Carl Maria von Weber

Birth date

Its real birth date lends to confusion: his/her father claimed it born on December 18th and baptized the 20, but the baptismal certificate, which indicates on November 20th, inclines to believe it native of November 18th. Only an attentive reading of the parochial register, and succession of the various acts, would make it possible to take a decision with quasi-certainty.

Family

It is resulting from a family dedicated to art for a long time. His/her father, Franz Anton, were a strange man who, of his own boss and without another form of lawsuit declared himself of nobility (baron). He began as officer and finishes as director of various dramatic groups not less obscure. Nevertheless, he was an excellent violonist and his/her mother sang on scene. His/her cousins, Josepha, Aloysia, Constanze and Sophie, girls of the brother of Franz Anton, Franz Fridolin, reached a high reputation as singers. Mozart, after being refused by Aloysia, married Constanze and thus became his/her cousin by alliance.

Youth

Carl was a souffreteux child, with a hereditary disease of the articulation of the hip which prevented it from going before the four years age. He travelled much. One taught the song and the piano to him very early.

In 1798, Michael Haydn gave him courses free with Salzburg. In March of the same year, his/her mother died. In April, the family visited Vienna, settling with the autumn with Munich. They were there that it made its first compositions, six Fugue S, a mass and a Opéra Die Macht der Liebe und of Weins , destroyed since. A whole of variations for the made up pianoforte a little later was lithographed by Carl himself, under the council of Aloys Senefelder, the inventor of the process, for which him and his/her father showed a great interest.

Years 1800

In 1800, the family went to Freiburg-in-Brisgau, where the knight von Steinsberg published the booklet of an opera named Das Waldmädchen , in which the boy, although not being yet fourteen years old, was produced in November with the theater of the city. The representation was not a success and the type-setter himself says later that it was a “very immature” work; however, it was produced then with Chemnitz and even with Vienna.

Carl turned over with his father to Salzburg in 1801, continuing his studies under the direction of Michael Haydn. There it composed its second opera Peter Schmoll und the Seine Nachbarn , which was produced without success with Nuremberg, in 1803. It was placed under the direction of the Vogler abbot who, at the end of one year, made it enter as choirmaster to the municipal theater of Breslau. Nevertheless its life was disturbed, it contracted debts and lost its beautiful voice by accidentally drinking an acid used in lithography, which failed to make it die. It began a new opera named Rubezahl , whose booklet is “romantic” with the more high degree. It worked there with enthusiasm but it was not never completed and little was preserved beyond quintet and opening, which, rewritten in 1811 under the title Der Beherrscher der Geister , is one of its best works.

Leaving Breslau in 1806, he became musical director at the court of the prince Eugene of Wurtemberg to Karlsruhe. Later, with Stuttgart, he was secretary of prince Louis at the same time as professor of music of the young princesses. The thoughtlessness of the father in a financial business and its intimacy with Margarethe Land, a singer of opera, made him lose its functions and both were banished.

The February 27th 1810 they begin a new life with Mannheim.

Op3era Comique

Having gotten a comfortable residence with his father, and having begun a new Op3era Comique in an act named Abu Hassan , Carl settled in Darmstadt to be close to his old Master the Vogler abbot and his fellow students Meyerbeer and Gansbacher. September 16th, 1810 it produced Sylvana with Francfort-sur-le-Main, but with a very mitigated success. Abu Hassan was supplemented in Darmstadt in January 1811, after many interruptions. It is in 1811, in Darmstadt, that is born one from fundamental romantic works for the repertory of the clarinet, the 1st concerto for clarinet of Weber (minor F, opus 73). The Concerto n°2 in E flat, COp 74 is, as for him, made up on November 25th, 1811. The two concertos will be published only well later, in 1822.

It began a round in February, during which it bound friendship with several influential people, and obtained a success in June in Munich. His/her father died in Mannheim in 1812. In 1813, it was named national choirmaster to Prague, function which it successfully occupied until the autumn 1816. For this period, it did not compose of new operas, but it had already written the majority of its best works for the pianoforte, and the disturbed state of Europe inspired it for some of the best patriotic melodies. At the head of these last are the ten songs Leyer und Schwerdt of Korner including “Vater, ich rufe dich” and “Lutzow' S wilde Jagd” and, of the same level, the splendid choruses in its cantata Kampf und Sieg , which was presented the first time to Prague, on December 22nd, 1815.

Sonatas for piano

Sonata for piano 1 op.24 (1816)
Sonata for piano 2 op.39 (1816)
Sonata for piano 3 op.49 (1816)
Sonata for piano 4 op.70 (1822)

German opera

Weber gave its resignation from its station to Prague in September 1816 and, on December 1st, the king of Saxony Frederic Auguste named it choirmaster with the opera of Dresden. The Italian operas given to the court were supervised by Morlacchi, of which the character jealous and intrigant caused him many troubles. The king, however, placed the two choirmasters on the same level of title and wages, and Weber found full occasions to exert its remarkable aptitudes of organization and control. It then devoted its precise attention to the history of the Robin of the Wood (Der Freischütz) which it had initially thought of turning in an opera, and, with the assistance of Friedrich Kind, it produced admirable libretto under the title Of Jägers Braut . No subject could be better adapted to be used as vehicle for the new form of art than was the romantic opera.

It had treated with the supernatural one in Rubezahl , and, in Sylvana , with the label and the ceremonies of the knighthood; but ghostly personifications of Rubezahl are hardly less human than the heroin which calls upon them.

He married the singer Carolina Brandt, a woman with a noble attitude and a good artist, who returned the efforts to him that he had deployed to educate it. He also made the music of the drama gipsy of Wolf Preciosa .

Berlin

Following the political difficulties in Dresden, it had been agreed that Preciosa and Der Freischütz would be produced in Berlin. In February 1821, Sir Julius Benedict was accepted as student per Weber. We owe him the accounts of the repetitions and first representations. Weber was very calm.

It was a triumph, like in Vienna, on October 3rd, and in Dresden, on January 26th, 1822. However, its place of choirmaster was not improved by it. He refused proposals trying in Berlin and Cassel, and in this last city it was Ludwig Spohr which obtained this station much more advantageous than it his.

Following opera

For its following opera, Weber accepted a booklet of Wilhelmine von Chezy, based on the history of Euryanthe as told at the 13th century by the Roman of the Violet of Gilbert de Montreuil, and repeated with changes in the " Décaméron" , the Cymbeline of Shakespeare, and other posterior forms. To the place of the ghostly horrors of Der Freischütz , the romantic element was provided by the chivalrous manners of the Middle Ages. The récitatifs were more elaborate than in its preceding work.

It was in fact a prototype of the grand opera which would be sophisticated fifty years later by Wagner in Lohengrin. It is one of the very first German operas without spoken dialogs, with an attempt at fusion of arts. Tovey affirmed that the Wagnerian musical drama is much more advanced there than in Lohengrin (cf J. Warrack). An alive table in a crypt added to environment.

Oberon

The third and last masterpiece were Oberon , an English opera written in 1826 for the theater Covent Garden on a booklet adapted by Blanche of Wieland. It was disfigured by the spoken dialog, given up in Euryanthe ; but, in musical beauty, it is the equal one. The fairies and the sirens are, in a bright way, as real as the spectra in Der Freischütz . He died of tuberculosis in London.

to also see: three Pintos

External bonds

Simple: Carl Maria von Weber

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