Oct 12: Birthday of Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687–1750).
The greatest lutenist of his time, and the friend of Bach. What do we actually have of that friendship?
The documents give us one visit. In the summer of 1739 Weiss came to Leipzig with his pupil Kropffgans and stayed four weeks at Bach's house. Bach's relative Johann Elias Bach wrote that there had been "something extra fine in music."
The famous story of the two of them improvising fantasias and fugues against each other comes later. Johann Friedrich Reichardt published it in 1805, more than sixty years after the visit, on the word of people who said they had been there.
The trace you can actually hear is BWV 1025. Bach took Weiss's Lute Sonata in A major, kept the lute part almost as it was for the harpsichord, and wrote a violin part over it.
Last year someone here told me Weiss once said he had spent half his life tuning his lute. I couldn't find that. What I did find is an older joke about all lutenists, credited to Mattheson: a lutenist who lives to eighty has spent sixty years tuning.
Bach: Suite in A major for violin and lute, BWV 1025 (after Weiss)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIWKKY1iMEs
Weiss: Lute Sonata in D minor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW4ppQKmehI