New Millennium Strings

Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria von Weber was born in Eutin, Germany, in November 1786 and he died in London, England, in June 1826. While he was a very young child, Weber played among the sets and props of his family's theater company. His father, Franz Anton, was a violinist and the town musician, and his mother, Genovefa, was an actress. As soon as Weber's father retired from his musical post, he fulfilled a life-long dream by founding the Weber Theatre Company. The family toured for several years. Besides taking a toll on Genovefa's health, the travel prevented Weber from acquiring a consistent musical education. Franz Anton always hoped that his son would be a sparkling genius like Mozart, who incidentally was Franz Anton's niece's husband.

Once Genovefa fell ill while traveling with the family theatrical company. The family was forced to stay in Hildburgshausen for a few months. While his mother recuperated, he son was able to study piano with the young oboist, conductor, and organist Johann Peter Heuschkel. At last Weber could receive a few months of uninterrupted musical training. By 1797, Genovefa was well again and the family was back on the road. However this time the family was held back by the presence of Napolean and his troops. From this point, the Weber family moved to Salzburg, where Weber studied theory and composition with Michael Haydn. As a result of his hard work, Weber published his first composition, Six Fughettas, in Salzburg in 1798. In March of the same year Weber lost his mother to tuberculosis. Within nine months, Franz Anton was engaged to another woman, but the marriage did not take place. Now the theater company was off to Munich, where Weber was able to study voice with Valesi. The opera coach had also provided training for some of Mozart's leading opera singers. As a result of Valesi's tutoring, Weber composed his first opera, Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins.

While in Munich, Franz Anton introduced his son to his friend Aloys Senefelder. Because of family hardships, the young Senefelder turned to music to earn a living, and he created a reproduction method for his music. In 1798 he invented lithography, and in 1799 Weber was apprenticed to Senefelder. Although Weber was only 13 years old, he helped Senefelder improve his lithographic technique. Franz Anton was looking for an opportunity to enable his son's compositions to be published. But father and son moved on, hoping to set up their own lithographic business.

Weber continued his musical training with Henschkel, Kalcher, and Vogler. When Weber was only eighteen, he was employed at the Breslau Opera. In 1813 he became the conductor of the Prague Opera and in 1816 he was appointed as the conductor of the Dresden Opera. Weber is principally known as an opera composer. He produced his three most famous operas within five years: Der Freischutz (1821), Euranthye (1823), and Oberon (1826).

Konzertstuck

The Konzertstuck was completed on June 18, 1821, the same day as the premier of Der Freischutz. It was the beginning of a productive outpouring of chamber music and piano compositions.

The Konzertstuck requires technical facility which was unique to Weber. The composer was endowed with extraordinarily large hands. His thumb reached to the middle joint of the index finger. Since he was a pianist, his physiology provided him ease for playing octave glissandos on the instrument, as well as executing four-part chords spanning a tenth. He was able to play tenths as easily as most people could play octaves.

The Konzertstuck represents Weber's unique musical style, while reflecting his own life experiences. In this composition, classical form was disregarded and a free form was used instead. Weber married a singer, Caroline Brandt, in 1817, and it seems feasible that the program for the Konzertstuck was influenced by Weber's own relationship. In this piano composition, the program depicts a romantic tale of a separation and reunion of two lovers. While Caroline and Carl Maria were engaged in a courtship, they endured many separations because of Weber's musical demands. In the Konzertstuck there is an appearance of Napolean's military presence represented by the march theme (first heard in the winds).

Also in the composition, Weber was both innovator and integrator of the musical idioms borrowed from other composers. He employs ornamentation that leads the melodic line away from the tonic key; this is reminiscent of techniques later employed by the Romantic composers Chopin and Liszt. Weber often wrote wide intervallic leaps in his melodic lines, whether it be intended for his folk influenced themes or for the grandeur of salon elegance. One of Weber's favorite compositional techniques was the use of staccato thirds and octaves, an idea emphasized in his study with Michael Haydn. This technique is found in Haydn's piano variations in C Major, of which Weber was particularly fond.

Invitation to the Dance

The Invitation to the Dance was another programmatic composition. It was originally published as a piano piece, which was dedicated to his wife Caroline. In 1841, after Weber's death, Hector Berlioz orchestrated the Invitation to the Dance. The fully orchestrated version was performed in Paris along with a production of Weber's Der Freischutz. The program for the composition is about a man who woos a lady at a dance, he declares passionately his love for her, the couple exchange parting words, and then exit. This musical illustration represents the expectations, wooing, evasiveness, flirtation, and coquettishness that takes place between the dancers. The Invitation to the Dance is in rondo form, which provides a masterful organization for several waltzes.

-- program notes by Laurien Jones

May, 2001