“Widely as the composers of this new school differed in other respects, they were alike in their susceptibility to the tone of thought and feeling which so deeply colored the romantic literature of their time. None of them were strangers to that weariness, approaching to disgust, of the actual world around them and those yearnings to escape from it which pursued so many of the finest minds of the generation to which they belonged. To such men it was a relief and delight to live in an ideal world as remote as possible from the real one.
C. M. VON WEBER
By Schimon
“Some took refuge in mediæval legends, where no border divided the natural from the supernatural one; some, in the charms and solitudes of nature; and others in the contemplation of peace and beatitude beyond the grave.”[70]
Of all the German musicians of the Nineteenth Century none exercised a greater influence than Weber. “The historian of German music in the Nineteenth Century will have to make Weber his starting-point. His influence was even greater than that of Beethoven, for deeply imbued though Beethoven was with the modern spirit of that time, he adhered as a rule to the traditions of the Eighteenth Century. These Weber casts aside and starts after fresh ideals. He was far less perfect in form than Beethoven, nor was he his equal in power; but in originality he has never been surpassed by any musician, ancient or modern. The germs of life he scattered broadcast; and the whole of German Opera down to Wagner’s latest works is evolved from Weber’s spirit. Even the concert-music of other masters such as Mendelssohn and Schumann profited by his suggestiveness. Without Weber Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Music, Walpurgis Nacht, Concert-Overtures and Pianoforte Concertos; Schumann’s Paradise and the Peri, Pilgrimage of the Rose and concert-ballads; the entire variation music of the present day; choruses for men’s voices; certain forms of the German Lied; even the modern technique of pianoforte playing; and, most of all, the present development of orchestration are inconceivable.”[71]
Weber, like Bach, came of a musical family; but, unlike most of the great composers who had, heretofore appeared, Weber was of noble ancestry.
Weber was a cultivated man of the world as well as a musician. His birth gave him a place in the best society and his cultivation, which was learned from men rather than books—he lived a wandering life in his youth—was wide and embraced literature and several arts.
Carl Maria von Weber was born in Vienna in 1786. He was a delicate, nervous child whose health was not improved by his father’s desire to make him a musical prodigy like Mozart, of whom he was a cousin. Weber was sadly overtaxed. Among his masters were Michael Haydn, brother of the great Haydn, and the Abbé Vogler, a fashionable composer and organist of Vienna and a man of wit, culture and social position. By 1810, when his true musical life may be said to begin, Weber had brought out several operas. In Mannheim he produced his first Symphony. In 1811 he started on his tour through Germany and Switzerland, at first alone and then in company with Baermann, the celebrated clarinet-player. Weber’s visit to Berlin in 1812 was very important. After many concert-tours Weber became conductor of the theatre in Prague. In 1816 the King of Saxony called him to Dresden.