Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826): Clarinet Concerto no 1 in F Minor
Weber was a man of many contradictions. He wrote the first German Romantic opera – indeed he practically invented the genre – and yet all of his training was in high European Classicism. He was near-sighted, consumptive and walked with a limp all of his life – Beethoven would unkindly dub him a “poor weak little mannikin” – and yet he possessed extraordinary reserves of energy and could rarely sit still. He was headstrong and driven, the sternest of taskmasters in his various roles as opera director, but also a friendly and sociable man with something of reputation for pulling pranks. He had a successful marriage, and showed an impressive commitment to his family, and yet in his younger days he was a heavy drinker, ran up hefty debts and was once even thrown in jail for financial corruption.
That Carl Maria von Weber’s early life was so colourful owes much to his larger-than-life father, Franz Anton, an entrepreneur and talented opportunist, constantly on the lookout for his next get-rich-quick scheme. Weber senior had found past employment as both a soldier and then orchestral director, but from around the time of Carl Maria’s birth (in Eutin, in the German bishopric of Lübeck), he ran a number of makeshift theatre companies, often involving his own family members as performers and seldomly balancing the books. Wishing to add lustre to his commercial reputation, he added the baronial prefix “von” to his surname, claiming descendance from a south German noble family who had in fact died out several generations earlier. Having left his first wife and married for a second time (to a 16-year-old singer named Genovefa Brenner – Franz Anton was then 50), he was determined to turn their firstborn into a classic late eighteenth century child prodigy and make his fortune that way. Their firstborn in question was however a sickly child named Carl Maria, whose congenital hip defect meant that he learned to play the piano before he learned to walk.
Franz Anton’s rather itinerant career resulted in his family moving around a lot during Carl Maria’s childhood – at various times they lived in Hildburghausen (in central Germany), Salzburg, Vienna, Munich and Freiberg (in Saxony). Among Carl Maria’s teachers in piano and composition were Michael Haydn (brother of Joseph and generously giving his lessons for free) and the less well-known Johann Nepomuk Kalcher, although the latter was instrumental in setting Carl Maria on his way as an opera-composer by the age of just 12, with his Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins (The Power of Love and Wine). Weber wrote two further small operas in his mid-teens, and while neither was quite the success his father might have hoped for, they did nonetheless help him land his first adult job, as director of Breslau Opera in 1804. Although barely eighteen years old, Weber immediately demonstrated the hard-nosed rigour which he would bring to his later operatic posts. He expanded the orchestra’s resources, introduced a more challenging repertoire, organised extra rehearsals and put together a younger and fresher troupe of singers. But neither the musicians nor general public of Breslau reacted well to the young upstart’s exacting demands, and Weber would last just two years in the role.
A second important position, from 1807 to 1810, as private secretary to Duke Ludwig, the brother of King Frederick I of Württemberg, proved a near-catastrophic side-track of Weber’s career. One problem was that he was once more sharing lodgings with his ageing father, despite the latter having become a something of a liability. Just a few years earlier, Weber senior had almost accidentally killed his son, by pouring acid used for lithographing into a wine bottle, which Carl Maria then imbibed. The latter was seriously ill and lucky to survive, while his vocal cords were permanently damaged*.
*The Webers had dabbled in lithographing for several years as Franz Anton hoped to set up a profitable business in their name, also as a way of propagating copies of Carl Maria’s music.
During their employment at Ludwig’s court, it appears that Franz Anton squandered a large sum of cash which the duke had put into Carl Maria’s safekeeping. In a desperate attempt to recover the money, Carl Maria became embroiled in a scheme to sell military exemptions on behalf of their ducal employer. The ruse was discovered, and both Webers were thrown in prison (Carl Maria himself was arrested while taking a rehearsal for his newly written opera, Silvana). They were only saved by the king himself agreeing to allow the case to pass to the civil courts, in order to protect his brother Ludwig (not guiltless in the whole affair) from further scandal. Franz Anton and Carl Maria were fined instead, thrown out of Württemberg and told not to return in a hurry.
The whole sordid episode may have been a turning point in Carl Maria’s life. He stopped drinking, began to practise a more careful economy and determined to reform himself. He was “born for the second time” as he later recalled. He started keeping a diary, partly to keep track of expenses, but partly it seems to keep track of himself. He approached his career with a new focus, living for a time as a freelancer. His reputation as a virtuoso pianist grew and his composing career at last started to take off. The latter would happen in two bursts, firstly with a flurry of concert music written for celebrated clarinet virtuoso, Heinrich Baermann in around 1811, and then with the era-changing premiere of his opera Der Freischütz ten years later.
The First Clarinet Concerto in F Minor belongs to this first breakthrough period. Weber had already written a Concertino for Baermann early in 1811, which had been premiered in Munich in front of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria (thankfully no relation of Frederick I of Württemberg), and the monarch was sufficiently impressed that he commissioned two further full concertos from the composer. Weber wrote the first of these, the Concerto in F Minor, in just over a month, and to equal acclaim at its first performance. It has remained popular ever since, and it is not hard to understand why. With a user-friendly duration of just twenty minutes and combining respectful nods to Mozart with some luxuriant orchestration and sumptuous harmonies, the piece is a highly attractive example of late Classicism meeting early Romanticism.
It is also successful in the way it effortlessly combines concerto-style writing with symphonic and even operatic elements. The latter is especially apparent in the quiet, curtain-raising introduction heard on the strings, before the full orchestra enters with a dramatic, expositional tutti. Although the movement then proceeds with a serious, minor-key objective, much of it is subdued and reflective, while the solo line often eschews virtuosity in favour of lovely, aria-style melodies.
The slow, second movement, in C Major, is probably the most interesting (as well as the most beautiful) part of the concerto. It contains several elements which Weber would use again in his famous overture to Der Freischütz, also set in C Major. The opening, while making clear reference to the slow movement in Mozart’s own Clarinet Concerto, is also very much Weber’s own, with an unhurried, expansive melody in the solo line set against the richest of accompaniments in the strings. After a short, dramatic interlude in C Minor, there follows a slow, solemn chorale for three French horns, accompanied by a freer melody on the clarinet. It is a very original piece of scoring for the time, and its other-worldly, Romantic aura clearly anticipates the evocative passage for four horns heard near the start of Der Freischütz.
The final movement, in F Major, sets off with a cheery and good-humoured polka which dispels some of the gravitas of the previous two movements. But even in this more crowd-pleasing vein, Weber cannot help but keep the music interesting and varied, and free of the strictly mundane.
With a Second Concerto in E Flat Major shortly following the first, Weber would soon after promote all of his new clarinet works on tour with Baermann, the success of these concerts doing much to change the public perception of his music. His improved standing would in turn help him mount a successful performance of his ill-fated Silvana in Berlin in 1812, and this time there would be no untimely, law-enforcing interruptions. Still only in his mid-twenties, the young composer was on his way.
Suggestions for further listening
Most students learning the clarinet will have come across Weber at some point in their studies – aside from his two concertos, he would write a lovely Quintet in B Flat Major (1815), and a Grand Duo Concertant (1816), alongside other smaller works with piano accompaniment.
At around the same time as his clarinet concertos Weber composed an equally attractive pair of concertos for piano: no 1 in C Major and no 2 in E Flat Major. He wrote further concert works for cello and horn with orchestra.