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Composer: Ernst Gottlieb Baron (1696-1760)
Work: Concerto per flauto a becco e liuto
Performers: EnsembIe Barocco Sans Souci
Painting: Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) - Figures in an Arcadian Landscape
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Ernst Gottlieb (Theofil) Baron
(Breslau, 17 February 1696 - Berlin, 12 April 1760)
German lutenist, composer and writer on music. Neither Baron’s life nor his works have as yet been fully explored by scholars. His father Michael was a maker of gold lace and expected his son to follow in his footsteps. The younger Baron showed an inclination towards music in his youth, however, and later made it his profession. He first studied the lute from about 1710 with a Bohemian named Kohott (not to be confused with the later Karl von Kahaut). In Breslau he attended the Elisabeth Gymnasium, and from there went in 1715 to Leipzig, where he studied philosophy and law at the university for four years. Much of the period from 1719 to 1728 was spent in travels from one small court to another. He first visited Halle for a short period, then in quick succession Cöthen, Schleiz, Saalfeld and Rudolstadt. He arrived in Jena in 1720 and remained for two years. Thereafter he travelled to Kassel, Fulda, Würzburg, Nuremberg and Regensburg, returning in 1727 to Nuremberg where his Historisch-theoretische und practische Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten, the work for which he is principally remembered, was published the same year. In 1728 he replaced the lutenist Meusel, who had recently died, at Gotha and held the post for four years. With the death of the Duke of Gotha he moved on to Eisenach. In 1737, after visits to Merseburg, Cöthen and Zerbst, Baron joined the musical ensemble of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia. He was immediately granted permission to go to Dresden to purchase a theorbo, and there met the highly esteemed lutenists S.L. Weiss and Hofer. When Frederick became king in 1740, Baron continued to serve as theorbist in the much expanded royal musical establishment. He remained at this post until his death. Baron’s Untersuchung is a valuable though not always reliable source of information about lutenists and lute playing in the late Baroque era, when the instrument was still widely cultivated in solo and ensemble performance in Germany. The work is divided into two main parts. The first deals with the history of the lute, and contains important references to contemporary players. The second is devoted to the practice of the instrument. Baron’s other writings, as yet incompletely studied, supplement the Untersuchung, and explore several other subjects. The few accessible examples of Baron’s compositions suggest that he cultivated a characteristic late Baroque idiom in his suites, but moved in the direction of the galant style in his concertos. The latter are in fact trio sonatas in texture, cast in the three-movement form of the concerto.
