WEBER, CARL MARIA FRIEDRICH ERNEST VON (1786-1826), German composer, was born at Eutin, near Lubeck, on the 18th of December 1786, of a family long devoted to art. His father, Baron Franz Anton von Weber, a military officer in the service of the palgrave Karl Theodor, was an excellent violinist, and his mother once sang on the stage. In 1778 Franz Anton was appointed director of the opera at Liibeck. In 1779 the prince bishop of Eutin made him his kapellmeister, and five years later he went to Vienna, placed two of his sons under Michael Haydn, and in 1785 married the young Viennese singer Genovefa von Brenner. In the following year Carl Maria von Weber was born—a delicate child, afflicted with congenital disease of the hip-joint.
Carl Maria von Weber became familiarized with the stage from his earliest infancy. Franz Anton hoped to see him develop into an infant prodigy, like his cousin Mozart. The child was taught to sing and place his fingers upon the pianoforte almost as soon as he could speak, though he was unable to walk until he was four years old. Happily his powers of observation and aptitude for general learning were so precocious that he seems, in spite of all these disadvantages, to have instinctively educated himself. In 1798 Michael Haydn taught him gratuitously at Salzburg. In April the family visited Vienna, removing in the autumn to Munich. Here the child's first composition—a set of "Six Fughet tas"—was published, with a pompous dedication to his half brother Edmund; and here also he took lessons in singing and in composition. Soon afterwards he began to play successfully in public, and his father compelled him to write incessantly. Among the compositions of this period were a mass and an Macht der Liebe und des Weins—now destroyed. A set of "Varia tions for the Pianoforte," composed a little later, was lithographed by Carl Maria himself, under the guidance of Alois Senefelder, the inventor of the process.
In 1800 the family removed to Freiburg, where the Ritter von Steinsberg gave Carl Maria the libretto of an opera called Das Waldmiidchen, which the boy, though not yet fourteen years old, at once set to music, and produced in the following November at Freiburg.
Carl Maria returned with his father to Salzburg in 18oi, resuming his studies under Michael Haydn. Here he composed his second opera, Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn, which was unsuccessfully produced at Nuremberg in 1803. In that year
he again visited Vienna, where, though Joseph Haydn and Al brechtsberger were both receiving pupils, his father preferred placing him under Abt Vogler. Through Vogler's instrument ality Carl Maria was appointed conductor of the opera at Breslau, before he had completed his eighteenth year. He began a new opera called Rithezahl, the libretto of which was "romantic" to the last degree, and Weber worked at it enthusiastically, but it was never completed, and little of it has been preserved beyond a quintet and the masterly overture, which was re-written in 1811 under the title of Der Belierrscher der Geister. Quitting Breslau in 1806, Weber removed in the following year to Stuttgart, where he had been offered the post of private secretary to Duke Lud wig, brother of Frederick, king of Wiirttemberg. He worked hard, and in 1809 remodelled Das aldmadchen, under the title of Sylvana. Weber removed to Darmstadt in order to be near his old master Abt Vogler, and his fellow-pupils Meyerbeer and Gansbacher. On Sept. 16, 181o, he reproduced Sylvana at Frank fort, but with very doubtful success. His new comic opera Abu Hassan was completed at Darmstadt in January 1811, after many interruptions, one of which (his attraction to the story of Der Freischutz—see below) exercised a memorable influence upon his later career.
Weber started in February 1811 on an extended artistic tour, during which he made many influential friends, and on the 4th of June brought out Abu Hassan with marked success at Munich. His father died at Mannheim in 1812. In 1813 Carl Weber's wanderings were brought to an end by the unexpected offer of an appointment as kapellmeister at Prague, coupled with the duty of entirely remodelling the performances at the opera-house. He retained this post till 1816. He composed no new operas, but he had already written much of his best pianoforte music, and played it with never-failing success, while the disturbed state of Europe inspired him with some of the finest patriotic melodies in existence. First among these stand ten songs from Korner's Leyer and Schwerdt, including "Vater, ich rufe dick," and "Liitzow's wilde Jagd"; and in no respect inferior to these are the splendid choruses in his cantata Kampf and Sieg, which was first per formed at Prague, on Dec. 2 2, 1815.