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Updated: May 7, 2025
The first great work of his life, "Der Freischütz," was written at this period. Three other important operas followed, "Preciosa," "Euryanthe," the first performance of which took place in Vienna in 1823, and "Oberon," which he finished in London and brought out there.
Yet he writes in 1830 that he intends going to Weimar, "for the sly reason of being able to call myself a pupil of Hummel." Wieck, his father-in-law, he esteemed greatly as teacher and adviser, but it offended him deeply that Wieck should have followed the common error of estimating genius with a yard-stick, and asked where were his "Don Juan" and his "Freischütz?"
I have already referred to the manner in which Weber, while composing certain parts of the "Freischütz," got his imagination into the proper state of creative frenzy by picturing to himself his bride as if she were singing new arias for him.
But in imaginative power and in the minute knowledge of orchestral detail, which enabled him to translate his conceptions into music, he has never been surpassed among writers for the stage. Modern opera, if we may speak in general terms, may be said to date from the production of 'Der Freischütz.
When he reached Prague, he concealed from her all the distress he had suffered, and there was nothing but happiness in their reunion. Returning to Dresden, he took up more seriously the composition of "Der Freischütz." The first note of it that he wrote was the second act duet between Agathe and Aennchen; he took Caroline as his ideal.
He turned up his cuffs, he took a look at the pedals, he threw back his head, shaking his long brown hair; and then, with a crash like thunder, his two hands struck the keys. He had forgotten all about that sonata: it was a fantasia of his own, based on the airs in Der Freischütz, that he played; and as he played Sheila's poor little piano suffered somewhat.
Den Freischutz in particular appealed very strongly to my imagination, mainly on account of its ghostly theme. The emotions of terror and the dread of ghosts formed quite an important factor in the development of my mind. From my earliest childhood certain mysterious and uncanny things exercised an enormous influence over me.
Such imaginative flights as these, with its pungent final interrogatory, suggestive to man's selfishness of joys as yet untried, might tempt to tamper with the dear delight; whereas the plain statement of the most that opium could minister to happiness, as contrasted with those false vain views of it, remind me of Tennyson's poetical 'Timbuctoo, gorgeous as a new Jerusalem in Apocalyptic glories, and the mean filth-obstructed kraals dotted on an arid plain, to which, for very truthfulness, his soaring fancy drops plumbdown, as the shot eagle in 'Der Freischutz.
On 24th January the doctor abandoned the hypothesis of electricity, because the noises kept time to profane but not to sacred music. A Tartar hymn by a Tartar servant, an Islamite, had no accompaniment, but the Freischutz was warmly encored. This went beyond the most intelligent spontaneous exercises of electricity.
"What an odd-looking youth!" said my companion, who had watched me, as I seated myself beside her. "Yes, he is odd-looking; but what is odder still is that I have seen him before, that his face is familiar to me, and yet that I can't place him." The orchestra was playing the Prayer from Der Freischutz, but Weber's lovely music only deepened the blank of memory.
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