Overtures

“I’m waiting in agony for a good libretto…I don’t feel right when I haven’t got an opera in hand.” The sad fact is that Weber, the most gifted opera composer working in Germany before Wagner, only once found a libretto anywhere near worthy of him and, as a direct consequence, wrote only one opera which survives in the regular repertoire today. Even Der Freischütz has its problems but it is a model of the librettist’s art in comparison with the texts of the next two operas he completed. The ultimate examples of the Weber dilemma, both Euryanthe and Oberon are abundant in music of the highest quality and both are virtually unstageable.

The consolation is that Weber’s genius is most succinctly and most engagingly represented in his overtures. He was an inspired melodist, a brilliant orchestrator and a consummate designer of single-movement structures which - although their primary function was to create the appropriate atmosphere in the theatre or opera house - are entirely convincing as separate items in the concert hall. Not all of the ten surviving overtures are masterpieces but, while there are some amusing oddities, there is not one failure. It is almost as though Weber knew that his reputation would one day depend not so much on the operas he was so eager to write as on their overtures.

Overture: Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn

The overture to Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn (“Peter Schmoll and his Neighbours”) is a good example of the care Weber took with these works. The libretto of the opera, based on a sprawling novel about a group of friends dispersed by the French Revolution, would have been an impossible task for the most experienced composer let alone the fifteen-year-old boy who applied himself to it in 1802. Staged in Salzburg in 1803, Peter Schmoll was not a great success.

Although Weber took no further interest in the rest of the score, the overture he thought worth saving and, after carrying out a thorough revision in 1807, he had it published as a concert work under the title Grande ouverture à plusieurs instruments. Its operatic origins are still clear enough, however - if not in the Andante moderato introduction or the cheerful first subject of the Allegro vivace then certainly in the characteristically lyrical second subject and, above all, in the expressive Adagio intervention on woodwind just before the recapitulation.

Overture: Turandot

The overture to Turandot - which was first performed in Weimar in 1809 as one of several items of incidental music to the Gozzi play which was to inspire operas by both Busoni and Puccini more than a hundred years later - is one of the amusing oddities. It is actually a reworking of an Overtura Chinesa which Weber had written in 1804, taking its one and only theme from an article on Chinese music in Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de la Musique. Purely pentatonic apart from one curiously wrong note, the tune clearly fascinated Weber who must have been delighted to find such apt use for it in the Chinese setting of Gozzi’s play. “Drums and pipes introduce the strange, bizarre melody,” he wrote, “which is taken up by the orchestra and presented in various forms.” It also fascinated Hindemith, who made a specially witty feature of it in his Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber in 1943.

Overture: Preciosa

Weber’s Preciosa music was also intended for a play - a German version of a story by Cervantes about a gypsy beauty who inspires the devotion of a young Spanish aristocrat and who finally turns out, of course, to be of noble birth herself. What little Weber knew of Spanish music he supplemented by reading round the subject as he got to work on the incidental music in Dresden in 1820. As the overture confirms, he discovered some genuine-sounding examples. There is a fairly authentic bolero, introduced by first violins over a staccato rhythm on saltando strings in the opening Allegro moderato section, and there is a colourful “Gypsy March” exotically scored for wind and percussion. The march tune is then accelerated to become one of the two main themes of the concluding Allegro con fuoco. It is far from the Spain of Carmen - in spite of a number of similarities to Bizet’s opera in both the text and the music - but it is no less entertaining for that.

Gerald Larner©

“I’m waiting in agony for a good libretto…I don’t feel right when I haven’t got an opera in hand.” The sad fact is that Weber, the most gifted opera composer working in Germany before Wagner, only once found a libretto anywhere near worthy of him and, as a direct consequence, wrote only one opera which survives in the standard repertoire today. Even Der Freischütz has its problems but it is a model of the librettist’s art in comparison with the texts of the next two operas he completed. Euryanthe    and Oberon - his last large-scale works and the ultimate examples of the Weber dilemma - are both of them abundant in music of the highest quality and both of them are virtually unstageable.

The consolation is that Weber’s genius is most succinctly and most engagingly represented in his overtures. He was an inspired melodist, a brilliant orchestrator and a consummate designer of single-movement structures which - although their primary function was to create the appropriate atmosphere in the theatre or opera house - are entirely convincing as separate items in the concert hall. Not all of the ten surviving overtures are masterpieces but, while there are some amusing oddities, there is not one dud. Brought up in a theatrical family and heir to many disappointments, Weber was acutely aware of the risks involved in mounting any kind of stage production: a well written overture, presenting the best of the musical material in a self-contained form, was an insurance against total failure.

Aufforderung zum Tanz

orchestrated by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Apart from the overtures, another consolation for Weber’s bad luck with his librettists is the operatic quality of so many of his instrumental works. His Aufforderung zum Tanz (“Invitation to the Dance”), one of several virtuso piano pieces he wrote in Dresden in 1819, is a particularly interesting in this respect. It begins with an eloquent recitative dialogue in which a gentleman dancer (represented in Berlioz’s orchestration by a solo cello) gracefully persuades a lady (clarinet and flute) to partner him in a waltz. It ends with a brief exchange of thanks between the same protagonists.

As an early and irresistible example of the sustained waltz sequence so fruitfully developed by the Strauss family later in the century, the Aufforderung zum Tanz would surely have enjoyed lasting success in its original piano version. But what made it really famous was the orchestral arrangement written by Berlioz for a production of Der Freischütz at the Paris Opera in 1841. Berlioz was a fervent admirer of Weber and reluctant to interfere with his work.    On the other hand, since Der Freischütz would not have been performed at the Paris Opera without a ballet, he agreed to supply one, along with the recitatives (rather than spoken dialogue) also required by the rules of the house. He did it with great skill and much discretion, transposing the Aufforderung zum Tanz from D flat to D major but otherwise, as he said, “without changing a note.”

Der Beherrscher der Geister, Overture                         

Weber usually turned to the overture when he had more or less finished the rest of the opera. In the case of Rübezahl, however - a project begun in 1804 between Peter Schmoll and Silvana - he seems to have approached the overture at an early stage in the composition. Certainly, although the opera was never finished, there was enough of the overture for Weber to return to it seven years later and issue what he described as “a complete reworking” of it as a concert overture,Der Beherrscher der Geister (“The Ruler of the Spirits”). While the new title refers to the sinister central figure of Rübezahl, the overture is now quite independent of the opera, dramatically orientated though it is. What it is really about is the contrast between the impulsive and brilliantly scored violin theme at the beginning and the lyrical material later introduced by woodwind - above all the lovely oboe melody which is triumphantly taken up by the brass with militaristic kettle-drum accompaniment not long before the end.   

Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn, Overture

Peter Schmoll is a fascinating indication of the care Weber took with the overture even at the beginning of his operatic career. Based on a sprawling novel by Carl Gottlob Cramer,Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn (“Peter Schmoll and his Neighbours”) - about a group of friends dispersed by the French Revolution - Joseph Türk’s libretto would have been a daunting prospect for any composer. For the fifteen-year-old boy who applied himself to it in 1802 it was an impossible task . The opera was staged in Salzburg in the following year but, in spite of the declaration by Weber’s teacher, Michael Haydn, that it was composed “with much fire and delicacy and appropriately to the text,” it was not a success.

Although Weber took little further interest in the rest of the score, the overture he thought worth saving    and, after carrying out a thorough revision in 1807, he had it published under the title Grande ouverture à plusieurs instruments. Concert work though it now is, its operatic origins are still quite clear - not so much in the serious-minded Andante moderato introduction or the cheerful first subject of the Allegro vivace, perhaps, but certainly in the joyfully lyrical second subject and, above all, in the expressive Adagio intervention on woodwind just before the recapitulation.

Preciosa, Overture

Weber’sPreciosa was written not for the opera house but for the theatre. It was commissioned for a German version of a story by Cervantes about a gypsy beauty who inspires the devotion of a young Spanish aristocrat and who finally turns out, of course, to be of noble birth herself. What little Weber knew of Spanish music he supplemented by reading round the subject as he got to work on the incidental music in Dresden in 1820. As the overture confirms, he discovered some genuine-sounding examples. There is a fairly authentic bolero, introduced by first violins over a staccato rhythm on saltando strings in the opening Allegro moderato section, and there is a colourful “Gypsy March” exotically scored for wind and percussion. The march tune is then accelerated to become one of the two main themes of the concluding Allegro con fuoco.    It is far from the Spain of Carmen - in spite of a number of similarities to Bizet’s opera in both the text and the music - but it is no less entertaining for that.

Abu Hassan, Overture

Although Weber was to enjoy only one full-scale operatic triumph - on the first performance of Der Freischütz    in Berlin in 1821 - he must have been encouraged by the not unfriendly reception ofSilvana in Frankfurt in 1810 and the rather more conspicuous success of Abu Hassan in Munich in 1811. Abu Hassan, a one-act Singspiel based on a comic episode from the ArabianThousand and One Nights, is the least ambitious of his operatic works but, precisely because of that, it escapes the dramatic extravagance which proved so detrimental to his more romantic projects. The overture is correspondingly short and brilliantly to the point. While it includes a characteristically lyrical second subject it begins and ends with the exotic dance activity and the so-called “Turkish” percussion colouring so much in favour at the time. Weber clearly knew Mozart’s Die    Entführung aus dem Serail and learned from it.

Jubel Overture

Unlike the other works of its kind, the Jubel (“Jubilee”) Overture has nothing to do with the theatre, even though it draws on the discarded Rübezahl score for some of its material.    It was written in 1818 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the accession of Friedrich August III, King of Saxony, who had recently appointed the composer to the post of Music Director at the German Opera in Dresden. So, while the Weber we know is unmistakably present in the central Presto, he is less recognisable in the outer sections. Uncharacteristic though it is, the ceremonial opening Adagio is impressive enough to have been echoing in Wagner’s memory, however faintly, when he came to write the Meistersinger Overture fifty years later. The last section is a splendid orchestral version (originally arranged for Weber’s cantata Kampf und Sieg)of the Saxon national anthem. Although the words of Heil dir im Siegerkranz are no longer familiar today, the melody certainly is.

Turandot, Overture and March

The Overture to Turandot - one of several items of incidental music compiled in 1809 for the Gozzi play which was to inspire operas by both Busoni and Puccini more than a hundred years later - is one of the amusing oddities rather than a masterpiece of its kind. It is actually a reworking of an Overtura Chinesa which Weber had written in 1804, taking its one and only theme from an article on Chinese music in Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de la Musique. Purely pentatonic apart from one curiously wrong note, the tune clearly fascinated Weber who must have been delighted to find such apt use for it in the Chinese setting of Gozzi’s play. “Drums and pipes introduce the strange, bizarre melody,” he wrote, “which is taken up by the orchestra and presented in various forms.”

The same indefatigable tune is also the basis of the March and, indeed, of all the Turandot incidental music. Friedrich von Schiller, for whose German version of the play Weber’s mischievous little score was written, did not live to hear it. But he would surely have been amused by it. Certainly, it did not displease Paul Hindemith, who made a witty feature of the same Chinese tune in his Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber in 1943.

Aufforderung zum Tanz

orchestrated by Felix Weingartner (1863-1942)

The Austrian conductor and composer Felix Weingartner thought little of Berlioz’s orchestration of the Aufforderung zum Tanz which, basically, he felt was too faithful to Weber’s piano score. It was his conviction that an orchestral arrangement should take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the new medium. So, although he restored the original key of D flat major, he took it upon himself to expand the construction - not least by interpolating a cadenza between the opening recitative and the main waltz section - and to elaborate the texture by introducing a contrapuntal interest absent from the original. The climax of the piece in the Weingartner version, where all the main themes appear together, is a tour de force of its kind.

Gerald Larner©