ideals. As a natural consequence 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 defy calculation, 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 less connected with opera, such as Mendelssohn and Schumann, profited by his suggestiveness. Without Weber, Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream music, Walpurgis Nacht, Concert-Overtures, and PF. 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. And though during the last 30 years the Weber-cultus in Germany has been checked by the revived influence of Bach, though his weakness of form has been hotly condemned by composers of concert and chamber-music (thus—for the most part involuntarily—implying a depreciation of his work in general, which is as foolish and shortsighted as it is ungrateful), his genius can afford to deride all such detraction now and for ever. He is curiously near of kin to his opponents, even to Brahms. For instance, take Brahms's penchant for the national music of his own and other countries, and trace it to its source, and you come upon Weber. Again, he is the first of the modern typical artists who is a cultivated man of the world, as well as a musician. This fact involved a change in the social position of the artist, which change has been erroneously ascribed to Beethoven's personal qualities, though it might just as well be attributed to Spohr. Both were proved men, conscious of their own worth, and capable of asserting it when necessary; but of what great artist and man of honour might not the same be said? It is undeniable that the range of their interests outside music was extremely limited. Spohr was cultivated in the same sense that Mozart was; Beethoven, though he absorbed the ideas of the French Revolution while living on the Rhine, could lay no claim to anything like general culture. Weber's birth gave him at once a status in the best society, and compelled the world to admit that there was nothing derogatory to a man of family in following art as a vocation. His cultivation was indeed of a peculiar nature and most extensive; not acquired from books, but learnt by practical experience, and perfectly homogeneous with his music. To this result both education and natural gifts tended. His literary and poetical talent was considerable, and he took a keen and intelligent interest in all mechanical processes and the plastic arts, in which his taste was excellent.[1] Compared to Mendelssohn's, his education was a very irregular one, but his wandering life from a child had brought before him a host of varied impressions which his intelligent mind absorbed, and his cool head turned to account. At twenty he had more knowledge of life and men than many an artist of the old school had attained at the time of his death. His cleverness and thorough knowledge of the ways of society were partly natural, and partly acquired through intercourse with men of all ranks, from the lowest to the highest. From his time the musician of genius, who was a musician and nothing more, like Franz Schubert, became impossible in Germany. The characteristics which distinguish Mendelssohn, Schumann, Hiller, Wagner, Liszt, and other great musicians, who are fully developed men, from the older type of musician, are precisely those first found in Weber.
To form a right estimate of Weber's music it is necessary to look upon him as a dramatic composer. Not that his other compositions are of no importance—quite the contrary; but in one and all may be discerned more or less plainly that dramatic genius which was the essence of his nature, and which determined their form, and gave them that stamp whereby they differ so strikingly from the productions of other artists. Composers gifted with the true dramatic instinct have always been rare in Germany, and it was this that Weber possessed in a high degree, higher perhaps even than Mozart. Being his most prominent characteristic, we will deal with his operas first.
1. The earliest, 'Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins,' was destroyed, apparently by himself. Of the second, 'Das Waldmädchen,' composed in Freiberg, there are extant three autograph fragments, containing in all 214 bars, the originals of some and copies of others being now in the Royal Library at Berlin.[2] These fragments seem to bear out Weber's own verdict that the opera was an immature production, not perhaps wholly devoid of invention. Although played several times, no complete score can now be found. We now come to his third opera, and after that almost all that he wrote for the stage made its permanent mark.
2. The libretto of 'Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn' was adapted by a certain Joseph Türke from a novel of the same name by Carl Gottlob Cramer (2 vols. Rudolstadt, 1798–99). The book was one of the romances of knights and robbers with which the market was flooded after the success of 'Götz von Berlichingen' and 'Die Räuber.'[3] Cramer's Peter Schmoll has no artistic merit, but it is less crude and sensational than some others of its class. The scene is laid not in the Middle Ages, but in the period of the French Revolution. Türke arranged the plot in two acts, and treated it after the fashion of the
- ↑ It was his interest in wood-engraving which led to his friendship with F. W. Gubitz in Berlin. See 'Gubitz's Erlebnisse,' ii. 18 (Berlin, 1868).
- ↑ The Weber collection, amassed with so much diligence by Prof. Jähns, was purchased some years ago for the Berlin Royal Library.
- ↑ The best-known work of the kind was 'Rinaldo Rinaldini' by Goethe's brother-in-law Vulpius.
