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THIS IS A MAJOR SOURCE FOR THE MUSIC OF THE GREAT BAROQUE LUTENIST S.L. WEISS, CONTAINING AROUND 50 PIECES BY HIM, OF WHICH 19 ARE UNIQUE TO THIS SOURCE. THE MANUSCRIPT IS UNPUBLISHED IN ITS ENTIRETY AND HAS NEVER BEEN STUDIED COMPREHENSIVELY. This celebrated manuscript, one of the great treasures of the Dolmetsch Library, is a major source for many pieces by perhaps the greatest of all lutenists, Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686-1750), from 1717 onwards a member of the chapel at the Saxon court in Dresden. The composer of more than 750 pieces ranging from galanterien to large-scale concerto movements, Weiss enjoyed a close musical relationship with J.S. Bach, whom he may have first met in Cöthen in 1719 (Bach evidently admired Weiss's sonatas, arranging one of them as a duo for harpsichord and violin: BWV 1025). In importance as a source for the music of S.L. Weiss, the manuscript ranks with Add. MS. 30387 in the British Library, a 159-leaf manuscript of dance and other music for lute partially in the hands of Weiss and his brother Sigismund, probably compiled in Prague between 1717 and 1724. The present volume is beautifully copied throughout in a fluent, neat hand. While the musical contents range from a fairly wide period (c.1680-c.1750), the actual copying appears to have taken place over a much shorter space of time. The repertory covered includes most of the chief composers of lute music in the first half of the eighteenth century. Some of the less widely-encountered names here, such as Bohr, Fux, Ginter, (Gottlieb?) Muffat, Orsler and Pichler, are perhaps indicative, as Tim Crawford has noted, 'of an origin in Bohemia or Austria rather than southern Germany, though this must remain conjecture until the watermark can be positively identified'. It would appear that, as many of the above composers were still composing into the middle of the eighteenth century, the man