The works of Weber comprehend examples of nearly all the vocal and instrumental forms, except the sacred oratorio. He completed and published six operas, and left fragments of three others. Of his first boyish effort, "Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins," not a bar has been discovered, and it is believed that he destroyed it. Of smaller dramatic works including the melodrama "Preciosa," the overture, and incidental music for "Turandot," airs for interpolation in operas of other composers, etc., he wrote twenty-eight. His cantatas, using the word in both its old and newer sense as a composition for soli and chorus with accompaniment, number eight. He wrote two masses and a separate offertory for each; ninety songs, ballads and romances for single voice with pianoforte or guitar accompaniment; nineteen part-songs for men's voices; fourteen canons, part-songs, etc., for mixed voices with and without accompaniment; and he arranged ten Scotch songs. The summary of his purely instrumental music is not so large. He was not a master of the great epic form, and the two symphonies which he composed have no significance in an estimate of his work. In addition to the overtures to his published operas he wrote three overtures which have appeared separately: that of "Peter Schmoll" published as "Grande Ouverture à plusieurs instruments," "Rübezahl," known as "Beherrscher der Geister," and "Jubel"; he also wrote five orchestral dances and marches. He composed three pianoforte concertos, ten smaller works with pianoforte accompaniment, thirteen concerted pieces for various solo instruments (clarinet, bassoon, flute and violoncello) and orchestra, four pianoforte sonatas, seventeen pianoforte pieces of various other forms for two hands (counting sets of Fughetti, Allemandes, Ecossaises and Waltzes as single numbers) and twenty similar pieces for four hands.
Weber's significance lies in his dramatic works. His songs, charmingly poetical and beautiful as many of them are, have been pushed into the background by those of his contemporary Schubert and his successors in the song-field, Schumann, Franz and Brahms. His part-songs for men's voices, especially his settings of Körner's patriotic lyrics, will probably be sung as long as the German gives voice to his love of Fatherland through the agency of Männergesangvereine. It is no depreciation of their artistic merit, however, to say that they fill a much larger page in the social and political history of Germany than in the story of musical evolution. As a composer for the pianoforte Weber long ago became archaic. His sonatas are seldom heard now-a-days outside of historical recitals whose purpose is, in the first instance, instructive. The "Concertstück," once the hobby of nearly all performers of the brilliant school, is rapidly sinking into neglect, and one might attend concerts for a decade in Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Boston or New York without hearing either of the other concertos. The circumstance that in the "Concertstück" and the "Invitation to the Dance," Weber displayed a distinctly Romantic tendency in the sense of striving to give expression to a poetical conceit placed at the foundation of the composition and kept in mind throughout, accounts in a great degree for the greater vitality of these two works. Yet even the "Invitation" is admired more to-day in the embellished version of Tausig and the orchestral paraphrase of Berlioz than in its original shape. The value of this exquisite little dramatic poem in tones, we are inclined to place so high that the estimate may seem out of all proportion with the rest of this review. The world has learned, however, that merit lies in contents and felicity of expression rather than pretension and dimension, and in view of the subsequent idealization of the dance by Chopin and his followers, we incline to the belief that what once may have been regarded as a trifle really outweighs in importance the bulk of Weber's pianoforte pieces whose formal titles give them dignity. The professor and the amateur are one in their admiration for this delicious composition, and there is no one so unlearned in music that he may not arrive at the composer's purpose from a simple hearing, so he bring love and a bit of fancy into the concert-room. How many pretty pictures of brilliant ball-rooms and loving couples has not this music conjured up in the minds of imaginative people. Even old Dr. Brown, whose "Rab and his Friends" will ever keep him dear to Anglo-Saxon hearts, felt the intoxication of these strains a quarter century ago, and put on record in The Scotsman one of the most eloquent critical rhapsodies extant. He pictures the ball-room, the lovers, the meeting in a shadowy recess, where she (the interested maiden) had been left by her mother. He (a Lochinvar, of course) is bending down and asking her to tread a measure. She,—but we must let Brown go on in his own way—"She looks still more down, flushes doubtless, and quietly in the shadow says 'No' and means 'yes'—says 'Yes' and fully means it, and they are off! All this small, whispered love-making and dainty device, this coaxing and being coaxed, is in the (all too short for us, but not for them) prelude to the waltz, the real business of the piece and evening. And then such a waltz for waltzing! Such precision and decision! Whisking them round, moulding them into twin orbs, hurrying them past and away from everything and everybody but themselves." And so old Brown goes on until you are almost dizzy with reading and entirely ready to vote that his rhapsody is only a little less delicious than Weber's music. The decadence of the liking for chamber music with wind instruments and of solos for them has relegated Weber's compositions for the clarinet and its brethren of the harmonious choir to the museum of musical history.
It is then to his operas that we must go to study Weber's music as an expression of artistic feeling and conviction and as an influence. He was one of the forward men of his art, one whose principles and methods are as vital now as they were when he was yet alive in the body. In a very significant sense they are still new to a large portion of the musical world. They are just dawning in Italy. It is through Wagner's restatement of them that they are acquiring validity in new fields. Weber's full stature, indeed, can only be seen in the light which the example of Wagner throws upon him. This light goes out in several directions, but in each instance it discloses Weber as a precursor. The intense Teutonism of Wagner which led him to aim at a resurrection in a new and glorified body of the "dramma per musica" of the Florentine reformers was an inheritance from his father-in-art and predecessor as Capellmeister at the Dresden opera. The Romanticism of Weber displayed in his choice of subjects had a literary tincture; it went no further than it was propelled by the example of Tieck, Schlegel and their companions, and it was colored by the mystical and sentimental Catholicism which was one of the singular reactionary fruits of the Romantic movement in German literature. Wagner's Romanticism is that of a period in which the pendulum had swung back again; it is psychological, almost physiological. The old myths will not serve in their mediæval form; they must be reduced to their lowest terms. Yet though we note this difference in manifestation, the root of Wagner's Romanticism strikes through Weber's. We have seen how Weber's sincerity of purpose led him to overturn the humdrum routine of operatic representation. His made his intelligence and his feeling to illuminate all sides of the work in hand. He was an intermediary not only between the composer and the performers in all departments, but also between the art-work and the public. He was wholly modern in his employment of all the agencies that offered to induct the public into the beauties and meanings of the operas which he conducted. He was the precursor of Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, and all the present tribe of literary musicians. To do things perfunctorily seems to have been foreign to his nature. He labored as conscientiously to win appreciation for Marschner's "Heinrich IV. und d'Aubigné" and Meyerbeer's "Abimelek" as for Beethoven's "Fidelio." It is to Weber that we must trace the essential things which are recognized to-day as marking the difference between German and Italian opera outside of language and style of composition.
It is a fact, the bearing of which ought to be borne in mind while studying the significance of Weber in the development of music, that he did not enjoy the favor of the leading men amongst his contemporaries. The popularity of "Der Freischütz" always remained an enigma to Spohr, and Schubert could find nothing to admire in "Euryanthe." His want of skill in the handling of form, which in the early part of his career we are justified in attributing to insufficient study, was an offence which these men and the majority who were like-minded with them could not forgive. In his orchestral treatment, too, and his obvious leaning toward dramatic and spectacular effectiveness, they could only perceive what is now termed sensationalism. The old notions of the relationship between music and poetry were still almost universally valid. Beauty had not come to be looked upon as a relative thing; it was believed that to be real it must appeal to all alike and that those of its elements which rested upon individual or national predilections were false in art. Characteristic beauty was an unknown quantity. Weber's definition of an opera when it was put forth sounded in the ears of his contemporaries like a heresy the realization of which would mean the destruction of operatic music. We are become familiar enough with it since Wagner achieved his reform, and therefore can scarcely appreciate how revolutionary it must have sounded three-quarters of a century ago. The opera, said Weber, is "an art work complete in itself, in which all the parts and contributions of the related and utilized arts meet and disappear in each other, and, in a manner, form a new world by their own destruction." A society in Breslau applied to Weber for permission to perform "Euryanthe" in concert style. Weber denied the request with the memorable words: "'Euryanthe' is a purely dramatic attempt which rests for its effectiveness upon the coöperation of all the sister arts, and will surely fail if robbed of their help." To these two definitions let us add two others touching singing and form: "It is the first and most sacred duty of song to be truthful with the utmost fidelity possible in declamation"; "All striving for the beautiful and the new good is praiseworthy; but the creation of a new form must be generated by the poem which is setting." Here we find stated in the plainest and most succinct terms the foundation principles of the modern lyric drama. It may be urged that Weber did not pursue his convictions to their extremity as Wagner did, but returned in "Oberon" to the simpler operatic style; but this, we are convinced, was partly because of the intellectual and physical lassitude due to the consumption of his vital forces, and partly because of his wish to adapt himself to the customs of the English stage and the taste of the people for whom he composed his fairy opera. This is obvious not only from his letters to Planché, the librettist of "Oberon," but from his subsequent effort to remodel the opera to suit his own ideas "so that 'Oberon' may deserve the name of opera." On February 16, 1825, he wrote: "These two acts are also filled with the greatest beauties. I embrace the whole in love, and will endeavor not to remain behind you. To this acknowledgment of your work you can give credit, the more as I must repeat, that the cut of the whole is very foreign to all my ideas and maxims. The intermixing of so many principal actors who do not sing, the omission of the music in the most important moments—all these things deprive our 'Oberon' of the title of an opera, and will make him unfit for all other theatres in Europe, which is a very bad thing for me, but passons là dessus." His adherence to the belief in the necessity of an intimate and affectionate relation between poetry and music, moreover, has beautiful assertion in the concluding words of the same letter: "Poets and composers live together in a sort of angels' marriage which demands a reciprocal trust."
It is the manner in which he has wedded the drama with music which makes "Euryanthe" a work that, at times, seems almost ineffable. There is no groping in the dark such as might have been expected in the case of a pathfinder. Weber is pointing the way to thitherto undreamed-of possibilities and means, yet his hand is steady, his judgment all but unerring. The eloquence and power of the orchestra as an expositor of the innermost sentiments of the drama are known to him. Witness his use of the band in the largo episode of the overture, designed to accompany a picture which Weber wished to have disclosed during the music for the purpose of giving coherency and intelligibility to the hopelessly defective book of the opera. Witness the puissance of the orchestra again in Lysiart's great air, "Wo berg ich mich?" Euryanthe's recital of the secret, Eglantine's distraught confession, and more strikingly than anywhere else in the wondrously pathetic scene following Adolar's desertion, and the instrumental introduction in the third act in which is to be found the germ of one of Wagner's most telling devices in "Tristan" and "Siegfried." Witness also how brilliantly its colors second the joyous, sweeping strains which publish the glories of mediæval chivalry. Will it ever be possible to put loftier sentiment and sincerer expression into a delineation of brave knighthood and its homage to fair woman than inspire every measure of the first act? Whither could we turn for more powerful expression of individual character through the means of musical declamation than we find in the music of Euryanthe and Eglantine? To Wagner's honor it must be said that he never denied his indebtedness to Weber, but if he had it would have availed him nothing while the representatives of the evil principle in "Euryanthe" and "Lohengrin" present so obvious a parallel, not to mention Wagner's drafts upon what may be called the external apparatus of Weber's score. Somewhat labored at times, and weighted with the fruits of reflection, the music unquestionably is, but for each evidence of intellectual straining discernible how many instances of highly emotionalized music, real, true, expressive music, present themselves to charm the hearer, and with what a delightful shock of surprise is not the discovery made that the old-fashioned roulades, when they come (which they do with as much naïveté as in Mozart) have been infused with a dramatic potency equalled only by Mozart in some of his happiest inspirations? Of finest gold is the score of "Euryanthe." That it is come so tardily into its estate, and that even to-day it is still underestimated and misunderstood, is the fault of its libretto. Dr. Spitta has gallantly broken a lance in defence of the book, but no amount of ingenious argumentation can justify the absurd complication created by the prudery of a German blue-stocking to avoid Shakespeare's simple expedient, the "mole, cinque-spotted." After all has been said and done in defence of the book, the fact remains that it is the attitude of the hero and heroine of the play to a mystery which is wholly outside the action and cannot be brought within the sympathetic cognizance of the spectators, that supplies the motive to the conduct of Adolar and Euryanthe.
WEBER LEADING HIS OPERA OF "DER FREISCHÜTZ" AT COVENT GARDEN THEATRE IN 1826.
From a characteristic and truthful lithographed sketch made shortly before his death and published by J. Dickinson, 114 New Bond Street, London.