Friedrich Wilhelm von Weber

“ 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 ”

“ One of his pupils, Fräulein von Belonde, was lady-in-waiting to the wife of Duke Eugene of Wirtemberg, then living at Schloss Carlsruhe in Silesia, where he kept up a great deal of music. The lady's influence procured for Weber the title of Musik-Intendant, which would, it was hoped, be a help to him on his tour, but that prospect having been destroyed by the war, the Duke invited Weber to Schloss Carlsrühe. Here he found not only a refuge for himself, his father, and an aunt, but a most desirable atmosphere for the cultivation of his art. ”

“ Courts and princes had done their best to ruin Weber, but to his lasting credit he came unhurt from the ordeal. After such trying experiences he began a new life. He was no longer a parasite, dancing attendance in the antechambers of royalty, but a musician, enthusiastic for his art and eager to perfect himself in all that could assist the development of his genius. He himself realized what an escape he had had. In his diary at the close of 1810 he wrote: "God has sent me many sorrows and disappointments, but he has also thrown me with good people, who have made life worth living. ”

“ On April 1, 1822, he was appointed one of the organists of the Chapel Royal in the room of Charles Knyvett, deceased. In 1824 he accompanied Charles Kemble to Germany to engage Weber to compose an opera for Covent Garden, and when Weber came to England in 1826 to bring out his 'Oberon' he was the guest of Sir George Smart, in whose house he died on June 5. It was mainly by the exertions of Sir George Smart and Sir Julius Benedict that the statue of Weber at Dresden was erected, the greater part of the subscriptions having been collected in England. ”

“ The devotion of his friends, his happy family relations, the success of his published works, conspired to make Weber cheerful and joyous beyond his wont, for he was naturally of a melancholy and serious turn, disposed to look at life from its tragic side. ”

“ Weber's natural way of working was not to develop continuously, but to proceed from one strong contrast to another. His musical ideas are seldom adapted for thematic treatment, being always full of meaning, but with few capacities of development. The instant one idea is given out decisively it calls up another absolutely opposed to it. Illustrations of this may be found in the opening of the Rübezahl overture, as well as in the E♭ movement of the Allegro in that to 'Der Freischütz.' This method of progression by continual contrasts is undoubtedly the sign-manual of Weber's dramatic genius ”

“ Weber knew that his days were numbered. A model husband and father, the thought of his wife and children was never absent from his mind; to provide for them to the utmost of his power was not only his most sacred duty, but his highest happiness. No one can fail to be touched by the tenderness and devotion which breathe in the letters to his wife, many of which are printed by his sons in the biography. After quitting Stuttgart, he had regulated his affairs in the most exemplary manner. He lived very comfortably in Dresden, and was able even to afford himself small luxuries. ”

“ In talking of Weber, people have in their minds, as a rule, only the last period of his life, beginning with 'Der Freischütz,' and ending with 'Oberon,' but from that point of view the work becomes too prominent, and the man of too little importance. As a man his versatile gifts made more effect in the first half of his artistic career than in the second. His artistic wanderings gave the keynote to the ideal life of Germany at that period, and for the first time rounded it off, so to speak, into a full chord. ”

“ But only one of the little group, besides the subject of this sketch, has left a name to be remembered,—and that is Carl Maria von Weber. The other two may have had as noble aspirations, as untiring energy, as passionate ambitions; but Fate had decreed that Godefroy von Weber and Gänsbacher should never win the world's applause. Carl Maria and Meyerbeer were the "cronies" of the little school. They were constantly together; they built their air-castles with a view to future joint occupancy; they made their boyish vows of eternal friendship. ”

“ Helmholtz, the great physicist, is a Kantian, as also is Wundt, the chief of the school, who declares that physiology can account for the inferior but not for the superior faculties of the human mind; Fechner, the discoverer of the law that bears his name, is an illuminate far more spiritual than materialistic; and Weber is a pure physicist, indifferent as between metaphysical schools. Thus, not one of the most authoritative masters of the new science in Germany is a materialist. ”

“ These choruses for men were sung throughout the Fatherland, as they still are sung.
But from the height of glory to which he was now borne, as the living voice of the nation, he was dragged back to the depths by the little hand and the little finger-nails of Caroline, who could be jealous enough to suspect that not all the adoration Von Weber was receiving from the women of Berlin was pure and impersonal patriotism.
Von Weber had from the first insisted that no marriage of theirs could have hope of success, unless she left the stage. ”

“ His objections were, however, overcome, and in 1816 Weber accepted the important post that was offered to him. In the next year he was married to Caroline Brandt, a famous singer, the modesty and innocence of whose character had acted as a charm in exorcising the effect of a previous regrettable entanglement of Weber's. The young couple, whose happiness seemed unclouded, took up their abode in Dresden, where they soon became universally popular. ”

“ The Prince is about to banish him from his service, when the hermit appears and intercedes for the unfortunate youth. The Prince is mollified, and it is decided that Max shall have a year's probation, after which he shall be permitted to take the post of chief huntsman and marry Agathe.
'Der Freischütz' is, upon the whole, the most thoroughly characteristic of Weber's works. The famous passage for the horns, with which the overture opens, strikes the note of mystery and romance which echoes through the work. ”

“ I recognized in a motor the Very High Born, his High Mightiness, the owner of the earth, the Prince of Auersperg."
Weber took another drink of coffee.
"An able man and one of our most bitter enemies," he said. "A foe of democracy everywhere. I think he was to have been made governor of Paris, and then Paris would have known that it had a governor. ”

“ The revolt against the cruelties of science spread also about this time to the continent. Baron Weber read his Torture Chamber of Science in Dresden, and created thereby a great sensation, followed by the formation of the German League, of which he is President, and the foundation of its organ, the Thier-und-Menschen-Freund, edited by Dr. Paul Förster, now a member of the Reichstag. Other Anti-vivisection Societies were founded then or in subsequent years in Hanover, in Berlin, and in Stockholm. In Copenhagen those devoted friends of animals, M. and Mdme. ”

“ Since 1908 she has been editor-in-chief of the “Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society” and since 1913 she has been a commissioner and secretary of the Illinois State Centennial Commission. To her charge was given the task of preparing and installing the historical exhibits in the Illinois buildings at the expositions at St. Louis; Portland, Ore.; and Jamestown, Va.; and a notable Lincoln exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco. Mrs. Weber is a member of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution ”

“ The law had to be enforced; property, or at least the property of the firm, must be respected. And during an absence of the consul’s, he seems to have drawn up with his own hand, and certainly first showed to the king, in his own house, a new convention. Weber here and Weber there. As an able man, he was perhaps in the right to prepare and propose conventions. As the head of a trading company, he seems far out of his part to be communicating state papers to a sovereign. ”

“ WEBER, Paul, German artist, b. about 1823. He studied art in Frankfort, and in 1848 came to the United States, settling in Philadelphia. In 1858 he went to Darmstadt, where he was appointed court painter. ”

“ The Duke took great pleasure in his society, but, having at the time many claims on his time, invited Weber to return in the autumn and make a longer stay. In Gotha Weber met Spohr, who since 1805 had been Concertmeister—the court had then no opera—and had married in 1806 Dorette Scheidler, a harpist, and daughter of Madame Scheidler, the court-singer. Spohr had not retained a very favourable impression of Weber's music at Stuttgart, but received him in true brotherly fashion. ”

“ Schnabel left the theatre on Weber's arrival, probably from vexation at not being Capellmeister himself, and, as a man of 37, declining to serve under a lad of 18. The two continued on awkward terms, and some rudenesses of which Weber was guilty towards Schnabel, a respectable and much respected man, did not raise him in the estimation of the better part of the public. Among the managing company he had roused opponents, by insisting on several expensive alterations. Rhode, indeed, was well-disposed towards him, and wrote a libretto, 'Rübezahl,' on which Weber set to work at Breslau. ”

“ WEBER, Gottfried, Doctor of Laws and Philosophy, composer, theorist and practical musician, was born in 1779 at Freiesheim near Mannheim, and studied and travelled until, in 1802 he settled in Mannheim as a lawyer and holder of a Government appointment. ”

“ I am an Austrian. I was born on the Zillenstein estate of Prince Karl of Auersperg. My family has served his for a thousand years. Great as I hold Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, Auersperg means even more to me. The Auerspergs are the very essence and spirit of that aristocracy and rule of the very highborn, in which I believe and to which your country and later the French have stood in the exact opposite. Every time that my pulse beats within me it beats with the wish that you and all that you stand for should fail."
John did not feel the slightest doubt of Weber's sincerity. ”

“ On a trip to Heidelberg he made the acquaintance of Alexander von Dusch, a brother-in-law of Gottfried Weber, and a cello-player of great taste, who after finishing his studies at Easter, 1810, came to settle in Mannheim. The three friends spent a few happy weeks in lively intellectual intercourse, and in April Weber moved to Darmstadt, where Vogler had been living since 1807. Here he met his friends Gänsbacher and Meyerbeer from Berlin. Weber did not return to the old relations of master and pupil with Vogler, but sought to profit by intercourse with him. ”

“ It is arguable, at least, that, instead of Calvinism producing the spirit of Capitalism, both would with equal plausibility be regarded as different effects of changes in economic organisation and social structure.
It is the temptation of one who expounds a new and fruitful idea to use it as a key to unlock all doors, and to explain by reference to a single principle phenomena which are, in reality, the result of several converging causes. Weber's essay is not altogether free, perhaps, from the defects of its qualities. ”

“ Where could he go for a home but back to the household of the Webers?—now more than ever in poverty since the good father had died and Aloysia had married soon after obtaining her new engagement.
The very name of Weber was a red rag to Leopold Mozart, and he began a series of bitter rebukes, which the son answered with ample dignity and gentleness.
"What you write about the Webers, I do assure, is not the fact. I was a fool about Madame Lange, I own; but what is a man not when he is in love? ”

“ The influence of this wealthy pupil may, however, have had its share in eliciting such boundless over-estimation of a work through which an amateur seeks to intrude into the ranks of men of science.'"
Waldemar flung the paper upon the table. "Poor Doctor Fabian," he exclaimed, "how often you have to atone for having educated such an unruly, uncultivated being as I am! True, you are in no way responsible for my unworthiness, and I have not in the least influenced Professor Weber's panegyric of your book ”

“ Fechner had also established Weber's conclusions in regard to strain by the method of right and wrong cases. In the last twenty years, Tischer, Merkel, and Starke, by the method of minimal changes ; Merkel and Angell by the method of mean gradations ; and Lorenz, Merkel, and Kämpfe, by the method of right and wrong cases, have confirmed for noise intensities the results of Volkmann ; Helmholtz, Aubert, and Kräpelin have established for brightness the results of Masson ; and Merkel, using the method of minimal changes, has also proved the conclusions of Weber and Fechner in regard to strain. ”