Years of travel, 1810–12.

The traumatic last weeks in Stuttgart left an indelible impression on Weber, who resolved thenceforth to hold himself to a higher level of fiscal and moral responsibility. To this end he started a diary on 26 February 1810 to mark the beginning of a new period in his life. He maintained this remarkable document (D-Bsb) until his death in 1826, and but for a few lacunae it records in detail Weber's daily activities and accomplishments, his expenses, personal and professional contacts, correspondence, performances, creative work, illnesses and impressions.

Arriving in Mannheim on 27 February 1810, Weber quickly established contacts with prominent professional and amateur musicians there and in nearby Heidelberg, including the lawyer Gottfried Weber, his brother-in-law the cellist Alexander von Dusch and the tenor Ludwig Berger. These contacts allowed him to participate in concerts in the vicinity shortly after his arrival and to give his own ‘academies’ in Mannheim on 9 and 28 March. Over the course of the next year he became a frequent participant in the concerts of the Carl-Stéphanie Museum, a society founded in Mannheim in 1808. Leaving his father in Mannheim, Weber then moved in April to Darmstadt, where he resumed studies with Abbé Vogler. As had earlier been the case, Weber reciprocated with work for Vogler, writing an analytical introduction to Vogler's revision of chorale settings by J.S. Bach and helping with a piano score for a new Vogler opera, Der Admiral. Vogler also entrusted Weber with the task of writing his biography. At this time Weber formed close friendships with two fellow students, Johann Gänsbacher (whom he had known in Vienna in 1803–4) and the young Meyerbeer.

With no position or steady income, Weber supported himself in a variety of ways that are mirrored in the compositions of the period. For his frequent appearances as a pianist and composer, he revised the First Symphony and composed the C major Piano Concerto, a set of variations for cello and orchestra (j94), the rondo for soprano and orchestra op.16 (j93) and a duet for two altos and orchestra (j107). Contracts with publishers allowed Weber to sell works composed at Stuttgart and new compositions, like the six songs of op.15 bought by Simrock. Simrock also published the six sonatas for piano and violin (j99–104) originally commissioned by André, who had rejected them, however, because he found them too difficult for the intended amateur market. Weber drew much-needed income from the sale of Silvana, which the theatre in Frankfurt purchased for 100 gulden and whose first performance it gave on 16 September 1810. Aristocratic patronage also remained important for Weber, who cultivated the support of Princess Stéphanie of Baden and Grand Duke Ludewig I of Hesse-Darmstadt. Weber's new one-act opera Abu Hassan (composed between 11 August 1810 and 12 January 1811) also figured in his hopes for patronage, as the Grand Duke rewarded him with a very generous gift of 440 gulden for the dedication of the work. Lastly, Weber negotiated to sell his incipient novel to the publisher J.F. Cotta.

Of particular importance during this period was the formation of a secret society called the Harmonischer Verein, a group that initially included Weber, Gottfried Weber, Dusch and Meyerbeer, and that later included Gänsbacher and a few others. According to the statutes that Weber drafted, the Verein, a society of musicians with literary skills, sought at one level idealistically to raise the standards of music criticism and taste through non-partisan reviews that would promote the good wherever it existed. At another level, however, the society had a practical function, as its members were obliged to promote the careers and works of their ‘brothers’ through reviews and notices. To spread their reputations as widely as possible, members were also urged to establish contacts with editors and publishers throughout the German-speaking world. The Verein also made preliminary, but unrealized, plans for its own musical journal. In order to maintain the secrecy necessary for the appearance of impartiality, the members employed pseudonyms. For example, Weber, the group's director, styled himself ‘Melos’, whereas Gottfried Weber, its secretary and archivist, was ‘Giusto’. Over the course of time, the society gradually ceased to function; however, Weber continued in later years as a conductor in Prague and Dresden to promote the works of his ‘brothers’ whenever the opportunity arose.

Weber left Darmstadt on 14 February 1811 to begin a long-planned tour with which he intended to establish his reputation, cultivate contacts for the Verein and educate himself as to the state of music. Travelling via Giessen, Aschaffenburg, Würzburg, Bamberg, Nuremberg and Augsburg (where he settled an outstanding debt with his former publisher Gombart by offering him the Momento capriccioso for piano and the five songs of op.13) he arrived in Munich on 14 March. With royal permission he gave a concert at the court theatre on 5 April, at which the court clarinettist Heinrich Baermann performed a newly composed Concertino, the first of a series of pieces written by Weber for him. The success of this work led immediately to royal commissions for two full-length clarinet concertos.

Because of the difficulties of arranging concerts during the summer months, Weber stayed in Munich throughout the summer of 1811 to supervise the première of Abu Hassan (4 June) and devote himself to composition and music criticism. On 9 August he set out for Switzerland to attend the music festival at Schaffhausen, enlist new allies for the Verein and present concerts of his own. He arrived on 19 August in Schaffhausen, where he was made an honorary member of the Société de Musique Helvétique. After giving a concert at Winterthur on 28 August, he went to Zürich to confer with the editor Hans Georg Nägeli and present a concert on 3 September. During his stay in Zürich he conceived a plan (ultimately unrealized) for a Noth- und Hülfs-Büchlein für reisende Tonkünstler, a kind of travel guide providing practical information for touring virtuosos about artistic conditions in cities and towns throughout Europe. Travel on foot from Zürich to Lucerne allowed Weber to experience sunrise on the Rigi; but, unable to arrange concerts in Lucerne, Solothurn or Berne, he spent ten days at Jegisdorf, near Berne, as the guest of a wealthy acquaintance, composing a concert aria (j121) and starting work on a quintet for clarinet and strings for Baermann. Weber ended his Swiss tour with a concert in Basle on 13 October and a stay at Schloss Wolfsberg, Ermatingen, on Lake Constance from 15 to 21 October.

Between 24 October and the end of November Weber was again in Munich. In preparation for his farewell concert on 11 November he revised the old Rübezahl overture as the overture Der Beherrscher der Geister and started work on a new piano concerto (j155, of which only the finale was ready by the time of the concert). Weber's last weeks in Munich were spent composing two works commissioned by the king, a concerto for the bassoonist Georg Friedrich Brand and an aria (j126) for the tenor Georg Weixelbaum, and completing three Italian duets and three canzonettas that he presented to the queen at a royal audience on 26 November.

Weber and Baermann left Munich on 1 December 1811 for a joint tour to Prague, Leipzig, Gotha, Weimar and Dresden. In Berlin they performed publicly on 15 and 25 March, following which Baermann continued the tour on his own while Weber remained in the Prussian capital for a production of Silvana. After taking charge of the rehearsals himself and recomposing the two principal arias, Weber conducted the première of the revised version on 10 July and the repetition on 14 July to general acclaim. In Berlin he learnt of the death of his father, but he also met a number of people with whom he formed lasting friendships, including F.F. Flemming, Friederike Koch, Hinrich Lichtenstein and F.W. Gubitz. This social circle, comprising mostly members of Zelter's Liedertafel, stimulated Weber to compose a number of choruses and solo songs during his sojourn. He also wrote the first of his four surviving piano sonatas (op.24), which he sold along with a collection of four songs (op.23) and the piano score of Silvana to the relatively new publishing firm of A.M. Schlesinger, who in the remaining years became Weber's principal publisher.

On 31 August 1812 Weber left Berlin for Gotha, where he had been invited by Duke Emil Leopold for an extended stay (6 September – 20 December). With few professional obligations or social distractions Weber was free to compose or complete a number of works, including the Second Piano Concerto, the variations for piano (j141) on a romance from Méhul's opera Joseph, a set of piano waltzes for the publisher Kühnel (j143–8), a concert aria (j142) for Duke Emil Leopold's son Prince Friedrich, a new duet for Abu Hassan and a setting of J.F. Rochlitz's hymn In seiner Ordnung schafft der Herr for chorus and orchestra.

Weber: (9) Carl Maria von Weber

Prague, 1813–16.

Weber left Gotha on 20 December with the intention of undertaking another extended tour, which he opened on 1 January 1813 with the première of the hymn and the first public performance of the new concerto at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. On 12 January he arrived in Prague, ostensibly on the way to Vienna and thence to Italy. But the tour did not continue beyond the Bohemian capital, as the administrators of the Estates Theatre offered him the position of Musikdirektor in the hope that he would revive the moribund opera. Forgoing his dream of Italy, in part so that he could discharge his outstanding debts and in part because he relished the opportunity to shape an institution according to his own vision, Weber accepted the appointment for three and a half years at an annual salary of 2000 gulden and with provision for yearly benefit performances and annual leaves. With the dissolution of the old company at Easter 1813, Weber went to Vienna at the end of March to recruit new singers, choristers and orchestra players. There he also encountered Baermann, Meyerbeer, Vogler and Spohr, and presented a concert on 25 April at the Redoutensaal.

Despite the orchestra's initial resistance to Weber and the difficulties of putting together a new company – compounded by wartime conditions that kept some potential cast members from travelling to Prague – the opera was able to start again on 9 September 1813 with a German-language performance of Spontini's Fernand Cortez, the first of the 72 works and approximately 430 performances given during Weber's tenure (Bužga, L1985). As he had in Breslau, Weber attempted an ambitious repertory of original German works and French and Italian operas in translation. But for reasons outside his control the company never fully attained the goals he set. Although the theatre boasted a fine orchestra and a great dramatic soprano in Therese Grünbaum, Weber was unable to cast classics like Die Zauberflöte and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, or any of Gluck's operas. Nevertheless, under Weber the Prague theatre did perform such difficult works as Beethoven's Fidelio, Cherubini's Faniska, Poissl's Athalia and Meyerbeer's Wirth und Gast (later known as Alimelek), and it gave the première of Spohr's Faust (1 September 1816).

For a number of reasons Weber never really enjoyed his tenure in Prague. His heavy workload doubtless contributed to the frequent bouts of ill-health during these years, illnesses that weakened a constitution already exhibiting symptoms of tuberculosis. Weber quickly came to feel isolated in Prague; despite a good friendship with the amateur cellist Dr Philipp Jungh, he failed to find a congenial circle of artists and intellectuals with whom he could associate and make music. In his letters he frequently complained about the Prague audiences, which he found generally unresponsive. A particularly volatile personal life also contributed to his misery. By the end of 1813 Weber was embroiled in a doomed relationship with a married actress, Therese Brunetti, from which he extracted himself in spring 1814 with the start of a romantic involvement with the singer Caroline Brandt, a popular member of his company. Weber eventually married Caroline, in 1817, but the early years of the courtship were stormy, as her jealousy and quick temper, her justified pride in her own career and her mother's initial disapproval of Weber provided ample grounds for frequent dissonance in a relationship that admittedly is illuminated only from Weber's side by his diary and the many surviving letters that he wrote to her (Bartlitz, D1986). The relationship faltered in summer 1815 when the couple agreed to separate prior to Weber's annual leave, but by June 1816 they were fully reconciled and by the end of 1816 they were betrothed.

With such distractions, it is not surprising that Weber found it difficult to compose in Prague. The strong desire to write a new opera was repeatedly thwarted by his inability to obtain a suitable text, as a call for librettos that he published in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in March 1813 yielded no viable subjects. More fruitful for composition were the summer vacations that afforded him the chance to restore health and spirits. In summer 1814 Weber went to Bad Liebenwerda for a three-week cure before moving on to Berlin for nearly five weeks to enjoy the company of his old friends. The vacation concluded with another stay with Duke Emil Leopold at Gotha and Schloss Gräfentonna, where, with the celebrations surrounding the victorious return of the King of Prussia to Berlin fresh in his mind, Weber began to compose the first pieces that won him widespread acclaim, the six songs for unaccompanied male chorus Leyer und Schwerdt (op.42) on patriotic poems by Theodor Körner.

In summer 1815 Weber spent most of his leave in Munich reunited with Baermann. At first unable to concentrate because of his recent breakup with Caroline Brandt (with whom he nevertheless continued a painful correspondence), he eventually began to compose again, writing two movements of the Grand duo concertant for Baermann and himself and a concert aria for the soprano Helene Harlas. In Munich patriotic fervour once again stimulated artistic creation, as Weber's experience of public celebration of the allied victory at Waterloo engendered a plan for a cantata entitled Kampf und Sieg. After a concert in Munich on 2 August and one in Augsburg on 8 August, Weber remained in Munich in relative seclusion to work on the cantata, complete the Clarinet Quintet, which he had started in 1811, and revise the Horn Concertino for the horn player Sebastian Rauch.

By the time of his return to Prague on 7 September 1815 Weber had decided to terminate his association with the Estates Theatre at the end of his contract in September 1816. Although he continued to fulfil his duties conscientiously, his activities during the last year in Prague broadened considerably. He returned to literary activity, writing not only concert reviews for the k.k. priv. Prager Zeitung, but also ‘dramatic-musical notices’, brief historical-critical essays designed to enhance the public appreciation of new works in the Prague repertory. His reading in February 1816 of the fourth part of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier prompted him to resume his own novel, and two Prague concerts given by Hummel in April encouraged him to apply himself again to the piano. After the première of Kampf und Sieg on 22 December 1815, Weber set about systematically to send manuscript copies of the score to the allied monarchs in the hope of financial reward and a possible appointment. From this resulted permission to perform the cantata in Berlin. Weber went there in early June 1816 and the success of the performances on 18 and 23 June fuelled the efforts – ultimately unsuccessful – of the Intendant of the royal Prussian theatre, Count Carl von Brühl, to secure a court appointment for Weber. On his way back to Prague, Weber spent four days (13–17 July) in Carlsbad (now Karlovy Vary), where the Intendant of the royal Saxon theatre, Count Heinrich Vitzthum von Eckstädt, approached him about directing a new German-language opera company that the court hoped to establish in Dresden.

In his last weeks in Prague Weber conducted the première of Spohr's Faust, prepared a number of organizational aids for his successor, and cleared his debt to his creditors in Stuttgart. By this time he could entertain serious hopes for a position in Dresden, for on 19 August he had accepted Vitzthum's terms: an appointment as Kapellmeister at a salary of 1500 thalers with primary responsibility for the German opera but with responsibilities as well for music at the court church and the Italian opera. However, official confirmation of the appointment was slow to come, as the Dresden court was cautious about committing resources to the new venture. Conducting his last performance on 30 September, Weber left Prague on 7 October, with plans to go to Berlin and from there (if no news arrived from Dresden) on an extended tour of northern Germany and Denmark.

Weber arrived in Berlin on 13 October, accompanied by Caroline Brandt, who had been engaged for guest appearances at the theatre, and her mother. There Weber composed or completed the second and third piano sonatas, three volumes of songs (opp.43, 46 and 47), and the Grand duo concertant. The stay in Berlin exposed Weber to E.T.A. Hoffmann's Undine, which stimulated his most important opera review, and witnessed two events that were to change the rest of his life. On 19 November, the eve of Caroline's departure from Berlin, she and Weber became engaged, and on 25 December Weber at last received a letter from Vitzthum confirming the new appointment and requesting him to come to Dresden as quickly as possible.

Weber: (9) Carl Maria von Weber

Dresden, 1817–21.

With his arrival in Dresden on 13 January Weber had the mandate to create a royal company for German-language opera, which hitherto had been provided by Joseph Seconda's private troupe while the court itself had maintained a first-class Italian company. At his disposal was an excellent orchestra, but the vocal resources were less promising, as the new German company had few trained soloists and no female choristers, the high choral parts having been assigned to boy sopranos and altos from the Kreuzschule. Accordingly, Weber's initial goal, which he outlined in an open letter to the residents of Dresden designed also to temper unrealistic expectations, was to build up a functional ensemble, to which star soloists would be added over time. Rehearsals began on 18 January for Méhul's Joseph, an opera chosen largely because it required no prima donna, and the first performance on 30 January was deemed a success by no less than the king himself.

However, Weber never fully realized his ambitions for the German opera (W. Becker, L1962). Although the chorus was reorganized to his satisfaction by September 1817, the numerous Gastspiele in 1817 failed to result in the speedy permanent engagement of star singers. Only with the acquisition of the coloratura soprano Caroline Willmann in 1820 and her replacement, the great dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, in 1823 was the company finally able to cast the leading soprano roles with distinction. Tenor roles posed even more of a problem, as the only tenor Weber considered adequate, Friedrich Gerstäcker, left for Kassel at Easter 1821 after only one year in Dresden. A disillusioned Weber met Vitzthum's cost-conscious successor Hans Heinrich von Könneritz on 24 January 1821 to discuss the possible dissolution of the German company.

Nor did Weber's repertory in Dresden develop exactly as he wished. The company's vocal limitations forced it at first to rely on relatively modest opéras comiques and Singspiele. Restrictions also arose because the German opera was not allowed to duplicate the repertory of the Italian opera. Thus a number of works that Weber had presented in German in Prague (La vestale, Fernand Cortez, Camilla, Le cantatrici villane, Così fan tutte, Le nozze de Figaro and La clemenza di Tito) were not available to him, and only over time was Weber able to wrest from the Italian company Joseph Weigl's Die Schweizerfamilie (1818), Peter Winter's Das unterbrochene Opferfest (1819) and Mozart's Don Giovanni (1821). Because of such constraints, one should therefore be cautious about reading too much ideological import into Weber's almost exclusively Franco-German repertory in Dresden.

Cultural politics were a further source for frustration during Weber's tenure in Dresden. Rightly or wrongly, Weber strongly believed that a pro-Italian faction, led by the Kapellmeister Francesco Morlacchi, was at work surreptitiously to undercut his authority and lower the status of the German opera in the eyes of the court and the public. Thus ensued a series of petty grievances and major crises that Weber blamed on the Italians. For instance, to his dismay he found upon his arrival in Dresden that his title was not ‘Kapellmeister’, to which he had agreed, but rather the less prestigious ‘Musikdirektor’, whereupon he threatened to leave for breach of contract. Vitzthum was able to mollify him, and the matter was officially resolved to Weber's satisfaction by 10 February 1817. A second crisis occurred in early 1818, when the court countermanded his efforts to reorganize the seating of the Italian opera orchestra for performances of La vestale and Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra that he conducted during Morlacchi's absence in Italy. Weber sparked a third crisis in early 1820 through his published comments about Meyerbeer's Emma di Resburgo, wherein he not only chastised his friend for having capitulated to Rossinian mannerisms but also questioned the ‘digestive capacity’ of Italian audiences that had made Rossini their principal operatic fare. Weber's comments provoked Morlacchi to go to Count Detlev von Einsiedel, the king's minister, to demand that Weber be offically reprimanded for his ‘insult’ to Italians, a move that Weber in turn perceived as a serious threat to artistic integrity and freedom of critical judgment (Allroggen, G1991). Only in spring 1822, by which time Weber had mitigated his own ambitions for the German opera, did he and Morlacchi finally come to an uneasy peace.

Weber's first year in Dresden was perhaps the most significant in his life. Though he had no close musical colleagues, he quickly cultivated friendships with various members of the theatre and with members of the ‘Dichter-Thee’ and Liederkreis, two groups of local poets who gathered socially to read their respective works aloud. The editor of the Abend-Zeitung, the theatre secretary Carl Gottfried Theodor Winkler (who used the pseudonym Theodor Hell), provided Weber with a forum for introductory essays of the kind that he had written in his last year in Prague. And in the playwright Friedrich Kind, the spiritus rector of the Liederkreis, Weber found a collaborator with whom he soon began to discuss plans for a new opera. By 21 February Kind had agreed to write a libretto after Johann August Apel's novella Der Freischütz, and thus began a project that resulted in Weber's most famous work. Throughout the year Weber also made plans for his impending marriage to Caroline Brandt, who was still in Prague finishing her contract. In June, Count Brühl attempted once again to recruit Weber for Berlin, but Brühl's plan was eventually vetoed by the King of Prussia. At the end of October, following a round of wedding festivities at court for which he composed an Italian cantata (j221), Weber returned to Prague, where he exchanged his own wedding vows with Caroline on 4 November. After a six-week honeymoon that took them to western Germany, they went to their new home in Dresden on 20 December 1817.

Weber's duties as Kapellmeister and the attendant crises that arose periodically caused his own projects frequently to be shelved while he worked on pieces for the court, such as a mass completed in early 1818 for the king's nameday (j224). In the summer of 1818 Weber and his wife rented rooms at Hosterwitz in the countryside nearby, in the hope that the quiet rural life would allow him to finish the composition to Kind's libretto, which had been provisionally accepted for Berlin, but he was obliged at this time to compose a cantata for the queen's nameday and several major works for the celebration of the 50th year of the reign of King Friedrich August. For the 50th wedding anniversary of the king and queen he completed a second mass in early 1819 (j251). The birth of a daughter on 22 December 1818 and Caroline's difficult recovery provided additional distractions. And shortly after Weber set to work again on the opera in March 1819 he was himself struck by a severe illness that left him incapacitated for nearly two months, during which time his infant daughter died. Convalescing in Hosterwitz in summer 1819 he was finally able to complete a number of pieces under contract to Schlesinger, to whom he sent on 26 August the piano variations op.55, the aria op.56 (written for Cherubini's Lodoïska), the Festgesänge op.53/57, the Jubel-Cantate (op.58), the Jubel-Ouvertüre (op.59), the four-hand piano pieces op.60, the Rondo brillante op.62, the Flute Trio op.63, the Polacca brillante op.72 and the songs of opp.66 and 71. During the summer he also composed one of his most celebrated solo piano pieces, Aufforderung zum Tanze, and began work on a fourth piano sonata.

In autumn 1819 Weber resumed the composition of Die Jägersbraut, as Kind's libretto was called at the time, and worked on it more or less continuously until he finished it on 13 May 1820. Shortly thereafter, at Brühl's recommendation, the title of the opera was changed to Der Freischütz. Upon completing the opera, Weber composed between May and July the incidental music for P.A. Wolff's play Preciosa, which was commissioned by Brühl for Berlin, and began at the same time to work on a comic libretto by Theodor Hell, Die drei Pintos, which he intended for the German opera in Dresden.

With the première of Der Freischütz postponed because of delays in the construction of the new Schauspielhaus in Berlin, Weber and Caroline embarked on a concert tour to northern Germany and Copenhagen in late July 1820. The tour took them to Halle, where the overtures to Der Freischütz and Preciosa were given their public début on 31 July. At both Halle and Göttingen Weber was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which he was received by the university students, who serenaded him with his own choral songs from Leyer und Schwerdt. Because of her delicate health, Weber left his expectant wife in Hamburg (where she nevertheless suffered a miscarriage after he departed) and continued on to Eutin, Plön and Kiel. On 24 September he arrived in Copenhagen, where he played at a court concert on 4 October and presented his own public concert on 8 October. After concerts in Lübeck and Hamburg he and Caroline returned to Dresden on 4 November.

In the first months of 1821 Weber continued to work on Die drei Pintos and discussed with Kind a new opera based on the Spanish epic El Cid. At Brühl's request, he also composed an additional piece for Der Freischütz, for whose long-delayed première Weber and his wife travelled to Berlin on 2 May. During the rehearsals for his opera, Weber attended the luxuriant production of Spontini's Olimpia (in E.T.A. Hoffmann's translation) at the royal opera house. On the morning of 18 June 1821 he completed the Concert-Stück in F minor for piano and orchestra, and that evening he conducted the first performance of Der Freischütz at the new Schauspielhaus. The work struck a responsive chord in the Berlin audience, which at one level embraced its theatricality and tuneful, folklike melodies (a fact driven home in Heine's well-known Reisebrief of 16 March 1822) and at another welcomed it as a potent symbol of German cultural resistance to the Franco-Italian style of the king's unpopular protégé, Spontini.

Weber: (9) Carl Maria von Weber

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 906