Carl Maria von Weber interesting facts. Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826)

Biography

Weber was born into the family of a musician and theatrical entrepreneur, always immersed in various projects. Childhood and youth were spent wandering around the cities of Germany together with a small theater troupe of his father, which is why it cannot be said that he went through a systematic and strict music school in his youth. Almost the first piano teacher, with whom Weber studied for more or less a long time, was Johann Peter Heushkel, then, according to theory, Michael Haydn, lessons were also taken from G. Vogler. - the first works of Weber appeared - small fugues. Weber was then a student of the organist Kalcher in Munich. More thoroughly the theory of composition Weber subsequently went through with Abbot Vogler, having fellow students Meyerbeer and Gottfried Weber; at the same time he studied piano with Franz Lauska. Weber's first stage experience was the opera Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins. Although he wrote a lot in his early youth, his first success came with his opera Das Waldmädchen (1800). The 14-year-old composer's opera was given on many stages in Europe and even in St. Petersburg. Subsequently, Weber reworked this opera, which, under the name "Sylvanas", held on for a long time on many German opera stages.

Having written the opera "Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn" (1802), symphonies, piano sonatas, the cantata "Der erste Ton", the opera "Abu Hassan" (1811), he conducted the orchestra in different cities and gave concerts.

Max Weber, his son wrote a biography of his famous father.

Compositions

  • Hinterlassene Schriften, ed. Hellem (Dresden, 1828);
  • "Karl Maria von W. Ein Lebensbild", by Max Maria von W. (1864);
  • Webergedenkbuch by Kohut (1887);
  • "Reisebriefe von Karl Maria von W. an seine Gattin" (Leipzig, 1886);
  • Chronol. thematischer Katalog der Werke von Karl Maria von W." (Berlin, 1871).

Of the works of Weber, in addition to those mentioned above, we point out the concertos for piano and orchestra, op. 11, op. 32; "Concert-stuck", op. 79; string quartet, string trio, six sonatas for piano and violin, op. 10; grand concert duet for clarinet and piano, op. 48; sonatas op. 24, 49, 70; polonaises, rondos, variations for piano, 2 concertos for clarinet and orchestra, Variations for clarinet and piano, Concertino for clarinet and orchestra; andante and rondo for bassoon and orchestra, concerto for bassoon, "Aufforderung zum Tanz" ("Invitation à la danse"), etc.

operas

  • "Forest Girl" (German) Das Waldmadchen), 1800 - isolated fragments survive
  • "Peter Schmol and his Neighbors" (German) Peter Schmoll and Seine Nachbarn ), 1802
  • "Rubetzal" (German) Rubezahl), 1805 - isolated fragments survive
  • "Sylvanas" (German) Silvana), 1810
  • "Abu Hasan" (German) Abu Hassan), 1811
  • "Free Shooter" (German) Der Freischutz), 1821
  • "Three Pintos" (German) Die drei Pintos) - not finished; completed by Mahler in 1888.
  • Evryanta (German) Euryanthe), 1823
  • "Oberon" (German) Oberon), 1826

In astronomy

  • The asteroid (527) Evryanta is named after the protagonist of Carl Weber's opera "Evryanta" (English)
  • The asteroid 528 Rezia is named after the heroine of Karl Weber's Oberon. (English) Russian , opened in 1904
  • The asteroid (529) Preciosa is named after the heroine of Karl Weber's opera Preciosa. (English) Russian opened in 1904.
  • Asteroids named after heroines of Carl Weber's opera Abu Hasan (865) Zubaid (English) Russian and (866) Fatma (English) Russian opened in 1917.

Bibliography

Dresden. Grave of Carl Maria von Weber and his family

  • Ferman V., Opera Theatre, M., 1961;
  • Khokhlovkina A., Western European Opera, M., 1962:
  • Koenigsberg A., Carl-Maria Weber, M. - L., 1965;
  • Bialik M. G. Weber's opera in Russia // F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the traditions of musical professionalism: Collection of scientific works / Comp. G. I. Ganzburg. - Kharkov, 1995. - C. 90 - 103.
  • Laux K., C. M. von Weber, Lpz., 1966;
  • Moser H. J.. C. M. von Weber. Leben und Werk, 2 Aufl., Lpz., 1955.

Notes

Links

  • Weber's Works at Classical Connect Free Classical Music Library at Classical Connect
  • Summary (synopsis) of the opera "Free Shooter" on the site "100 operas"
  • Carl Maria Weber: sheet music of works at the International Music Score Library Project

Categories:

  • Personalities in alphabetical order
  • Born in Oitina
  • Deceased in London
  • Composers of Germany
  • opera composers
  • Romantic composers
  • Composers alphabetically
  • Born in 1786
  • Deceased in 1826
  • who died of tuberculosis
  • Founders of national opera art
  • Musicians alphabetically

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See what "Weber, Carl Maria von" is in other dictionaries:

    - (Weber, Carl Maria von) CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786 1826), the founder of German romantic opera. Karl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was born in Eutin (Oldenburg, now the land of Schleswig Holstein), November 18 or 19, 1786. His father, Baron Franz ... ... Collier Encyclopedia

    - (Weber) (1786 1826), German composer and conductor, music critic. Founder of German romantic opera. 10 operas (The Free Shooter, 1821; Evryant, 1823; Oberon, 1826), virtuoso concert pieces for piano. ("Invitation to ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

    Weber Karl Maria von (18 or 11/19/1786, Eitin, ‒ 5/6/1826, London), German composer, conductor, pianist, music writer. Founder of the German romantic opera. Born into the family of a musician and theatrical entrepreneur. Childhood and ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

"The world - the composer creates in it!" - this is how the field of activity of the artist was outlined by K. M. Weber - an outstanding German musician: composer, critic, performer, writer, publicist, public figure of the early 19th century. And indeed, we find Czech, French, Spanish, oriental plots in his musical and dramatic works, in instrumental compositions - stylistic signs of gypsy, Chinese, Norwegian, Russian, Hungarian folklore. But the main business of his life was the national German opera. In the unfinished novel The Life of a Musician, which has tangible biographical features, Weber brilliantly characterizes, through the mouth of one of the characters, the state of this genre in Germany:

In all honesty, the situation with the German opera is very deplorable, it suffers from convulsions and cannot stand firmly on its feet. A crowd of assistants bustle around her. And yet, barely recovering from one swoon, she again falls into another. In addition, by making all sorts of demands on her, she was so puffed up that not a single dress fits her anymore. In vain, gentlemen, the remodelers, in the hope of decorating it, put on it either a French or an Italian caftan. He doesn't suit her front or back. And the more new sleeves are sewn to it and the floors and tails are shortened, the worse it will hold on. In the end, a few romantic tailors came up with the happy idea of ​​choosing for it native matter and, if possible, weaving into it everything that fantasy, faith, contrasts and feelings have ever created in other nations.

Weber was born into a musician's family - his father was an opera bandmaster and played many instruments. The future musician was shaped by the environment in which he was from early childhood. Franz Anton Weber (uncle of Constance Weber, W. A. ​​Mozart's wife) encouraged his son's passion for music and painting, introduced him to the intricacies of performing arts. Classes with famous teachers - Michael Haydn, brother of the world famous composer Joseph Haydn, and Abbot Vogler - had a noticeable impact on the young musician. By that time, the first experiments of writing also belong. On the recommendation of Vogler, Weber entered the Breslau Opera House as a bandmaster (1804). His independent life in art begins, tastes, beliefs are formed, large works are conceived.

Since 1804, Weber has been working in various theaters in Germany, Switzerland, and has been director of the opera house in Prague (since 1813). During the same period, Weber established connections with the largest representatives of the artistic life of Germany, who largely influenced his aesthetic principles (J. W. Goethe, K. Wieland, K. Zelter, T. A. Hoffmann, L. Tieck, K. Brentano, L. Spohr). Weber is gaining fame not only as an outstanding pianist and conductor, but also as an organizer, a bold reformer of the musical theater, who approved new principles for placing musicians in an opera orchestra (according to groups of instruments), a new system of rehearsal work in the theater. Thanks to his activities, the status of the conductor changes - Weber, taking on the role of director, head of the production, participated in all stages of the preparation of the opera performance. An important feature of the repertory policy of the theaters he headed was the preference for German and French operas, in contrast to the more usual predominance of Italian ones. In the works of the first period of creativity, the features of the style crystallize, which later became decisive - song and dance themes, originality and colorfulness of harmony, freshness of orchestral color and interpretation of individual instruments. Here is what G. Berlioz wrote, for example:

And what an orchestra that accompanies these noble vocal melodies! What inventions! What ingenious research! What treasures such inspiration opens before us!

Among the most significant works of this time are the romantic opera Silvana (1810), the singspiel Abu Hasan (1811), 9 cantatas, 2 symphonies, overtures, 4 piano sonatas and concertos, Invitation to Dance, numerous chamber instrumental and vocal ensembles, songs (over 90).

The final, Dresden period of Weber's life (1817-26) was marked by the appearance of his famous operas, and its real culmination was the triumphal premiere of The Magic Shooter (1821, Berlin). This opera is not only a brilliant composer's work. Here, as in focus, are concentrated the ideals of the new German operatic art, approved by Weber and then becoming the basis for the subsequent development of this genre.

Musical and social activities required the solution of problems not only creative. Weber, during his work in Dresden, managed to carry out a large-scale reform of the entire musical and theatrical business in Germany, which included both a targeted repertoire policy and the training of a theater ensemble of like-minded people. The reform was ensured by the musical-critical activity of the composer. The few articles he wrote contain, in essence, a detailed program of romanticism, which was established in Germany with the advent of the Magic Shooter. But in addition to its purely practical orientation, the composer's statements are also a special, original musical piece clothed in a brilliant artistic form. literature, foreshadowing articles by R. Schumann and R. Wagner. Here is one of the fragments of his "Marginal Notes":

The apparent incoherence of the fantastic, reminiscent not so much of an ordinary piece of music written according to the rules, as of a fantastic play, can be created ... only by the most outstanding genius, the one who creates his own world. The imaginary disorder of this world actually contains an inner connection, permeated with the most sincere feeling, and you just need to be able to perceive it with your feelings. However, the expressiveness of music already contains a lot of indefiniteness, individual feeling has to invest a lot in it, and therefore only individual souls, tuned literally to the same tone, will be able to keep up with the development of feeling, which takes place like this, and not otherwise, which presupposes such and not other necessary contrasts, for which only this opinion is true. Therefore, the task of a true master is to reign imperiously over both his own and other people's feelings, and the feeling that he conveys to reproduce as a constant and endowed only those colors and nuances that immediately create a holistic image in the soul of the listener.

After The Magic Shooter, Weber turns to the genre of comic opera (Three Pintos, libretto by T. Hell, 1820, unfinished), writes music for P. Wolf's play Preciosa (1821). The main works of this period are the heroic-romantic opera Evryanta (1823) intended for Vienna based on the plot of a French knightly legend and the fabulous-fantastic opera Oberon, created by order of the London theater Covent Garden (1826). The last score was completed by the already seriously ill composer right up to the very day of the premiere. The success was unheard of in London. Nevertheless, Weber considered necessary some alterations and changes. He didn't have time to make them...

Opera became the main work of the composer's life. He knew what he was striving for, her ideal image was suffered by him:

... I'm talking about opera, which the German craves, and this is an artistic creation closed in itself, in which parts and parts of related and in general all used arts, soldering to the end into one whole, disappear as such and to a certain extent even are destroyed, but they are building a new world!

Weber managed to build this new - and for himself - world...

V. Barsky

The ninth son of an infantry officer who devoted himself to music after his niece Constanza married Mozart, Weber receives his first music lessons from his half-brother Friedrich, then studies in Salzburg with Michael Haydn and in Munich with Kalcher and Valesi (composition and singing). At the age of thirteen, he composed the first opera (which has not come down to us). A short period of work with his father in musical lithography follows, then he improves his knowledge with Abbot Vogler in Vienna and Darmstadt. Moves from place to place, working as a pianist and conductor; in 1817 he marries the singer Caroline Brand and organizes a German opera theater in Dresden, as opposed to the Italian opera theater under the direction of Morlacchi. Exhausted by great organizational work and terminally ill, after a period of treatment in Marienbad (1824), he staged the opera Oberon (1826) in London, which was received with enthusiasm.

Weber was still the son of the 18th century: sixteen years younger than Beethoven, he died almost a year before him, but he seems to be a more modern musician than the classics or the same Schubert ... Weber was not only a creative musician, a brilliant, virtuoso pianist, conductor famous orchestra, but also a great organizer. In this he was like Gluck; only he had a more difficult task, because he worked in the squalid surroundings of Prague and Dresden and had neither a strong character nor the undeniable glory of Gluck ...

In the field of opera, he turned out to be a rare phenomenon in Germany - one of the few born opera composers. His vocation was determined without difficulty: from the age of fifteen he knew what the stage required ... His life was so active, so eventful that it seems much longer than Mozart's life, in reality, only four years "(Einstein).

When Weber introduced The Free Gunner in 1821, he greatly anticipated the romanticism of composers such as Bellini and Donizetti who would appear ten years later, or Rossini's William Tell in 1829. In general, the year 1821 was significant for the preparation of romanticism in music: at this time, Beethoven composed the Thirty-first Sonata op. 110 for piano, Schubert introduces the song "King of the Forest" and begins the Eighth Symphony, "Unfinished". Already in the overture of The Free Gunner, Weber moves towards the future and frees himself from the influence of the theater of the recent past, Spohr's Faust or Hoffmann's Ondine, or the French opera that influenced these two of his predecessors. When Weber approached the Euryanta, Einstein writes, “his sharpest antipode, Spontini, had already, in a sense, cleared the way for him; at the same time, Spontini only gave the classical opera seria colossal, monumental dimensions thanks to crowd scenes and emotional tension. In Evryanta a new, more romantic tone appears, and if the public did not immediately appreciate this opera, then composers of the next generations deeply appreciated it. The work of Weber, who laid the foundations of the German national opera (along with Mozart's The Magic Flute), determined the double meaning of his operatic heritage, which Giulio Confalonieri writes well about: “As a faithful romantic, Weber found in legends and folk traditions a source of music devoid of notes but ready to sound ... Along with these elements, he also wanted to freely express his own temperament: unexpected transitions from one tone to the opposite, a daring convergence of extremes, coexisting with each other in accordance with the new laws of romantic Franco-German music, were brought to the limit by the composer , whose state of mind, due to consumption, was constantly restless and feverish. This duality, which seems to be contrary to stylistic unity and actually violates it, gave rise to a painful desire to get away, by virtue of the very choice of life, from the last meaning of existence: from reality - with it, perhaps, only in the magical "Oberon" reconciliation is supposed, and even then partial and incomplete.

Biography

Weber was born into the family of a musician and theatrical entrepreneur, always immersed in various projects. Childhood and youth were spent wandering around the cities of Germany together with a small theater troupe of his father, which is why it cannot be said that he went through a systematic and strict music school in his youth. Almost the first piano teacher with whom Weber studied for a more or less long time was Heshkel, then, according to theory, Michael Haydn, and G. Vogler also took lessons.

As early as 1810, Weber drew attention to the plot of Freishütz (Free Shooter); but it was not until that year that he began to write an opera based on this subject, arranged by Johann Friedrich Kind. Freischütz, staged in 1821 in Berlin under the direction of the author, caused a positive sensation, and Weber's fame reached its zenith. "Our shooter hit right on target," Weber wrote to librettist Kind. Beethoven, surprised by Weber's work, said that he did not expect this from such a gentle person and that Weber should write one opera after another.

Prior to Freischütz, Wolff's Preciosa was staged the same year, with music by Weber.

At the suggestion of the Vienna Opera, the composer wrote "Evryant" (at 18 months). But the success of the opera was no longer as brilliant as Freishütz. Weber's last work was the opera Oberon, after which he was staged in London in 1826 and died soon after.

Monument to K. M. von Weber in Dresden

Weber is justly considered a purely German composer who deeply understood the nature of national music and brought the German melody to a high artistic perfection. Throughout his entire career he remained true to the national trend, and in his operas lies the foundation on which Wagner built Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. In particular, in "Evryant" the listener is seized by exactly the musical atmosphere that he feels in the works of Wagner of the middle period. Weber is a brilliant representative of the romantic opera trend, which was in such force in the twenties of the 19th century and which later found a follower in Wagner.

Weber's talent is in full swing in his last three operas: "Magic Arrow", "Euryant" and "Oberon". It is extremely varied. Dramatic moments, love, subtle features of musical expression, a fantastic element - everything was available to the composer's wide talent. The most diverse images are outlined by this musical poet with great sensitivity, rare expression, with great melody. A patriot at heart, he not only developed folk melodies, but also created his own in a purely folk spirit. Occasionally, his vocal melody at a fast pace suffers from some instrumentality: it seems to be written not for the voice, but for an instrument to which technical difficulties are more accessible. As a symphonist, Weber mastered the orchestral palette to perfection. His orchestral painting is full of imagination and is distinguished by a peculiar coloring. Weber is primarily an operatic composer; the symphonic works he wrote for the concert stage are far inferior to his operatic overtures. In the field of song and instrumental chamber music, namely piano compositions, this composer left wonderful examples.

Weber also owns the unfinished opera Three Pintos (1821, completed by G. Mahler in 1888).

Weber erected a monument in Dresden, the work of Ritschel.

Max Weber, his son wrote a biography of his famous father.

Compositions

  • Hinterlassene Schriften, ed. Hellem (Dresden, 1828);
  • "Karl Maria von W. Ein Lebensbild", by Max Maria von W. (1864);
  • Webergedenkbuch by Kohut (1887);
  • "Reisebriefe von Karl Maria von W. an seine Gattin" (Leipzig, 1886);
  • Chronol. thematischer Katalog der Werke von Karl Maria von W." (Berlin, 1871).

Of the works of Weber, in addition to those mentioned above, we point out the concertos for piano and orchestra, op. 11, op. 32; "Concert-stuck", op. 79; string quartet, string trio, six sonatas for piano and violin, op. 10; grand concert duet for clarinet and piano, op. 48; sonatas op. 24, 49, 70; polonaises, rondos, variations for piano, 2 concertos for clarinet and orchestra, Variations for clarinet and piano, Concertino for clarinet and orchestra; andante and rondo for bassoon and orchestra, concerto for bassoon, "Auforderuug zum Tanz" ("Invitation à la danse"), etc.

operas

  • "Forest Girl", 1800
  • "Peter Schmoll and his neighbors" (Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn), 1802
  • "Rubetzal", 1805
  • Silvana, 1810
  • Abu Hassan, 1811
  • "Preciosa" (Preciosa), 1821
  • "Free shooter" ("Magic shooter", "Freyschütz") (Der Freischütz), 1821 (premiered in 1821 at the Berliner Schauspielhaus)
  • "Three Pintos" 1888. Unfinished. Completed by Mahler.
  • "Euryanthe" (Euryanthe), 1823
  • "Oberon" (Oberon), 1826

Bibliography

  • Ferman V., Opera Theatre, M., 1961;
  • Khokhlovkina A., Western European Opera, M., 1962:
  • Koenigsberg A., Carl-Maria Weber, M. - L., 1965;
  • Laux K., C. M. von Weber, Lpz., 1966;
  • Moser H. J.. C. M. von Weber. Leben und Werk, 2 Aufl., Lpz., 1955.

Links

  • Summary (synopsis) of the opera "Free Shooter" on the site "100 operas"
  • Carl Maria Weber: Sheet Music at the International Music Score Library Project

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what "Carl Maria von Weber" is in other dictionaries:

    Not to be confused with Bernhard Weber, also a German composer .. Carl Maria von Weber (1786 1826), the founder of the German romantic opera, a composer with extensive knowledge of art, poetry and literature ... Wikipedia

    - (Weber, Carl Maria von) CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786 1826), the founder of German romantic opera. Karl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was born in Eutin (Oldenburg, now the land of Schleswig Holstein), November 18 or 19, 1786. His father, Baron Franz ... ... Collier Encyclopedia

    Weber Karl Maria von (18 or 11/19/1786, Eitin, ‒ 5/6/1826, London), German composer, conductor, pianist, music writer. Founder of the German romantic opera. Born into the family of a musician and theatrical entrepreneur. Childhood and ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

    - (Weber) (1786 1826), German composer and conductor, music critic. Founder of German romantic opera. 10 operas (The Free Shooter, 1821; Evryant, 1823; Oberon, 1826), virtuoso concert pieces for piano. ("Invitation to ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

    Karl Maria Friedrich August (Ernst) von Weber (German Carl Maria von Weber; November 18 or 19, 1786, Eitin June 5, 1826, London) baron, German composer, conductor, pianist, music writer, founder of German romantic opera. Contents ... ... Wikipedia

    - (18 (?) XI 1786, Eitin, Schleswig Holstein 5 VI 1826, London) The composer creates the world in it! this is how the outstanding German musician outlined the field of activity of the artist K. M. Weber: composer, critic, performer, writer, publicist, ... ... Music dictionary

    - (Weber) Weber Karl Maria von Weber (1786 1826) German composer, conductor, music critic. The founder of the romantic direction in opera. From 1804 bandmaster in Breslau. From 1813 he was a theater conductor in Prague. Since 1817 ... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms

    Fon (1786-1826) German composer and conductor, music critic. Founder of German romantic opera. 10 operas (Free Shooter, 1821; Evryant, 1823; Oberon, 1826), virtuoso concert pieces for piano (Invitation to dance, ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary


Until the beginning of the 19th century, there was no actual German opera in Germany. Up until the 20s. in this genre, throughout Europe, the Italian tradition dominated. The creation and flourishing of the folk-national German romantic opera is associated with the name of Carl Maria von Weber.

The sources for writing his works were ancient legends and folk tales, songs and dances, folklore theater, and various national-democratic literature. Weber's work was strongly influenced by his predecessors, the forerunners of German romanticism: Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann and Ludwig Spohr with their works "Ondine" and "Faust", respectively.

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was born on November 18, 1786 in the Holstein town of Eutin. His father, Franz Anton von Weber, was the head of a traveling theater, and his mother was a singer. The Weber family was related to Mozart. From a young age, Carl studied music with his father. In general, he studied a lot, but unsystematically, with various composers, musicians, music teachers: Johann Geyshkel, Michael Haydn, Georg Joseph Vogler, I. N. Kalcher, I. E. Valesi and others. Weber grew up as a sickly and weak boy, but quickly grasped everything he was taught.


The innate genius and numerous talents justify the exorbitant selfishness of the composer. So, at the age of 18 he already led the orchestra in the theater of the city of Breslau, and at the age of 24 his first successful opera "Sylvanas" was released. During his short life (and Weber died in 1826, just short of his fortieth birthday from a debilitating pulmonary disease), the composer was in the role of musical director of theaters in Dresden and Prague. In parallel, he made numerous concert tours as a pianist, and three operas - "Free Gunner", "Evryant" and "Oberon", became the first examples of the emerging genre of German romanticism.


In addition to his activities as a musician, composer, conductor, Weber wrote critical articles in magazines, reviews of performances, musical works, annotations to his compositions, published an autobiographical novel "The Life of a Musician" and even deeply studied lithography. But the best work of all Weber's work is, without a doubt, the opera "Free Shooter", or as it is also called "Magic Shooter". The opera premiered on June 18, 1821 in Berlin. In its content, this is a romantic interpretation of a folk legend. Here, through music, Weber sings of the beauty of nature and the triumph of noble human feelings, fills the content of the opera with magical contrasts, comparisons of everyday, lyrical and fantastic scenes.


In his personal life, all researchers of the composer's biography note the presence of many novels and theatrical intrigues. But, despite this, for the last 9 years of his life, Weber was married to singer Caroline Brandt. Max Maria Weber, his son, was a civil engineer by profession, and he also wrote a biography of his great father. Carl Maria von Weber entered the history of music as the creator of opera based on German folk artistic traditions. The triumph on the stage of the "Free Shooter", with its fabulously legendary plot and national music in its color, coincided with the general upsurge of the national movement in the country and contributed to it in many ways.

Maria Igumnova

Karl Maria Friedrich August von Weber (born November 18 or 19, 1786, Eitin - died June 5, 1826, London), baron, German composer, conductor, pianist, music writer, founder of German romantic opera.

Weber was born into the family of a musician and theatrical entrepreneur, always immersed in various projects. Childhood and youth were spent wandering around the cities of Germany together with a small theater troupe of his father, which is why it cannot be said that he went through a systematic and strict music school in his youth. Almost the first piano teacher, with whom Weber studied for more or less a long time, was Heshkel, then, according to the theory, Mikhail Haydn, lessons were also taken from G. Vogler.

1798 - Weber's first works appeared - small fugues. Weber was then a student of the organist Kalcher in Munich. More thoroughly, the theory of composition Weber subsequently went through with Abbot Vogler, having fellow students Meyerbeer and Gottfried Weber. Weber's first stage experience was the opera Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins. Although he wrote a lot in his early youth, his first success came with his opera Das Waldmädchen (1800). The 14-year-old composer's opera was given on many stages in Europe and even in St. Petersburg. Subsequently, Weber reworked this opera, which, under the name "Sylvanas", held on for a long time on many German opera stages.

Having written the opera "Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn" (1802), symphonies, piano sonatas, the cantata "Der erste Ton", the opera "Abu Hassan" (1811), he conducted the orchestra in different cities and gave concerts.

1804 - worked as a conductor of opera houses (Breslavl, Bad Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin).

1805 - wrote the opera "Ryubetsal" based on the fairy tale by I. Museus.

1810 - opera "Sylvanas".

1811 - opera "Abu-Ghassan".

1813 - headed the opera house in Prague.

1814 - Becomes popular after composing martial songs on the verses of Theodor Kerner: "Lützows wilde Jagd", "Schwertlied" and the cantata "Kampf und Sieg" ("Battle and Victory") (1815) on the text of Wollbruck on the occasion of the Battle of Waterloo. The jubilee overture, the masses in es and g, and the cantatas then written in Dresden were much less successful.

1817 - headed and until the end of his life directed the German musical theater in Dresden.

1819 - back in 1810, Weber drew attention to the plot of "Freyschütz" ("Free shooter"); but it was not until this year that he began to write an opera based on this story, reworked by Johann Friedrich Kind. Freischütz, staged in 1821 in Berlin under the direction of the author, caused a positive sensation, and Weber's fame reached its zenith. “Our shooter hit right on target,” Weber wrote to librettist Kind. Beethoven, surprised by Weber's work, said that he did not expect this from such a gentle person and that Weber should write one opera after another.

Prior to Freischütz, Wolff's Preciosa was staged the same year, with music by Weber.

1822 - at the suggestion of the Vienna Opera, the composer wrote "Evryant" (at 18 months). But the success of the opera was no longer as brilliant as Freishütz. Weber's last work was the opera Oberon, after staging which in London in 1826 he died soon after.

Weber is justly considered a purely German composer who deeply understood the nature of national music and brought the German melody to a high artistic perfection. Throughout his entire career he remained true to the national trend, and in his operas lies the foundation on which Wagner built Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. In particular, in "Evryant" the listener is seized by exactly the musical atmosphere that he feels in the works of Wagner of the middle period. Weber is a brilliant representative of the romantic opera trend, which was in such force in the twenties of the 19th century and which later found a follower in Wagner.

Weber's talent is in full swing in his last three operas: "Magic Arrow", "Euryant" and "Oberon". It is extremely varied. Dramatic moments, love, subtle features of musical expression, a fantastic element - everything was available to the broad talent of the composer. The most diverse images are outlined by this musical poet with great sensitivity, rare expression, with great melody. A patriot at heart, he not only developed folk melodies, but also created his own in a purely folk spirit. Occasionally, his vocal melody at a fast pace suffers from some instrumentality: it seems to be written not for the voice, but for an instrument to which technical difficulties are more accessible. As a symphonist, Weber mastered the orchestral palette to perfection. His orchestral painting is full of imagination and is distinguished by a peculiar coloring. Weber is predominantly an opera composer; the symphonic works he wrote for the concert stage are far inferior to his operatic overtures. In the field of song and instrumental chamber music, namely piano compositions, this composer left wonderful examples.


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