Enchanted Wanderer - The Life of Carl Maria Von Weber

Lucy Poate Stebbins

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 06 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528759984
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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ENCHANTED WANDERER
THE LIFE OF Carl Maria von Weber

BY
LUCY POATE STEBBINS
AND
RICHARD POATE STEBBINS

G. P. PUTNAM S SONS
NEW YORK
C ARL M ARIA VON W EBER
Painting by Caroline Bardua
COPYRIGHT , 1940
BY LUCY POATE STEBBINS AND RICHARD POATE STEBBINS
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Van Rees Press New York
TO ELIZABETH POATE FLEMING
Preface
This book is not a treatise on Weber s music, but the biography of a man whose life as virtuoso, conductor, journalist, lover, romanticist, and wanderer would still fascinate though not a note had survived him. No previous biography of von Weber has been based on so wide a range of material, and consequently many legends have been discarded and many facts newly interpreted; but the reader may be assured that our arguments are carefully segregated and cannot interfere with his enjoyment of the narrative.
For him who values his right to verify or to disagree, however, it may be added that every statement which deviates from the traditional account-as contained in Baron Max von Weber s monumental biography of his father-rests on evidence fully set forth in the notes. Exception is made only for what is readily traceable in books of general history or in the standard English and German reference works. The bibliography, designed to assist other students, contains only what we believe may be of use to them; and a list of recently published Weber music takes the place of the usual complete catalogue.
The romantic verses heading each chapter have been selected from the works of Weber s contemporaries, and translated with an eye rather to the sense of the original than to independent poetic merit. All quotations which have previously appeared in English have been freshly translated. Our equivalents for various sums of money are subject to the usual reservations concerning metallic content and purchasing power. Illustrations unlikely to be familiar to American or English readers have been given the preference. For assistance in procuring illustrations we are particularly indebted to Mrs. Kathryn M. Achuff, Curator of the admirable Robbins Print Collection at Arlington, Massachusetts; to Professor Dr. Georg Sch nemann, Director of the Music Division in the Prussian State Library; and to the descendants of Baron von Weber.
Funds for the necessary European research were generously contributed by the Oberlaender Trust; and much of our work was done in the great libraries of Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, and Munich, and in the British Museum. It is pleasant to record that we were everywhere received with the greatest cordiality and helpfulness. Without the use of the Boston Public Library, however, and the freest access to the collections of the Harvard College Library, the book could not have been written.
We are deeply grateful to our friends in all these institutions, and to many others, for facilitating our access to indispensable material. Praise or blame for the use which we have made of this material is exclusively ours.
Lucy Poate Stebbins
Richard Poate Stebbins
Newton Centre
Massachusetts
December, 1939
Contents
I.
Noisy Webers
II.
Father and Son
III.
Lad s Will
IV.
Stranger at the Erl-King s Palace
V.
A Young Man and His Friends
VI.
Further Search for the Blue Flower
VII.
Pilgrim and Stranger
VIII.
Soul in Bondage
IX.
Wanderer s Night Song
X.
The Lovely Town
XI.
Bridal Chorus
XII.
Klein Hosterwitz
XIII.
The Great Year
XIV.
Top of the Mountain
XV.
Sister Euryanthe
XVI.
Sehnsucht
XVII.
Journey without End
XVIII.
Weber in London
XIX.
The Lonely Heart

Appendix I: F rstenau on Weber s Treatment in London

Appendix II: The Descendants of Franz Anton Weber s First Marriage

Notes

A Weber Bibliography

Index
Illustrations
Carl Maria von Weber. Painting by Caroline Bardua
Franz Anton von Weber. Painter Unknown
Genofeva von Weber. Painter Unknown
Franz Anton von Weber in 1799
Georg Joseph Vogler in 1809. From the Painting by Anton Urlaub
Jakob Meyerbeer. Portrait by Franz Kr ger
Therese Brunetti. Portrait by Bayer
View of Dresden about 1825. Colored Engraving by C. A. Richter
Count Heinrich Vitzthum von Eckst dt. Painting by Ludwig Geyer
Weber s House at Hostervitz. Artist Unknown
Gioacchino Rossini. Portrait by Jules Boilly
Francesco Morlacchi. Artist Unknown
Gasparo Spontini. Painting by Jean Gu rin
Weber in 1825. Drawing by one of the Henschel Brothers
Caroline von Weber in Widowhood. Painting by Alexander von Weber
ENCHANTED WANDERER
CHAPTER I
Noisy Webers

Dem Schnee, dem Regen ,
Dem wind entgegen ,
Im Dampf der Kl fte ,
Durch Nebeld fte ,
Immer zu! Immer zu!
Ohne Rast und Ruh! *
-G OETHE
E VEN TODAY E UTIN IS SUCH A LITTLE TOWN THAT TOURISTS FROM Hamburg never visit it; never see the lovely lake and the long gardens with staked roses whose foliage is cut away until the flowers bloom economically without leafage. Eutin looks now much as it did toward the end of the eighteenth century, with solid German Renaissance houses and a charming ch teau girdled by a moat where swans sail the livelong summer day. The trees in the linden alley were young then, and the gardens in the English style newly laid out.
But now the ducal family is exiled, and the palace of the Prince Bishops of L beck is shown to rustics for a ten-pfennig piece. In 1785 the Prince Bishop, who was also Duke of Oldenburg, used his Orangerie for theatricals requiring the services of numerous artists-among them Franz Anton Weber, an old employee of the Court musical establishment, who had just returned from Vienna with his newly married second wife. The position he came to fill, that of Town Musician, poorly suited his extraordinary talents.
The Eutiners, whose stares today are rather bovine than malevolent, must have gaped at sight of the bride; may even have anticipated, daringly, pursuit by an outraged father. For Genofeva was younger by thirty years than the battered, handsome husband whom they well remembered. She had a mass of fair hair, great blue eyes, a wild and reckless beauty. But no one troubled to come after her; and presently the stolid neighbors, forgetting how she looked, took her for what she was, at least in part-a girl subdued by ill-health and homesickness, exhausted by the dashing exuberance of the Weber family into which she had married.
Two stepsons older than herself, two grown stepdaughters, bride, and veteran husband crowded the four-roomed flat in the house of stucco-covered brick near the head of the L beckerstrasse. There was a plethora of Webers in the apartment; but the house itself, with broad curved stair and garland carved above the wide doorway, was far from squalid. Though Eutin is the Rose Town of Germany, * the blight falls early in the north. Autumn is cruel; December freezes the very heart. The young bride pined for Vienna and for Italy, where as a child, half-naked and starving as she had been, she had not felt such cold.
Her son was born on the eighteenth of December, 1786. He was the ninth child of the father, for whom the occasion presented no novelty. But even that experienced parent was not used to greet so frail a morsel as this latecomer. The Catholic Webers thought it wise to hurry on the christening, and the child was named Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber. The grown brothers and sisters took a realistic view of the infant: probably he would die; but if he lived he was not likely to improve the family fortunes.
The Webers did not know that Carl Maria was born with congenital hip disease; probably they did not realize that Genofeva was already tubercular-facts, nevertheless, which did not improve the prospects of Franz Anton s youngest son. No one knows what Genofeva thought of her little boy. But the gifted, erratic old father knew perfectly well that a genius lay on the languid arm of the girl in the corner room.
So the wailing child was destined to become a prodigy. His lame feet had been set to travel a world already at its last gasp-unquiet, darkened by tyranny, weighed down beneath an oppression already crumbling before the onslaught of new forces which would destroy prisons and monarchies, flaunting the forked banners of brave words signifying little; but would be powerless to liberate the human spirit or end the enslavement of man by men. What place in this Europe tottering on the brink of chaos for a lame boy and his German operas? Vienna, the city for which his mother s slow tears fell, was gorged with music-a temple where Salieri, the high priest, served the great god Gluck at the altar; whose gates were kept by Haydn and by Mozart; where Beethoven, Bear of the Mountain, growled beyond the walls. Elsewhere, in every capital city and in every petty Court, Italian classicism was entrenched.
But if we are to understand these Webers, we must go back to their beginnings, which were ludicrously unlike what Franz Anton told his son, and what his grandson, Baron Max von Weber, * recounted in the family biography. The great-grandfathers of the child in the corner room upstairs were a peasant, a huntsman, a wig-maker from Brittany, and a miller of the Black Forest. So much for the noble ancestry of Europe s most aristocratic comp