J. H. Kapsberger, S. L. Weiss, D. Scarlatti: Baroque Suites & Sonatas on Guitar

Description

With the exception of a work by Kapsberger, this Da Vinci Classics album focus entirely on the music of two composer who both lived between the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, and who were acquainted with each other, i.e. Silvius Leopold Weiss and Domenico Scarlatti.
The insertion of the Kapsberger piece is intriguing and apt, since his figure seems to anticipate some features we will find again in the other two composers.
Johann (or Johannes) Hieronymus Kapsberger, also known in the Italianized form of his Christian names (Giovanni Girolamo or Geronimo) lived approximately a century before the other two. The son of an Austrian gentleman (a military officer) and a Venetian mother, he was culturally Italian, and specifically Venetian himself; it seems that he could not speak German, but, notwithstanding this, he became known as “The German of the theorbo”.
He left the Serenissima Republic in 1605 for Rome, where his fame reached its zenith; the “academies” (i.e. semipublic concerts) he organized at his place became so famous and appreciated that they were included among the “wonders of Rome”. A handful of years later, Kapsberger got married to Gerolima di Rossi, who would give him at least three children, and he published his first printed collections. In spite of a number of publications issued after that, only one of his lute works survives, i.e. the famous Libro I d’intavolatura di lauto.
After some more years, in 1624, Kapsberger got an employment from one of the most important figures of contemporaneous Rome, i.e. Cardinal Francesco Barberini; at his household, he could meet such notable figures as Girolamo Frescobaldi and Stefano Landi, along with other members of the Roman cultural elite.
This context doubtlessly stimulated him and his creativity, which resulted in a highly original style, cognizant of, but at the same time deliberately transcending, the given and received compositional rules. The connoisseurs rightly attributed his extravaganzas to his taste for innovation and experimentalism: for instance, Athanasius Kircher used such words as “superb genius” to refer to Kapsberger, who, in his opinion, had “successfully penetrated the secrets of music”. Others, however, were more critical, and believed that he was greater as a performer than as a composer. Since we cannot, alas, compare his compositions with his performances, our judgment on this must be left suspended; still, it is undeniable that his surviving works are of superior quality. Furthermore, arguably Kapsberger’s capricious style and his brilliant innovations were also influential on the work of other great musicians of his time, including such a prominent composer as Frescobaldi himself.
Among his other published works are three volumes of tablatures for the “chitarrone” (1604, 1626, and 1640), including not only musical works proper, but also instructions on how to play and perform in various styles and with several compositional/improvisational techniques.
This already demonstrates the kinship between various plucked-string instruments. It is a double-edged matter, however: on the one hand, those who were prominent virtuoso on one of the plucked-string instruments were likely to be at least virtuoso performers of other ones; on the other, precisely those who mastered most perfectly these instruments were also those who were most keenly aware of their differences.
And this brings us to one of the two protagonists of this recording, Silvius Weiss, who wrote to Johann Mattheson the following lines in 1723:
“…I am of the opinion that after the keyboard there is no more perfect instrument than this one (the lute) especially for Galanterie. The theorbo and archlute, which are quite different even from each other, cannot be used at all in Galanterie pieces… I have adapted one of my instruments for accompaniment in the orchestra and in church. It has the same size, length, power and resonance of the veritable theorbo and has the same effect, only that the tuning is different. This instrument I use on these occasions. But in chamber music, I assure you that a cantata a voce sola, next to the harpsichord, accompanied by the lute has a much better effect than with the archlute or even theorbo, since these two latter instruments are ordinarily played with the nails and produce in close proximity a coarse, harsh sound”.
These words are telling: they reveal the musician’s attention to sound, timbre, quality, technique, and musical value of the various plucked-string instruments.
It is therefore to a particularly fascinating and intriguing musical adventure that we are invited here: to taste the music written for different plucked-string instruments in a version for guitar. And the original sound media are not just instruments whose strings are set into vibration by directly plucking them, but also keyboard instruments, such as those for which Domenico Scarlatti wrote his Sonatas. Just as Kapsberger and Frescobaldi appreciated each other’s music and talent and influenced each other, so, arguably, did Weiss and Scarlatti interact with each other. And just as Kapsberger was acquainted with the elite of his time, so was Weiss a friend of such musicians as Scarlatti himself, Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach, as we will shortly see.
Silvius Leopold Weiss was Bach and Scarlatti’s junior by two years, but he would die in the same year as Bach. Born near Breslau (today’s Wroclaw), he came from a family of musicians, just as, once more, both Bach and Scarlatti (who was the son of Alessandro, one of the finest composers of his time). Silvius’ father was in fact another great lutenist, who was active in several courts of Europe – including Rome. Weiss began playing his father’s instrument at a very young age, and it seems that he had a good sense of humour, as the following anecdote demonstrates: “The great lutenist Weiss in the fiftieth year of his life (1736) answered the question of how long he had been playing the lute with «twenty years». One of his friends, who knew for certain that Weiss already was playing the lute in his tenth year, wanted to contradict him, but he interrupted and said, «True, but for twenty years I was tuning»”.
His official career began in 1706, with a prestigious appointment in Dusseldorf, and would bring him to all of the most important cultural and musical venues of his times’ Europe. Already in 1708, in fact, we find him in Italy, among the court members of Prince Alexander Sobiesky. They maintained their home base in Rome and the Peninsula until 1714, when Alexander died, but travelled extensively throughout the Continent.
In Rome, Weiss was in the employment of Maria Casimira, the former Queen of Poland; he met there Scarlatti, who was also among her court musicians. After Alexander’s death, Weiss resumed his journeys, and was also the object of a tragicomical incident, in which a violinist attempted to bit off Weiss’ thumb. In spite of this, his career kept going from success to success, and he found a new prestigious employment in Dresden – which he would maintain notwithstanding some very interesting job offers in Bavaria and Vienna.
During a legendary visit of Weiss and other leading musicians (Pisendel, Buffardin, and Quantz) to Berlin, where they went with Augustus the Strong to pay homage to King Frederick William I of Prussia, a well-known tribute to Weiss’ skill was pronounced by Princess Sophie Wilhelmine: “famous Weiss, who excels so strongly on the lute that he never had an equal and that those who come after him will have only the glory of imitating him”.
As mentioned earlier, among the VIPs met by Weiss during his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach was certainly not the least. We know for certain that they got to know each other in 1739. One of Bach’s brothers, Johann Elias, noted down the following: “I certainly hoped to have the honour of speaking to my brother; I wished it all the more because just at that time there was extra special music while my cousin from Dresden (Wilhelm Friedemann) who was present here for four weeks, together with the two famous lutenists, Herr Weiss and Herr Kropfganss, played at our house several times…”. The two leading musicians were also connected through the pivotal figure of Count Keyserlingk (for whom Bach wrote the so-called Goldberg Variations). It is possibly at Keyserlingk’s place that another musical encounter between Bach and Weiss took place, as reported by Johann Friedrich Reichardt years later: “Whoever knows the difficulty of playing harmonic modulations and good counterpoint on the lute will be astounded and scarcely believe when eyewitnesses assure us that the great Dresden lutenist Weiss competed in playing fantasias and fugues with Sebastian Bach, who was also great as a harpsichordist and organist”.
This all demonstrates how these excellent musicians felt both the affinity and diversity of their instruments: they allowed close competition to take place (and we can only fathom how a musical “duel” between Weiss and Bach may have sounded like!), but at the same time afforded many fascinating opportunities to highlight their differences.
It is therefore particularly suggestive to hear works originally conceived for the lute and for the keyboard being played on the guitar: the instrument of destination’s timbre, adopted for both kinds of transcription, puts paradoxically in the spotlight the difference in sound, texture, and technique among them.
Both Weiss and Scarlatti, who were truly “European” musicians, and who left an indelible mark in the history of their respective instruments, developed a highly original and unique style, which is, at the same time, idiomatic for their instrument and universal. And these traits are both evidenced by the transcriptions recorded here, where their works acquire a more abstract value, somehow transcending the hic and nunc of their composition, and presenting themselves as works of pure musical art.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2025