Weber’s works, especially his operas Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, and Oberon, greatly influenced the development of the Romantic opera in Germany. He was also an innovative composer of instrumental music. His compositions for the clarinet, which include two concertos, a concertino, a quintet and a duo concertante, are regularly performed, while his piano music - including four sonatas, two concertos and the Konzertstück (Concert Piece) in F minor - influenced composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Felix Mendelssohn. The Konzertstück provided a new model for the one-movement concerto in several contrasting sections (such as Liszt’s, who often played the work), and was acknowledged by Igor Stravinsky as the model for his Capriccio for piano and orchestra. Weber’s contribution to vocal and choral music is also significant. His body of Catholic religious music was highly popular in 19th-century Germany, and he composed one of the earliest song-cycles, Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten. Weber’s orchestration has also been highly praised and emulated by later generations of composers - Hector Berlioz referred to him several times in his Treatise on Orchestration, while Claude Debussy remarked that the sound of the Weber orchestra was obtained through the scrutiny of the soul of each instrument. His operas influenced the work of later opera composers, especially in Germany, such as Heinrich Marschner, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Richard Wagner, as well as several nationalist 19th-century composers such as Glinka, and homage has been paid him by 20th-century composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Gustav Mahler (who completed Weber’s unfinished comic opera Die drei Pintos and made revisions of Euryanthe and Oberon) and Paul Hindemith (composer of the popular Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber). Weber also wrote music journalism and was interested in folksong, and learned lithography to engrave his own works. Weber was the eldest of the three children of Franz Anton von Weber (who seems to have had no real claim to a “von” denoting nobility), and his second wife, Genovefa Brenner, an actress. Franz Anton started his career as a military officer in the service of the Duchy of Holstein; later he held a number of musical directorships; and in 1787 he went on to Hamburg, where he founded a theatrical company. Weber’s cousin Constanze was the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Weber’s father gave him a comprehensive education, which was however interrupted by the family’s constant moves. In 1796, Weber continued his musical education in Hildburghausen, where he was instructed by the oboist Johann Peter Heuschkel. On 13th March 1798, Weber’s mother died of tuberculosis. That same year, Weber went to Salzburg, to study with Michael Haydn; and later to Munich, to study with the singer Johann Evangelist Wallishauser, (known as Valesi), and with the organist J.N. Kalcher. 1798 also saw Weber’s first published work, six fughettas for piano, published in Leipzig. Other compositions of that period, amongst them a mass, and his first opera, Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins (The Power of Love and Wine), are lost; but a set of Variations for the Pianoforte was later lithographed by Weber himself, under the guidance of Alois Senefelder, the inventor of the process. In 1800, the family moved to Freiberg, in Saxony, where Weber, then fourteen years old, wrote an opera called Das stumme Waldmädchen (The silent forest maiden), which was produced at the Freiberg theatre. It was later performed in Vienna, Prague, and St. Petersburg. Weber also began to write articles as a critic, e.g. in the Leipziger Neue Zeitung (1801). In 1801, the family returned to Salzburg, where Weber resumed his studies with Michael Haydn. He later continued studying in Vienna with Abbé Vogler (Georg Joseph Vogler), founder of three important music schools (in Mannheim, Stockholm, and Darmstadt; another famous pupil of Vogler was Giacomo Meyerbeer, who became a close friend of Weber. In 1803, Weber’s opera, Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn (Peter Schmoll and his Neighbours) was produced in Augsburg, and gave Weber his first success as a popular composer. Vogler, impressed by his pupil’s obvious talent, recommended him to the post of Director at the Opera in Breslau (1806), and from 1807 to 1810, Weber held a post at the court of the Duke of Württemberg, in Stuttgart. His personal life during this time remained irregular: he left his post in Breslau in a fit of frustration, he was on one occasion arrested for debt and fraud and expelled from Württemberg, and was involved in various scandals. However he remained successful as a composer, and also wrote a quantity of religious music, mainly for the Catholic mass. This however earned him the hostility of reformers working for the re-establishment of traditional chant in liturgy. In 1810, Weber visited several cities throughout Germany; from 1813 to 1816 he was director of the Opera in Prague; from 1816 to 1817 he worked in Berlin, and from 1817 onwards he was director of the prestigious Opera in Dresden, working hard to establish a German Opera, in reaction to the Italian Opera which had dominated the European music scene since the 18th century. The successful premiere of the opera Der Freischütz (18 June 1821, Berlin) led to performances all over Europe; it remains the only one of his operas still in the regular repertoire. Weber’s colourful harmonies and orchestration, the use of popular themes from central European folk music, and the gloomy (gothic) libretto, complete with an appearance of the Devil himself in a nocturnal forest, have all helped to ensure its popularity.| |The bust of Weber in EutinIn 1823 Weber composed the opera Euryanthe to a mediocre libretto, but containing much rich music. In 1824 Weber received an invitation from Covent Garden, London, to compose and produce Oberon, based on Christoph Martin Wieland’s poem of the same name. Weber accepted the invitation, and in 1826 he travelled to England, to finish the work and be present at the performance on the 12 April. Other famous works by Weber include: Invitation to the Dance (later orchestrated by Berlioz); Polacca Brillante; two symphonies, a concertino and two concertos for clarinet, a quintet for clarinet and strings, and a concertino for horn (during which the performer is asked to simultaneously produce two notes by humming while playing - a technique known in brass playing as multiphonics). Weber was already suffering from tuberculosis when he visited London; he died there during the night of 4th to 5th June 1826. He was buried in London, but eighteen years later, his remains were transferred on an initiative of Richard Wagner and re-buried in Dresden. |
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