There are critics, I suppose, prepared to insist that Weber, like
Mozart, is a little _passé_ now. And it is true that no composer, save
Mozart, is at once so widely accepted and so seldom heard; for even
Bach is more frequently played and less generally praised. At rare
intervals Richter, Levi, or Mottl play his overtures; the pieces for
piano and orchestra are occasionally dragged out to display the
prowess of a Paderewski or a Sauer; and one or another of the piano
sonatas sometimes finds its way into a Popular Concert programme. But
the pieces thus made familiar to the public may be counted on one's
ten fingers; and the operas are scarcely sung at all, though they
contain the finest music that Weber wrote. The composers who have
lived since Weber, even if they differed on every other subject and
did not agree as to the value of his instrumental music, united to
sing a common song in praise of the operas. Indeed, so enthusiastic
were they, that after listening to them anyone who does not know his
Weber well may easily experience a certain disappointment on looking
carefully for the first time at the scores of "Der Freischütz,"
"Oberon," and "Euryanthe"; and it is perhaps because they have
experienced that disappointment, that some critics whose opinions are
worth considering have come to think that a faith in Weber is nothing
more than a part of the creed learned by every honest Wagnerite at the
Master's knee. But it need be nothing so foolish, so baseless If you
look, and look rightly, for the right thing in Weber's music,
disappointment is impossible; though I admit that the man who
professes to find there the great qualities he finds in Mozart,
Beethoven, or any of the giants, must be in a very sad case. Grandeur,
pure beauty, and high expressiveness are alike wanting. You look as
vainly for such touches as the divine last dozen bars "Or sai chi
l'onore" in "Don Giovanni," or the deep emotion of the sobbing bass at
"the first fruits of them that sleep" in "I know that my Redeemer
liveth," as for the stately splendour of "Come and thank Him" in the
"Christmas Oratorio," or the passion of "Tristan." His music never
develops in step with the movement of the drama he treats: if he
writes a tragic scene, he is apt to commence with a scream; and if he
is not at his best, then the scream may degenerate into a whimper
before the moment for the climax has arrived. Like Spohr, with whom he
had much in common, despite the difference between his mercurial
temperament and the pedagogic gravity of the composer of "The Last
Judgment," he set great store upon his learning, and was fond of
trivial themes that admitted of obvious contrapuntal treatment. Even
when he avoided that failing, his music is often uncouth and
ponderous, while on its surface lies a superfluous, highly-coloured
froth. The basses move with leaden-footed reluctance; the melodies
consist largely of ineffective arpeggios on long-drawn chords; the
embroidery seems greatly in excess of modest needs. All this may be
conceded without affecting Weber's claim to a place amongst the
composers; for that claim is supported in a lesser degree by the gifts
which he shared, even if his share was small, with the greater masters
of music, than by his miraculous power of vividly drawing and painting
in music the things that kindled his imagination. Drawing and
painting, I say; for whereas the other musicians sang the emotions
that they experienced, Weber's music gives you the impression that he
depicted the things he saw, that melody and harmony were to him as
lines and colours to the painter. He is first, and perhaps greatest,
of all the musicians who have attempted landscape; and that froth of
seemingly superfluous colour and excess of melodic embroidery, instead
of being in excess and superfluous, are the very essence of his music.
Being a factor of the Romantic movement, that mighty rebellion against
the tyranny of a world of footrules and ledgers, he lived and worked
in a world where two and two might make five or seven or any number
you pleased, and where footrules were unknown; he took small interest
in drama taken out of the lives of ordinary men and enacted amidst
everyday surroundings; his imagination lit up only when he thought of
haunted glens and ghouls and evil spirits, the fantastic world and
life that goes on underneath the ocean, or of men or women held by
ghastly spells. Hence his operas are not so much musical dramas as
series of tableaux, gorgeous glowing pictures of unheard-of things; in
them we must expect only to find the elfish, the fantastic, the wild
and weird and grotesquely horrible; and to look for drama, captivating
loveliness, and emotional utterance, is to look for qualities which
Weber did not try to attain, or only in a small measure and not very
successfully. And if we consider carefully the remarks of the best
critics amongst the later masters, Berlioz and Wagner, we can see that
they knew Weber had not attained these high qualities,--that what they
grew enthusiastic over was his astonishing pictorial gift, shown,
first, in the pictures his imagination presented to him, and second,
in the way he projected those pictures on to the music-paper before
him, using the common musician's devices of his day to suggest line,
colour, space, and atmosphere.
The precise provocation of this essay was a certain performance of
"Lohengrin." During the first act the drama proceeded with charming,
almost Mozartean, smoothness; and I was surprised to find that the
smoother it went the more irresistibly the music reminded me of Weber,
until I remembered that "Lohengrin" is Wagner's most Weberish opera,
and that in his youth Wagner heard Weber sung, not as he is sung
now--that is, like an early Wagner music-drama--but as Weber intended
it to be sung, like a later Mozart opera. For Weber stood very near to
Mozart, modern as he often seems. He was born before Mozart died; he
worshipped him, and absolutely refused to speak to Salieri because
Salieri had been Mozart's enemy; and it is easy to see, when once we
rid ourselves of the idea that he was a rudimentary music-dramatist,
that in his music he adhered as closely to Mozartean simplicity as his
very different genius would permit. Perhaps, after all, it is his
greatest glory that he is the connecting link between Mozart and
Wagner, between the greatest composer born into the eighteenth century
and the greatest born into the nineteenth; for the musical-pictorial
art which he evolved from Mozart's technique was used by Wagner with
only the slightest modifications in the making of his music-dramas.
But whereas Weber was a factor in the Romantic movement when it was
most magnificently unreasonable, Wagner came later, and, though he
felt the force of the current, it did not carry him into the
absurdities that weaken--for they do weaken--much of Weber's work.
Wagner has been described as Weber, as Weber might have become; but
the truth is that he was Weber's younger brother, who took Weber's art
and used it to nobler ends with a degree of intellect, dramatic power,
invention, and passion which Weber did not possess. To Weber the
scenery was the important thing, and humanity almost seemed to be
dragged in because the human voice was indispensable; but Wagner,
going back to Mozart, restored humanity to its proper place, thus
making his opera into real drama, and kept the fantastic creatures who
haunted Weber's woods and glens and streams only as emblems of the
natural forces that war for or against humanity. Above all, he got rid
of Weber's stage villains--for Samiel is merely the stage villain of
commerce; and, instead of the dusk and shadow in which Weber's fancy
loved to roam, he gives us sunlight and the sweet air. "Lohengrin" is
full of sunlight and freshness; full, too, of a finer mystery than
ever Weber dreamed of--the mystery with which the most delicate German
imagination invested the broad rivers that flowed through the black
forests from some far-away land of unchangeable stillness and beauty,
some "land of eternal dawn," as Wagner calls it. No more Mozartean
music is in existence, save Mozart's own, than that first act of
"Lohengrin," where Wagner, by dint of being Weberish, came nearer to
Mozart than ever Weber came; for Weber never wrote anything which,
regarded as absolute music, apart from its emotional significance, or
the picture it suggests to the inner eye, is so purely beautiful as,
for instance, the bit of chorus sung after Lohengrin concludes his
little arrangement with Elsa. Both the first and the second acts are
full of such melodies, any two of which would prove Wagner to be the
greatest melody-writer of the century; and those critics who say that
Verdi is greater because his melodies are more like Mozart's in form,
would have said, had they lived last century, that Salieri was greater
than Mozart because Salieri's melodies were more like Hasse's in form.
Perhaps the last act might be quite as exquisite on the stage, for it
is even more exquisite in the score; but that we shall not know until
our operatic singers abandon their vanity and their melodrama, and by
reading an occasional book, and sometimes going out into the world,
learn how much they themselves would gain if they always worked with
artistic sincerity.