Vincenzo Capirola is only slightly less of a mystery figure. It has been revealed that he was from Brescia, born into a wealthy mercantile family in 1474 and that he lived a long a life until he was in his mid-seventies. He is last recorded alive in 1548 when he was seventy-four. His parents died while Vincenzo was still young: his father when he was two, and his mother later in his youth. Documentary evidence confirms his presence in Brescia in 1489, 1498, and 1548. He was in Venice in 1517, there has been unconfirmed speculation that he may have travelled extensively in Europe and that he may even have been the same renowned Brescian lutenist who was at the English court of Henry VIII in 1515. The music of this lute book reveals Capirola as a consummate lutenist who had already attained a high level of stylistic maturity. This can be seen in all the musical genres in his book, especially in his intabulations of vocal polyphony that transform their models into attractive idiomatic solo lute music, and in his ricercars that assimilate inherited styles into engaging and coherent rhetorical narrative.

Born in Grottkau, a town close to Wroclaw in Lower Silesia (modern day Poland), Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750) is for the lute what Johann Sebastian Bach represents for harpsichord and organ. Since 1706, in his hometown, he served Count of Palatinate Charles Philippe, brother of Prince Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, patron of the arts and dedicatee of Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerti Grossi, Op VI.

Starting in 1718, he settled permanently in Dresden, refusing the salary offered by the Viennese Court –which was almost twice as much as he was earning in Dresden – and dedicated his efforts to composing more than 600 lute pieces, either solo or with other instruments. In Dresden, he took part in the musical life in court and met numerous musicians; he was particularly friendly with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann Sebastian’s son and organist at Saint Sophia’s Church. In 1739, the two friends travelled to Leipzig where they were hosted by Johann Sebastian for four weeks. We don’t know for sure for the music played by Bach and Weiss during their meeting, but it seems legitimate to think that they played their music on their instruments composing, arringing or improvising together. This programme is meant to witness this precise type of practise, and in some manner aims at recreating the musical atmosphere of these two musicians’ meeting, during which, as reported by Johann Friedrich Reichardt in the Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung,"being aware of the difficulty in performing controlled and elegant phrases on the lute, eyewitnesses ensure that the great lutenist from Dresden, together with the great organist and harpsichordist Bach improvised many fugues and fantasies together".