The London Manuscript Vol. 1

A Prague manuscript in London

Here is the presentation of one of the most important volumes of music of all times for solo instrument. In what has come to be known as the “London Manuscript”, located in the British Library, we find 317 pages of tablature for Baroque Lute containing 237 pieces by Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750). These works are grouped into 26 full solo sonatas with additional material interspersed in the form of 3 preludes, 2 fugues, 1 prelude and fugue, 2 fantasias, 2 tombeaux, a caprice, an overture, a plainte, assorted minuets, gavottes, etc., in addition to five grand duos including the three concertos for lute and transverse flute of four movements each (the flute part is missing) and the two mystery sonatas with neither soprano voice nor title information (believed with a high degree of certainty to be duets). The nomenclature “London Manuscript” is used to distinguish this collection from various other Weiss folios that are housed in Dresden, Salzburg, Vienna, Moscow, Paris, etc. It should be noted that the London Manuscript, despite its extraordinary significance, is representative of less than one half of the total output of this remarkably prolific composer.

The works in the London Manuscript, although having full pagination and partial (although important) piece numbering, do not seem however at first glance to conform to any obvious formal ordering, either chronological, keywise or stylistic, but one can observe with a certain degree of fascination that even these aspects have been taken in consideration. The document should be seen as a body of works that grew over the years, becoming a precious collector’s item for the definitive owner, Count Johann Christian Anthony (Anthoni) von Adlersfeld of Prague.

Composed between 1706 and 1730, this massive musical oeuvre was never published during his lifetime. In fact Weiss pre-dated Paganini with his penchant for maintaining exclusive proprietorship, for him and very few friends, of his virtuoso works. Silvius Leopold must have had a high degree of confidence in allowing such an exception, knowing likewise that Adlersfeld was not a lutenist but rather a collector wishing to keep his exclusive treasure forever. From a collector to another, the volume was undoubtedly passed from hand to hand, before being acquired for two pounds Sterling by the British Museum in 1877. In this manuscript, D. A. Smith has accurately identified six different sorts of handwriting, including that of the master (Weiss) himself. From this we can ascertain that the work was extensively revised, most notably in those pieces that were edited by the five other copyists. We now know that the pagination and the piece numbering are contemporaneous with the edition of the works. All this supports a central thesis that the manuscript was meticulously revised by an author who viewed the individual pieces as part of a unified whole, but was not intended to publication. This would explain the contradiction between the musical perfection and the disregard for titles, minute chronology (specific dates are provided for only a few pieces and sonatas) and precise separations between the works. This strong dichotomy should help us, in the end, and contrarily to our first beliefs, to seriously consider the London Manuscript as generally being musically the most reliable document in a comparative study of sources.