(VI) Theatre music.

A particularly obscure area of Weber's output is his music for the spoken theatre, which he composed between 1809 and 1822 for specific productions of mostly long-forgotten plays and Festspiele. Understanding of Weber's contributions in this area is plagued by the relatively poor survival of musical and theatrical sources and questions of authenticity. In general, these pieces fulfil functions specified by the plays, which – with the exception of the celebratory Festspiele – tend to introduce music in a ‘realistic’ fashion. Thus much of the incidental music is song presented as such, like the narrative ballads and Romanzen to guitar accompaniment in Der arme Minnesänger and Das Nachtlager von Granada, or the singing of nuns to an organ-like wind accompaniment in Carlo. Comparably realistic uses of music include marches and/or dances (Turandot, Das Haus Anglade, Der Tod Heinrichs IV, Sappho, Preciosa) and fanfares (König Yngurd). In conjunction with its tendency to such functional realism, Weber's theatre music is frequently also a locus for couleur locale, as Weber sought to enhance the atmosphere of a play through reference to folk or exotic melodies and use of characteristic instrumentation and harmonization; examples include the chinoiserie in the overture and marches to Schiller's Turandot, the allegedly authentic Spanish melody in Das Nachtlager von Granada (its florid style provoked criticism that Weber did not allow to go unanswered), the quotation of the well-known folksong ‘Vive Henri quatre’ in Der Tod Heinrichs IV, the archaizing harmonies of the chorus for Grillparzer's Sappho and the vaguely Mediterranean flavour for the Provençal setting of Das Haus Anglade.

By far Weber's most important contribution to spoken theatre is the music for P.A. Wolff's Preciosa, commissioned and composed in 1820 for a Berlin production of the play which received its first performance on 14 March 1821. Wolff's play, based on one of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares, calls for an unusually large amount of music to characterize the opposed Spanish and gypsy elements in the drama and to take advantage of the singing and dancing talents of Auguste Stich, who performed the title role in Berlin (Ziegler, O1996). In response, Weber wrote some of his most affecting music, which includes choruses and dances that supply the musical couleur locale as well as songs that convey the feelings of the title character, a Gypsy orphan who turns out to be of aristocratic Spanish birth. The Preciosa music also manifests certain operatic attributes, most obviously in the programmatic overture, the melodramas for Preciosa, and the use of recurring melodies. The play (with Weber's music) rivalled the popularity of Der Freischütz in the Dresden repertory and was widely disseminated, but with the disappearance of Wolff's play from the stage Weber's music has also largely vanished from public consciousness.

Weber: (9) Carl Maria von Weber

13. Operas.

Despite his self-professed ‘inclination to the dramatic’ (Autobiographische Skizze) and the dominance of the operas in his posthumous reputation, Weber's activities as a composer of opera are not spread evenly throughout his career. For biographical and stylistic reasons it is perhaps most meaningful to group his operas into three phases: early operas written between 1799 and 1806; the two operas that grew out of his collaboration with the Stuttgart librettist F.C. Hiemer; and the three masterworks of the Dresden years.

(i) Early works.

(ii) The Hiemer operas.

(iii) Mature operas.

Weber: (9) Carl Maria von Weber, §13: Operas