Silvius Leopold Weiss: Works

S.L.Weiss - Works

Here are presented the works with or for lute, that are attributed to "Weiss", including the works for Johann Sigismund Weiss.
You can choose to select the pieces of single manuscripts or look at all works. Each entry includes concordances and is given with page or folio numbers to help to identify it. As far as known Smith-Crawford and Smith numbers are given. This "worklist" is based mainly on the list in the dissertation of D.A.Smith and on the "Sämtliche Werke", that were edited by him (including volume 4) and now by Tim Crawford and Dieter Kirsch.
As in the "Sämtliche Werke" at the moment (2007) only the works of the London and the Dresden ms have been published, the numbers above S-C 60 are preliminary. I adjusted them in September of 2009. Mistakes cannot be excluded.
I want to thank Dieter Kirsch and Tim Crawford for making them accessible.
Currently only the attributions in the sources are printed, if the works are not anonymous at all.

Later I plan to name the probable composers, as far as that is possible at all. There are several problems in doing that:

1. There are different lutenists that bear the name "Weiss": Beside Silvius Leopold his siblings Johann Sigismund and Juliana Margaretha, and also his father Johann Jacob and Silvius's son Adolph Faustinus. Furthermore in the meantime new researches have made it clear, that in Königsberg Carl Franz Josef Weiss, a nephew of Silvius Leopold (the son of his sister), was employed as Kingly lutenist. Possibly we will not be able to clear without ambiguity the authorship of a big part of the corpus.

2. Some of the works ascribed to Weiss are supposedly composed by other composers. Furthermore the opposite also is possible, that works of one of the Weiss family were passed down under another name. One of the most popular examples is BWV 1025, that was ascribed to J.S.Bach. But the harpsichord part for sure has been notated from a lute suite of S.L.Weiss.

3. Many pieces are passed down without any ascription.

By and by there will be added details to the manuscripts (place, origin, date, other content).

In May 2008 I have begun to add incipits to the manuscripts. I want to thank Jean-Daniel Forget for allowing me to use his transcriptions.

At the end I will have to warn, that this overview of Weiss's works will neither be complete nor without errors. If you find out that there is a mistake or something is missing, please contact me.