Weber composer Brief biography

Karl Maria von Weber - lectures on musical literature Musike. The premiere of his “magic shooter”, held in Berlin on June 18, under the leadership of the author, became an event of historical significance. She put an end to the long domination of foreign, primarily Italian, opera music on the scenes of German theaters. Weber's childhood passed in the atmosphere of the nomadic provincial theater.

His mother was a singer, and his father by a violinist and the leader of a small theater troupe. The excellent knowledge of the scene acquired in childhood later was very useful to Weber, as an opera composer. Although constant trips interfered with systematic music training, already at the age of 11 he became an outstanding virtuoso-pianist of his time. From summer age, the independent activity of Weber as an opera conductor begins.

For more than 10 years he moves from place to place, without a permanent refuge and experiencing huge material difficulties. Only in the year he finally settled in Dresden, taking on the leadership of the German music theater. The Dresden period became the pinnacle of his creative activity when the composer’s best operas appeared: “Magic Shooter”, “Euryanth”, “Oberon”.

Simultaneously with the “Magic Rifle”, two famous programmatic plays of Weber were created - the piano “invitation to dance” and “Concertshtuk” for the piano with the orchestra. Both works show a brilliant concert style characteristic of the composer. In search of ways to create a folk-national opera, Weber turned to the latest German literature. With many German romantic writers, the composer communicated personally [1].

Opera "Magic shooter" "Magic shooter" is the most popular essay of Weber. His Berlin premiere was accompanied by sensational success. Soon after her, the opera bypassed theaters around the world. There are several reasons for such brilliant success: the 1st, the most important, this is a support on the tradition of the original German culture. Pictures of German folk life with its customs, the favorite motives of German fairy tales, the image of the forest is as common in German folklore as the image of the headstone in Russian folk art, or the image of the sea in English.

The music of the opera is filled with melodies in the spirit of peasant German songs and dances, the sounds of hunting horns The most striking example - the temperamental choir of hunters of 3 d. All this hurt the most secret strings of the German soul, everything was associated with national ideals. The opera appeared in an atmosphere of a patriotic upsurge caused by liberation from Napoleonic despotism.

The most important feature of the “magic shooter” is that Weber came up in a completely new way to the outline of folk life. Unlike the operas of the 18th century, the characters from the people are not shown in the comedy, emphasized the everyday plan, but deeply poetically. The everyday scenes of the folk life of the peasant holiday, the hunting competition are written out with amazing love, sincerity.

It is no coincidence that the best choral numbers - the hunters' choir, the chorus of the bride’s girlfriends - became folk. Some radically changed the traditional circle of intonations of opera arias and choirs. The composer found the plot for his opera in the short story of the German writer August Appel from the Ghost Book. Weber read this short story another year, but did not immediately take up the composition of the music.

The libretto was composed by the Dresden actor and writer I. Kind, using the instructions of the composer. The action takes place in the Czech village in the XVII century. According to the genre of the “magic shooter”-a folk-kept opera with the features of the Zingshpil [2]. Its dramaturgy is built on the interweaving of three lines, each of which is connected with its own circle of musical and expressive means: fantastic; folk -jungle, characterizing the images of hunting life and forest nature; The lyric-psychological, revealing the images of the main characters-Max and Agatha.

The fantastic line of the opera is the most innovative. Its climax is in the final II of action in the “Wolf Gorge”. The scene in the wolf gorge has a through free structure, it consists of a number of episodes independent in material. In the 1st, entrance, a mysterious, ominous atmosphere reigns, the choir of invisible spirits sounds. Its terrible, “infernal” hellish character is created by extremely laconic expressive means: this is the alternation of two sounds-“fis” and “a” in a monotonous rhythm, harmonized T and VII in the tonality of FIS-Moll.

Samjel is not singing, he only says, and exclusively in his kingdom - a wolf gorge, although throughout the opera it often appears on the stage passes, disappears. He is always accompanied by a short and very bright leitmotif - an ominous colorful stain of the chord and several fragmented fading sounds in the dull sound of low timbres. These are clanets in a low register, baskets and litaurus; The 3rd episode of Allegro is dedicated to the characterization of Caspar, with a restless impatience awaiting Max; The music of the 4th section characterizes the appearance of Max, his fear and the spiritual struggle; 5th, final section-episode of bullet casting-the culmination of the entire finals.It is decided almost exclusively by orchestral agents.

Each painting stage detail is the appearance of terrible ghosts, a thunderstorm, a “wild hunt”, a flame that is stinking from the ground receives its original musical characteristics with the help of timbre and harmonic colors. Bad dissonances, especially reduced septacords, triton combinations, chromatisms, unusual tonal comparisons dominate. The tonal plan is built according to a reduced septaccord: FIS - A - C - ES.

Weber opens up new visual capabilities of tools, especially the wind: Staccato Valtorn, sustained low sounds of clarinets, unusual timbre combinations. The innovative discoveries of the Weber Wolf Valley had a huge impact on all the music of the 19th century, in particular, on the science fiction of Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Wagner. The images of gloomy fantasy are opposed to cheerful folk scenes.

Their music is somewhat naive, simple -minded, sincere - pierced by folklore elements, characteristic melodic turns of household songs, as well as the fair music of Thuringia. The folk-haired line is embodied in mass scenes of the 1st and 3rd acts of the opera. This is a picture of a peasant holiday in choral introduction, a scene of the contest of hunters. The march sounds like rural musicians perform it.

The village waltz is emphasized by unpretentiousness. The main image of the opera is Max, the first typically romantic hero in music. It is endowed with the features of psychological bifurcation: the influence of Caspar, behind which are hellish forces, is opposed to the purity of loving agata. The complete disclosure of the image of Max, like Agatha, is given in the scene and aria of the first act.

This is a large aria-monologist, where a deep mental conflict is revealed. The wonderful overture of the “magic shooter” is written in sonata with a slow introduction.

It is built on the musical topics of the opera is the ominous leitmotif of Samiel in the introduction, the theme of the "Hell forces" is the main and connecting party of the Sonatnaya ALLEGRO, the themes of Max and Agatha side party. Placing the topics of the “hellish forces” with the themes of Max and Agatha, the composer logically leads to the solemnly jubilant topic of Agatha, which sounds as a hymn of happiness and love.

Samjel is not singing a face. In the spirit of Zingshpil, a secondary image of a cheerful, frisky Angen is interpreted.