by previous generations on both sides. With Bach this was Protestant church music in its noblest form, with Weber, national opera in its most brilliant if not its most perfect development. The earliest known member of the family, Johann Baptist, a man of property in Lower Austria during the latter half of the 16th century, was made Freiherr by the Emperor Ferdinand II in 1622. The family was, and still is, Roman Catholic. We know nothing of Johann Baptist's musical tastes or faculties, but his younger brother, Joseph Franz Xaver, apparently living in Upper Swabia, is said to have been a great amateur of music and the drama. The title of the elder brother was not transmitted till 1738, and of the younger one's descendants, one, Fridolin, was in the service of Freiherr von Schönau-Zella, near Freiburg im Breisgau, in the 18th century, and died in 1754. He was passionately devoted to music sang, and played the violin and organ. Of his two sons, the elder, also a Fridolin (and also a singer and violin player) became the father of Mozart's wife Constance; and, as is well-known, she, and in a still greater degree her sisters, Josepha, Aloysia, and Sophie, were excellent, and almost distinguished singers. Constance's father succeeded his father as manager of the Schönau-Zella estates, and apparently dropped the von, which was not borne by Mozart's wife.
His younger brother, Franz Anton von Weber, born 1734, became the father of Carl Maria, who was thus connected by marriage with Mozart. Franz Anton must have been a violinist of more than common ability, as we find him included, by those qualified to speak, amongst the most distinguished viola players of the time.[1] He was also a virtuoso on the double-bass. He took military service with the Elector Palatine, Carl Theodore, at Mannheim, on the understanding that he was to assist in the celebrated court band. He fought against Frederic the Great at Rosbach (1756) and was slightly wounded, after which he left the army, and entered the service of the Elector Clement Augustus at Cologne. In 1758 he became Steward to the Prince-Bishop, and Court-Councillor at Steuerwald, near Hildesheim. His devotion to music, which was such that he would even play the violin while walking in the fields with his family, caused him to neglect the duties of his office, and he was deprived of it. From 1768 to 1773 he lived at Hildesheim as an ordinary citizen, and there decided, despite his age and numerous family, on becoming a practical musician. He appears to have started on a tour as a viola-player,[2] and then settled in Lübeck, where he published 'Lieder mit Melodien fürs Clavier' (1774), compositions apparently not without talent, as they were noticed nine years after.[3] In 1778 he was musical director of the theatre at Lübeck, and from 1779 to 83 Capellmeister to the Prince- Bishop of Eutin. In 1784 he went to Vienna, made acquaintance with Joseph Haydn, and entrusted to him his two eldest sons, Fritz and Edmund, both of whom showed talent for music [see vol. i. p. 7086.] In 1785 he married again in Vienna, returned to Eutin, and undertook the post of director of the town-band.
At Eutin was born in 1786 the first child of his second marriage, Carl Maria von Weber. His birthday was most likely Dec. 18, but there is no absolute certainty of the fact. The father had always longed to have a child that should turn out a prodigy, such as Mozart had been. All his children, daughters as well as sons, showed talent for music and the stage, and his two eldest sons became really good musicians. Haydn was specially attached to Edmund, and wrote in his album
Fear God, love thy neighbour, and thy
Master Joseph Haydn who loves thee heartily.[4]
Estoras (sic), May 22, 1783.
But Franz Anton could not disguise from himself that so far none of his children surpassed mediocrity, and he was all the more anxious to discern in Carl Maria talent of a higher order. Inconstant by nature, his character was an odd mixture of vanity and a pretentious vein of comedy with the most brilliant and versatile gifts, forming a most unsatisfactory whole. Such a disposition was little adapted to the training of a gifted child. Carl Maria was early set to learn music, principally under his father, who after all was but an amateur. The talent, so ardently longed for, however, would not appear in the delicate, nervous child. There is a tradition that after taking great pains with him in vain, his elder brother Fritz exclaimed on one occasion, 'Carl, you may become anything else you like, but a musician you never will be.' The father now tried him with the plastic arts, and put him to drawing, painting in oil, pastel, and enengraving. Weber, in his autobiography, says that he followed this with some success,[5] but the specimens preserved in the family show nothing beyond a certain manual dexterity, with no sign of real talent.
His father had left Eutin in 1787, and was leading a restless life as director of a dramatic troupe mainly consisting of his own grown-up children. During the next few years he is to be found in Vienna, Cassel, Meiningen, Nuremberg, Erlangen, and Augsburg. Bad as the influence of this roving life must have been on the whole, it had its advantages for Carl Maria in the special line to which he was to devote himself, for he may be said to have grown up behind the scenes. From his childhood he was at home in the stage-world as none of
- ↑ Forkel's Musikalischer Almanach for 1783, p. 93.
- ↑ Gerber's Lexicon, ii. 771.
- ↑ Forkel, p. 68, and elsewhere. M. M. von Weber, in his biography of his father (Lebensbild) i. 13, conjectures that Franz Anton had played under an assumed name up to 1778, as no trace of him is found before. Apparently he did not know of the passage in Forkel's Almanach. Gerber also mentions as compositions of Franz Anton's a cantata 'Das Lob Gottes in der Natur,' and pieces for the viola, both in MS.
- ↑ C. F. Pohl's Joseph Haydn, ii. 204. The general opinion of Edmund von Weber is somewhat opposed to Spohr's judgment on making his acquaintance in Berne in 1816. He says 'he is said to be a good theoretical musician: as a violinist and conductor he is weak.' Spohr's Selbstbiographie, i. 253.
- ↑ Weber's Litterariscbe Arbeiten, 175. (Leipzig, Kiel., 1866.)
