There never was a more German composer than you; … the Briton does you justice, the Frenchman admires you, but only the German can love you. You are his own, a bright day in his life, a drop of his blood, a particle of his heart. —Richard Wagner, in a funeral oration for Carl Maria von Weber.

Car Maria von Weber (1786-1826) was born near Lübeck in Northern Germany to a musical and theatrical family, and was a cousin of Mozart’s wife Constanze. The fact that his childhood circumstances—raised in music and theatre—were similar to those of Richard Wagner is all the more significant, given that Weber is seen as the pioneer of German Romantic opera who paved the way for Wagner. Weber’s music studies began with the piano and included lessons with Franz Joseph Haydn’s brother Michael in Salzburg.
Weber began composing when he was twelve, and composed his first opera at thirteen, though the manuscript was destroyed in a fire just after it was completed. At seventeen, he won a post as Kapellmeister of the Breslau theatre, but had to resign from the hectic schedule after two years when he accidentally drank engraver’s acid. He would then embark on a career as a virtuoso pianist until 1813, when he was given the directorship of the Prague opera house. In 1817, he was appointed Royal Saxon Kapellmeister in Dresden. His primary focus in Dresden was the development of a new style of German opera, which met with much antagonism as Italian opera was all the rage. Everything changed with the premier of Weber’s Der Freischütz in 1821 in Berlin, which was a complete success and immediately swept through Germany and much of Europe.
Sadly, Weber would never have another major operatic success, since he would never have a libretto as good as Der Freischütz. Just after the premiere of Oberon in London in 1826, his long years of ill health caught up with him and he died the day before he was to return home. He was buried in Moorfields Chapel, but Wagner arranged for his body to be moved to Dresden in 1844.
The realm of symphonic composition was a treacherous place when Weber wrote his two symphonies. Beethoven’s Third Symphony had changed everything and his Fourth was powering its way through Europe when Weber completed his two symphonies in 1807. In the shadow of Beethoven, Weber’s symphonies can be seen as an act of bravery, yet Weber didn’t opt for the unconventional. Instead, he followed the tradition of Mozart: elegant orchestration, spellbinding melodies, grace over boldness, and a strict adherence to form. Symphony No. 1 in C Major, J.50 was dedicated, on its publication in 1812, to Gottfried Weber, who befriended Weber after his dismissal from Württemberg in 1810. The first three movements were completed by Christmas Eve 1806, while the final Presto was finished at midnight on January 2, 1807. Weber’s operatic sensibility pervades the entire work, which unfortunately was overshadowed by Beethoven’s revolutionary symphonies and did not find a place in the repertoire until the mid-twentieth century.