THE plenitude of genius in the classical period of German music has a striking illustration in the rapid succession in the kingship which followed the wresting of the musical sceptre from Italy. Beginning with Bach, there has been no break in the line of succession. Had such a thought occurred to the father of modern music, he might have established a sentimental foundation, a handgrasp, a kiss, or an apostolic laying on of hands, which might have been transmitted down to our day without once leaving the direct and royal line. In the musical succession there is an over-lapping, a concurrence of reigns, nearly all the time. The most significant phrase of this phenomenon is exemplified in the subject of this study. Gluck and Mozart might have come like the good fairies of the nursery tale to kiss him in his cradle. Haydn and Beethoven might have waited till their salutations would inspire his youth. He himself might have blessed the infancy of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Wagner. This it is which helped to give Carl Maria von Weber a position in musical history which now we recognize to be commanding in a sense never realized so fully before. His activities range over the territory through which is drawn the indeterminate line of demarcation between the Classic and Romantic schools. He embodies the spirit of both tendencies, though not in an equal degree. Not only does he touch hands with the kings of the eighteenth century and their successors of the nineteenth, but some of his life threads in the fabric of history were interwoven with theirs. We shall see how in the story of his life.

The influence of heredity has a twofold illustration in this story. The musical talent of Weber and, indeed, the general bent of his artistic predilections were an inheritance. An ardent devotion to music and the drama can be traced back a century in the family from which he sprung. The family belonged to the minor nobility of Austria. Of the tastes and inclinations of the first Freiherr von Weber, who was endowed with the title in 1622, nothing is known. But a brother, who had taken up a residence in Suabia, probably after the loss of the family estates in the Thirty Years' War, was musical. He was the ancestor of Fridolin Weber, who, in turn, was the father of several daughters who would have merited a paragraph in the annals of music had they not won a page through the circumstance that Mozart fell in love with one, Aloysia, and married another, Constance. Franz Anton von Weber, a brother of this Fridolin, was the father of Carl Maria, who through Constance became cousin by marriage to Mozart. The brothers, though many other things besides, during the latter portion of their existence were, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, musicians. Fridolin, who had dropped the "von" from his name when Mozart met him in Mannheim, was reduced to the position of a sort of general utility man in the Court Theatre; Franz Anton, who clung to the sign of nobility and conveyed other titles to himself to which he had less right, enjoyed the distinction of being one of the best viola players of his time and was also an admirable performer upon the double-bass. He even ventured upon the sea of composition with some songs with pianoforte accompaniment, which frail craft bore him up for a considerable time.

Here was one manifestation of the law of heredity; contemplation of the other is less agreeable. From Franz Anton von Weber his son inherited an instability of character which for a time threatened to make shipwreck of his divine gifts. The whole of Franz Anton's life was the career of an adventurer. In his youth he was a titled rake in Mannheim. He became a soldier and was slightly wounded fighting against Frederick the Great at Rosbach. The Elector of Cologne, ClÉment Augustus, gave him an appointment and on the death of his father-in-law advanced him to the posts which the latter had held—Steward and Court Councillor. From these posts he was dismissed with a small pension by ClÉment Augustus's successor in the Electorate. It is said that his devotion to music was partly the cause of his dismissal. He was fonder of his fiddle than of his duties, and often went walking in the fields, playing on his viol, his eight children trooping behind him as if he were another Pied Piper. He married into a councillorship and fiddled himself out of it. The Prince-Bishop who appointed him was the gay prelate who "danced himself out of this world into another" and who gave employment to Beethoven's grandfather and father in his court band; the Prince-Bishop who dismissed him was the serious-minded and thrifty Maximilian Frederick, who became the master of Beethoven himself. Those who are fond of delving for remote causes may associate the birth of Weber with this action of Beethoven's patron. Franz Anton, having lost his position and squandered his wife's fortune, started out on a dramatic and musical itinerancy. His wife did not survive her humiliation. He wandered through Germany after three years of service as Chapelmaster to the Bishop of LÜbeck and Eutin, and in 1784 found his way to Vienna, where he placed two of his sons under the tuition of Haydn, and a year later married the sixteen-year-old Genoveva von Brenner, a daughter in the family that had given a home to his sons. This delicate flower the adventurer of fifty plucked out of its genial surroundings in the Austrian capital and transplanted to Eutin, whither he now returned to accept the post of town musician, another having meanwhile won the once despised but now coveted chapelmastership. Small wonder that when Carl Maria Friedrich Ernest, the first child of this mistaken marriage was born he should have brought with him into the world a frail and puny body afflicted with a disease of the hip which was the cause of the composer's lifelong lameness.

Concerning the date of Carl Maria's birth there is still controversy. The church records in Eutin give it as November 18, 1786. The date commonly accepted is December 18, 1786. When the boy's first composition was published the father did not hesitate to falsify his age by a year in order to irritate the attention of the cognoscenti. The impulse which prompted what must have seemed a trifling peccadillo to the unscrupulous Franz Anton sprang from an ambition which had long consumed his heart and had been intensified by the marvelous career of his nephew by marriage, Mozart: He wished to figure in the world as father of a prodigy. He had been disappointed in the children of his first marriage who, with finer facilities than Carl Maria ever enjoyed, had turned out to be simply good working musicians. The forcing process which he applied in the case of his youngest son was in no respect beneficial. The boy, too, was ambitious to be a Mozart, but in later life, speaking of his second opera, composed at the age of thirteen, he mentioned the circumstance that he had written the second act in ten days, and added: "This was one of the many unfortunate consequences of the numerous tales of the great masters which made so great an impression on my juvenile mind, and which I tried to imitate." The demand which the father made upon the precocious mind of his son was in reality greater than that made upon the boy Mozart's. Leopold Mozart was an ideal instructor and a man of fine moral fibre. In his exploitation of Wolfgang he never sacrificed the things which make for good in art. He may have been injudicious in fanning the spark of genius so industriously that it burst into the too-fierce flame which consumed his son's life prematurely, but the technical training which Wolfgang enjoyed was sound and thorough. This boon was never accorded to the boy Weber. While his father continued the roving life which began anew a year after Carl Maria's birth, he and his son Frederick cared for the lad's education. There was no more stability in the life of the family than in that of a gypsy band. Within a dozen years the father figured in one theatrical capacity or another in Vienna, Cassel, Meiningen, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Weimar, Erlangen, Hilburghausen and Salzburg. Only in the last two towns does it appear that he procured proper instruction for the child. Evidently with all his desire to play the rÔle of a second Leopold Mozart he mistrusted his son's gifts, for he once contemplated making a painter out of him, and even after he had exhibited noteworthy fruits of the few months of study pursued under Michael Haydn in Salzburg, and Kalcher in Munich, he seemed willing to sacrifice his son's musical talents to the prospect of making money with Senefelder's new invention of lithography, in which both father and son took a keen interest. The influence of such an irresolute life upon the lad's moral character must also have been pernicious. He grew up behind the scenes of a theatre. One can easily imagine the value of the familiarity with the mimic world thus obtained after he had become a dramatic composer, but it fastened a clog upon his talent which he was never quite able to fling off. When a good teacher, who valued his gifts and devoted himself assiduously to their development, was found in Hilburghausen, study had already become irksome to the lad.

Michael Haydn had been his master for only six months when, his mother having died of consumption in March, 1798, he accompanied his father to Vienna and remained there till July. Next came a removal to Munich, and study under Kalcher for composition and Wallishauser (of Valesi, as he called himself) for singing. Even with imperfect cherishing, however, the boy's creative faculty asserted itself. The first of his music which was published consisted of six fughettos written under the eyes of Michael Haydn. Guided by Kalcher he composed an opera, "Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins," a mass and several vocal and instrumental pieces in the smaller forms. All of this music is lost except a set of variations which he dedicated to his teacher and printed himself by the new lithographic method.

We have written with somewhat disproportionate fullness of the beginning of Weber's career because of the light which the recital throws upon his moral as well as his musical development. Fate had it in store that a lovely character and a genius of high order should emerge from the unsightly and much-abused chrysalis; but before then another decade had to be spent under such circumstances as ordinarily wreck men's souls. In this period the interruptions of the peripatetics which had been the curse of his childhood, were few and comparatively brief. Freiberg, in Saxony, Chemnitz, Salzburg, and Augsburg, were in turn the lad's stopping-places, and a tour was made through Northern Germany. Then came two years of study in Vienna with AbbÉ Vogler, rewarded by an appointment which the AbbÉ procured for the youth of seventeen and a half as Capellmeister in Breslau. For two years he performed the duties of this office, and then disaffections and quarrels between him and the citizens who maintained the company led to his resignation. The influence of a pupil got him the title of Musik-Intendant to Duke Eugene of Wirtemberg, which he intended to use for advertising purposes on a concert tour; but war interfered with the plan and he went to Schloss Carlsruhe to participate in the music-making at the Duke's court. The conquest of Prussia by Napoleon in 1807 led the Duke to dismiss his band, but he obtained for Weber the post of Private Secretary to a brother, Duke Ludwig, at Stuttgart. The associations into which this new life threw him were more demoralizing a thousand times than any of his past experiences. The profligacy and immorality of the official and theatrical life of the Suabian capital were notorious throughout Europe. The charm of Weber's mind and manners drew about him many good influences, particularly the friendship of Capellmeister Danzi, but the moral stamina to withstand the temptations which beset him on all hands had not been developed, and he abandoned himself to a course of life which threatened his moral as well as artistic ruin. His boon companions were one of the sirens of the theatre and the members of a coterie known as "Faust's Descent into Hell." From the dangers which beset him he was most rudely rescued. He had incurred the anger of the King while delivering one of the many unpleasant messages of Duke Ludwig, who was the King's brother, and avenged himself for the contumely poured on him by directing an old woman, who had inquired for the Royal laundress, into the King's cabinet. It required the intervention of the Duke to save him from imprisonment, but the King's anger was not appeased, and he soon found occasion to punish Weber for the insult. The misrepresentations of a servant to a citizen from whom Weber borrowed money led the former to believe that the loan would purchase an appointment for his son in the Duke's household and consequent immunity from military service. The appointment not following, Weber was denounced to the King, tried by a process quite as summary as a drum-head court-martial, and banished from Wirtemberg along with his father, in whose behalf the loan had been made. It was the year 1810, and it marks Weber's moral regeneration. He resolved thereafter to devote himself honestly and seriously to the service of his art. His artistic achievements during this decade were scarcely significant enough to outweigh the unhappy incidents of his life. At Freiberg he forgot his father's lithographic schemes long enough to set an opera book written by Ritter von Steinsberg on the familiar folk-tale of the Seven Ravens, entitled "Das Stumme WaldmÄdchen," which was performed in Freiberg, Chemnitz, Prague and even Vienna and St. Petersburg, without making a decided success. In the course of his second stay in Salzburg he composed "Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn," which was brought out with indifferent results at Augsburg. During his trip through Northern Germany he developed a thirst for theoretical knowledge and also a bent toward literature which grew with time, made him a student of the writings of Kant and Schelling, in Stuttgart, and filled his head for a space with thoughts of a critical journal. His choice of AbbÉ Vogler as a teacher has generally been deplored, but it seems to have been beneficial in this respect, at least, that under the influence of that man of brilliant if superficial talents, he ceased the production of unripe works and took up the analysis of masterpieces and the study of folk-music. The circumstance that his writings for two years are practically summed up in a pianoforte arrangement of the AbbÉ's opera "Samori" and two sets of variations on themes from that opera and "Castor and Pollux" might be variously interpreted. The AbbÉ had the gift of attaching young men to himself and was probably not averse to such tributes as his affectionate pupils paid him in the revamping of his ideas; but if Weber's own testimony is to be accepted he must have helped him greatly in the direction where his greatest needs lay. In Breslau he began the composition of "RÜbezahl" (text by J. G. Rhode, the managing director of the private company that maintained the theatre), and composed an a Overturn Chinesa," utilizing for the purpose a Chinese melody entitled "Lieu-ye-kin." This overture he remodeled a few years later and prefixed it to Schiller's adaptation of the Italian Gozzi's masque "Turandot" for which he also composed six incidental pieces. How one who was so happy a few years later in the application of local color should have persuaded himself to use a Chinese melody with its characteristic pentatonic scale in an overture to a play based on a Persian subject does not appear. Weber's stay with Duke Eugene was not without profit, though his compositions were chiefly instrumental and, barring two symphonies, in the smaller forms. In Stuttgart where his musical services to Duke Ludwig were confined to instructing his children, he undertook a resetting of "Das Stumme WaldmÄdchen," the book of which had been worked over by Franz Carl Hiemer, the leading spirit of the dissolute coterie known as "Faust's HÖllenfahrt." Weber seems to have spent two years on this work, or rather to have spread it out over two years of time, a circumstance which, when contrasted with the rapidity of his work on his second opera as a lad of thirteen, tells its own tale of the effect of the influences which surrounded him. It was at a rehearsal of this opera, renamed "Sylvana," that the King chose to have him arrested to gratify a petty vengefulness. The work came into new notice in connection with the German celebrations of Weber's centenary in 1886 by reason of a second revision and revival after it had been forgotten for full half a century. This "revision," however, for which Ernst PasquÉ and Ferdinand Langer are responsible, is almost if not quite as original a piece of work as that done by Weber in the remodeling of "Das Stumme WaldmÄdchen." The three-act play is expanded into one of four acts; the dumb maiden is metamorphosed into a particularly brilliant soprano leggiero; a ballet is introduced consisting of the "Invitation to the Dance," which was composed in 1817, and the Polonaise in E-flat which dates back to the Stuttgart period; several of Weber's songs are interpolated (a hint of Widor's having seemingly been acted on), and vocal numbers are constructed out of two sonata movements.

With the expulsion from Stuttgart Weber's wanderings began again, and for several years, the rest of the time indeed which may be counted in the period preparatory to his entrance upon his estate as a genius conscious of a mission and equipped for its performance, his life is like that of a minstrel knight of old, save for the difference in social and artistic environment. At the very outset of these final peregrinations there is noticeable a sign of his moral regeneration, preceding only by a little most convincing evidences of a determination to make good also the artistic shortcomings due to his desultory early training and his later frivolities. Toward the close of 1810 he wrote in his journal: "I can say calmly and truthfully that I have grown to be a better man within the last ten months. My sad experiences have made me wiser, I am become orderly in my business affairs and steadily industrious." The men whose friendship he cultivated on his travels were worthy of the best he could offer, and he made no more companionships that were hindrances to his growth. In Mannheim, whither he first went with letters from Danzi, it was the theoretician Gottfried Weber who gave him encouragement, help and a friendship that lasted till death. In Darmstadt began a lovely intercourse with Meyerbeer, who was then studying with Vogler, and whose parents received him like one of the family when he went to Berlin. In Hamburg he met E. T. A. Hoffman, that incarnation of the Romantic spirit; and in Munich he formed a social and artistic connection with the clarinettist, BÄrmann, which was a source of delight and profit to them both. Duke Emil Leopold August, of Saxe Gotha, with all his crazy eccentricities, was a kind patron, at whose court he came into close relationship with Spohr, whom he had first met at Stuttgart, and on whom he had made an unfavorable impression. He went to Weimar, and learned to love Wieland and would also doubtless have bent the knee to Goethe, had that great man treated him with a little more than scant courtesy. It would seem, however, as if the great poet had imbibed, consciously or unconsciously, some of the prejudice against Weber which his musical oracle, Zelter, cherished. Weber's resolve to give truer devotion to his art bore fruit first in a heightened appreciation of the value of criticism. Not only did he seek to profit by the censure bestowed on his own works on the score of a want of plastic beauty and soundness of form, but he sought to give greater dignity to criticism by cultivating it himself. In Darmstadt he joined Meyerbeer and others in organizing a secret society which had for a motto "the elevation of musical criticism by musicians." He even recurred to his old project of founding a critical journal, and though he did not carry it out, he was thus in a sense a forerunner of Schumann, as the "Harmonischer Verein" (thus the critical coterie called itself) was a prototype of the "DavidsbÜndler." His conviction that he was profiting by his more serious studies and loftier determination is seen, moreover, in his desire to better his earlier work. He did not try to complete the opera "RÜbezahl," but he remodelled its overture, which he thought his finest achievement up to that time, and also the overture to "Peter Schmoll." In his one-act operetta "Abu Hassan," composed during a second stay in Mannheim after his return from Frankfort, where he had produced "Sylvana" successfully, modern critics have found the buds of that dramatic genius which came into full flower in "Der FreischÜtz." His fondness for literary composition grew so strong in this period that, not content with critical essays, he ventured upon a work of fiction. It is impossible not to see in this circumstance and also in the title chosen for the romance, "TonkÜnstler's Erdenwallen," a suggestion which Wagner acted on when a generation later he wrote: "Ein Ende in Paris," and "A Pilgrimage to Beethoven."

We have reached a point in Weber's career when his aims, ambitions, methods and achievements present so many parallels with those of his direct successor in art that the temptation is strong to put aside the story of the man in favor of an essay in comparative criticism. Each succeeding event in the next few years of his life helps to bring those parallels into a light which is particularly vivid to us who view them from the vantage ground of to-day. When he goes to Prague in January, 1813, to organize a German Opera, we see him enter the portal of the temple which enshrined the goddess of his later idolatry. When he emerges from that temple it is as the High Priest of a new cult, consecrated for the greater task which he accomplished in Dresden, whither he went in 1817. The consecration was two-fold; it entered into his moral life and purged it of the last husks of folly when he married Caroline Brandt on November 4, 1817; it entered into his artistic life when he conceived his mission to be to stimulate a national art-spirit in his country worthy of the spirit of patriotism which had enabled the German people to rid themselves of a foreign oppressor. In Prague he formed his last ignoble attachment. It was for the wife of a dancer at the opera, whose purposes were all mercenary, and whose husband was willing to trade in his wife's honor. The liaison caused immeasurable suffering to the gentle soul of Weber, and was the last of his purging fires. The solace which he found in the love of the singer who had sung in his "Sylvana" at Frankfort and been engaged at Prague at his instance, was perfect. Caroline Brandt did not accept him lightly, and he had time, while wooing her, to learn the value of her sweet purity and recover from the wounds struck by a degrading passion.

The spirit of Romanticism which had long before been breathed into German literature and encouraged patriotism by disclosing the treasures of German legendary lore, became a vital force when patriotic sentiments were transmuted into deeds of valor. Theodor KÖrner was the incarnation of that political ecstacy which had been nourished by the Tugendbund. In the youth of Germany, especially in the students, his songs produced a sort of divine intoxication. Part of Weber's summer vacation in 1814 was passed in Berlin. Prussia was leading in the struggle to throw off the yoke of Napoleon, and Weber drank daily of the soma-juice in KÖrner's "Lyre and Sword." On his return trip to Prague he visited his old friend the Duke Emil August at his castle GrÄfen-Tonna. From this old feudal pile he sent his settings of "LÜtzow's wilde Jagd" and "Das Schwertlied" to his love in Prague. The world has never ceased to marvel at the fire of those settings; who shall describe their effect in Germany at the time they were written? They were sparks hurled into the powder-magazine of national feeling. All things were conspiring to develop Weber's Germanism from an emotion into a religion. The "Hurrah!" of his apostrophe to the sword found an echo at Waterloo. He planned a cantata to celebrate the event. It was not musical taste as much as patriotic ardor to which the circumstances compelled him to appeal. "Kampf und Sieg" is another "Wellington's Victory," containing the same vulgar realism (the noises of battle, etc.), but disclosing also a higher artistic striving. Beethoven used national melodies to characterize the warring soldiery: the "Chanson de Malbrouk" for the French, and "Rule Britannia" for the English. Weber utilized the revolutionary "Ça ira" for the French "God save the King" for the English, the Austrian and Prussian grenadier marches and the refrain from his own "LÜtzow." The latter circumstance may be looked upon as evidence of the popularity which the spirited song had won within a year.

It was when Romanticism became militant that it fired the heart of Weber and enlisted him as a soldier. In Berlin Brentano offered him the subject of "TannhÄuser" for treatment. He had considered the story of "Der FreischÜtz" as far back as 1810. He was not ready for such work until he had fought the fight for a German operatic institution in Prague and in Dresden. In one respect the conditions were more favorable in the Bohemian capital than in the Saxon. In the former it was chiefly indifference and ignorance with which he had to contend; in the latter the patriotic fires which might have been helpful were buried under the ashes of hatred of Prussia. The splendid Teutonism of Weber was tolerated with ill grace, and the intrigues of his associate Morlacchi, at the head of the Italian opera, were permitted to make fourfold more difficult the stupendous task of building up a German opera in a city that had always been dominated by Italian influences in art. It was four years before Weber could take the step which to us looks like an appeal from the Saxon court to the German people. The case was that of "Der FreischÜtz" against the Italian rÉgime, and it was tried and won on June 18, 1821, in the new opera house in Berlin.

The Italian rÉgime was maintained in Dresden through the efforts of the conductor of the Italian Opera, Morlacchi, the concert-master Polledro, the church composer Schubert, and Count von Einsiedel, Cabinet Minister. The efforts of these men placed innumerable obstacles in Weber's path and their influence heaped humiliations upon him. Confidence alone in the ultimate success of his efforts to regenerate the lyric drama sustained him in his trials. Against the merely sensuous charm of suave melody and lovely singing he opposed truthfulness of feeling and conscientious endeavor for the attainment of a perfect ensemble. Here his powers of organization, trained by his experience in Prague, his perfect knowledge of the stage imbibed with his mother's milk, and his unquenchable zeal gave him amazing puissance. Thoroughness was his watchword. He put aside the old custom of conducting while seated at the pianoforte and appeared before his players with a bÂton. He was an inspiration, not a figure-head. His mind and his emotions dominated theirs and were published in the performance. He raised the standard of the chorus, stimulated the actors, inspected the stage-furnishings and costumes and stamped harmony of feeling, harmony of understanding, harmony of efforts upon the first work undertaken—a performance of MÉhul's "Joseph in Egypt." Nor did he confine his educational efforts to the people of the theatre. He continued in Dresden the plan first put into practice by him in Prague of printing articles about new operas in the newspapers to stimulate public appreciation of their characteristics and beauties. For a while the work of organization checked his creative energies, but when his duties touching new music for court or church functions gave him the opportunity he wrote with undiminished energy. His masses in E-flat and G were thus called forth, and his "Jubilee Cantata," the overture to which, composed later, is now a universal possession.

The year which gave him his wife also gave him the opera book with the composition of which it was destined he should crown his career as a National composer. Apel's "Gespensterbuch" had fallen into his hands seven years before, and he had marked the story of "Der FreischÜtz" for treatment. His mind reverted to it again in the spring of 1817. Friederich Kind agreed to write the book and placed it complete in his hands on March 1st, nine days after he had undertaken the commission. Weber's enthusiasm was great, but circumstances prevented him from devoting much time to the composition of the opera. He wrote the first of its music in July, 1817, but did not complete it till May 13, 1820. It was in his mind during all this period, however, and would doubtless have been finished much earlier had he received an order to write an opera from the Saxon court. In this expectation he was disappointed, and the honor of having encouraged the production of the most national opera ever written went to Berlin, where the patriotism which had been warmed by Weber's settings of KÖrner's songs was still ablaze and where Count BrÜhl's plans were discussing to bring him to the Prussian capital as Capellmeister. The opera was given under circumstances that produced intense excitement in the minds of Weber's friends. It was felt that the patriotic interest which the name and presence of KÖrner's collaborator aroused would not alone suffice to achieve a real triumph for a work of art. The sympathies of the musical areopagus of Berlin were not with Weber or his work,—neither before nor after the first performance; but Weber spoke to the popular heart and its quick responsive throb lifted him at once to the crest of the wave which soon deluged all Germany. The overture had to be repeated to still the applause that followed its first performance, and when the curtain fell on the last scene a new chapter in German art had been opened.

The difficulties which surrounded the production of "Der FreischÜtz" and the doubt felt touching its fate seemed to have almost unnerved Weber's friends. He alone had remained undisturbed. For a year his mind had been in a fever of creative activity. The incidental music for the melodrama "Preciosa" had gone to Berlin with the score of "Der FreischÜtz," and before he left Dresden to produce his opera he had begun to work on the music of "Die drei Pintos," a comic opera for which Theodor Hill had supplied the book. On the eve of the great "FreischÜtz" day he composed his "ConcertstÜck," which until recent years was the most universally popular of his pianoforte compositions and now is esteemed as only second to the exquisitely graceful, eloquent and romantic "Invitation," which he composed and dedicated to his wife shortly after his marriage.

Weber had begun the hopeless fight against the disease that robbed him of his mother at the age of twenty-six years, before he came to Dresden. He did not possess the physical constitution for a long combat. He was small and narrow-chested. Much of the superhuman energy which marked the last five years of his life was due to the unnatural eagerness of his mind to put forth the whole of his artistic evangel before bodily dissolution should silence the proclamation.

There is no doubt that it was sheer will-power that kept the vital fires burning in his tortured body until the uttermost faggot of fuel which could nourish them was burned to ashes. The picture which Sir Julius Benedict draws of him as he appeared when Sir Julius entered his house to become his pupil in February, 1821, is indescribably pathetic in its simple eloquence: "I found him sitting at his desk and occupied with the pianoforte arrangement of his 'FreischÜtz.' The dire disease which but too soon was to carry him off had made its mark on his noble features; the projecting cheek-bones, the general emaciation, told their sad tale; but in his clear eyes, too often concealed by spectacles, in his mighty forehead fringed by a few straggling locks, in the sweet expression of his mouth, in the very tone of his weak but melodious voice, there was a magic power which attracted irresistibly all who approached him." The last period of his life, the period in which he went on uninterruptedly from one great achievement to another, strengthening the foundations of the new structure his genius had reared, lifting it higher and extending it in all directions, was for his physical body but a period of torment. His rewards were many, but those which brought the greatest benison of felicity and comfort flowed from his domestic life, or came from without the province of his official labors. Dresden shared the glory which he had won in Berlin and elsewhere, but his masters refused him the honors the rest of the world was glad to give. His king denied him the petty insignias of distinction which no man in the kingdom had so richly earned, yet, though opportunities offered (such as an invitation to become musical director at Hesse Cassel) he refused to change his field of labor, inspired by a desperate determination to conquer the indifference of the Saxon court. "Der FreischÜtz" had set Germany on fire, but its composer waited a year before he was privileged to produce it in Dresden. Nearly three months before that occurrence he received an invitation to compose an opera for the KÄrnthnerthor theatre, in Vienna, under the management of Barbaja. He chose the blue-stocking, Helmina von Chezy, as his collaborator, and began work on "Euryanthe." It was another tremendous stride in the path of progress; but the world did not know it, for now Weber was the forward man leading the way into the hitherto unexplored fields of dramatic music. He went to Vienna in September, 1823, to bring out his new work. Of all the incidents of the memorable visit none is more significant than his meeting with Beethoven. It was a tardy meeting. As lad and youth he had been in Vienna without manifesting the slightest desire to meet the great master. In his self-elected capacity as critic he had attacked the symphonies in E-flat and B-flat. It is not improbable that it was the study of "Fidelio," which he produced at Prague, and afterward at Dresden, that opened his mind to the significant relationship which Beethoven bore to his own efforts to reanimate a national art-spirit in Germany. At any rate when the composer of "Euryanthe" went to Vienna it was as a musician filled with veneration for the composer of "Fidelio," and the reception which he met with at the hands of the great man touched him most profoundly. "We dined together in the happiest mood," Weber wrote to his wife; "the stern, rough man paid me as much attention as if I were a lady he was courting, and served me at table with the most delicate care. How proud I felt to receive all this attention and regard from the great master-spirit; the day will remain forever impressed on my mind and those of all who were present." Beethoven, it is said, promised to attend the first performance of "Euryanthe," which took place on October 25, but did not. He would have heard nothing of the music if he had, but there is a story that after the representation, which was tremendously successful, he wrote to Weber: "I am glad, I am glad! For this is the way the German must get the upper hand of the Italian sing-song." The success of the opera was not lasting, however. It was marred by the dramatic faults of its book, and after Weber's departure its score was horribly disfigured by excisions made by Conradin Kreutzer.

The vital forces were rapidly leaving Weber's frail body. For nearly a year and a half after the completion of "Euryanthe" he composed nothing except a French romance for voice and pianoforte. Then he marshalled his intellectual and physical forces for a last endeavor. Charles Kemble in 1824, stimulated by the success of "Der FreischÜtz" in London, commissioned him to compose an opera for Covent Garden. The work was to be in English, and after some correspondence on the subject Weber agreed to compose an opera and produce it in person for an honorarium of £1,000. While the negotiations were in progress he consulted his physician, who told him the acceptance of the commission would bring about his death in a few months, or even weeks, whereas a year's respite from all work in Italy would prolong his life five or six years. The sum offered was large and Weber's mind had been haunted by the apprehension of leaving his wife and children unprovided for. He decided to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his family, and accepted the commission. The decision made, his physical and intellectual lassitude gave way to another fit of energy. The subject agreed on was "Oberon," and PlanchÉ was to prepare the book. As a preparation, the dying composer learned English. The first two acts of the book came into his hands on January 18, the third on February 1, 1825. He began at once but suspended it in order to take the waters at Ems during the summer. He resumed work in the fall and completed the overture, which, in the usual manner of composers, he composed last, in London, on April 29, 1826. He had reached the city a week before, having travelled to Calais in his own carriage and made a stop in Paris, where he was cheered by the kind attention of men like Cherubini, Rossini, Onslow and others. No time was wasted in beginning the preparations for the production of "Oberon," nor, indeed, was there any time to waste. He superintended sixteen rehearsals, and conducted the first performance on April 12, 1826. It was his last triumph; "The composer had an even more enthusiastic reception than Rossini two or three years before," says Spitta. Weber conducted twelve performances according to contract, took part in a few concerts, gave one of his own which was a failure financially because of the indifference of the aristocracy, and then in feverish anxiety to see his family again, began preparations for his return journey. On the morning of June 5, 1826, his host, Sir George Smart, found him dead in his bed: "his head resting on his hand as if in sweet slumber; no traces of his suffering could be seen in these noble features. His spirit had fled—home indeed!" His body was buried in Moorfields Chapel on June 21, but eighteen years later, largely through the instrumentality of Richard Wagner, it was brought to Dresden and interred in the family vault with impressive ceremonies. Wagner pronounced the oration at his final resting-place, and thus emphasized the trait in his character which lay at the foundation of his greatest achievement in art: "Never lived a musician more German than thou! No matter where thy genius bore thee, in what far-away unfathomable realm of fancy, always did it remain fastened with a thousand sensitive fibres to the heart of the German people, with which it smiled and wept like an undoubting child listening to the fairy tales of its native land. This ingenuousness it was which led thy manhood's mind like a guardian angel and preserved it chaste; and in this chastity lay thy individuality: preserving this glorious virtue unsullied thou wast lifted above the need of artificial invention. It was enough for thee to feel, for when thou hadst felt then hadst thou already discovered the things which have been from the beginning. And this lofty virtue didst thou preserve even into thy death. Thou couldst not sacrifice it, nor divest thyself of this lovely heritage of thy German lineage; thou couldst not betray us!—Behold, now the Briton does thee justice, the Frenchman admires thee, but only the German can love thee! Thou art his, a lovely day out of his life, a warm drop of his blood, a fragment of his heart—who will blame us for wishing that thy ashes might become a portion of his earth, his precious German earth?"

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.