Bernhard Anselm Weber

Bernhard Anselm Weber (Mannheim, 1764 – Berlin, 1821) was a German pianist, conductor and composer whose career unfolded chiefly in German-speaking theatres at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. His significance lies less in the extent of his output than in his work as a musical director, a role in which he was particularly notable for championing the music of Gluck.

Weber's training began in Mannheim, where he received keyboard lessons from Vogler, who later also taught him composition from 1775. By the 1780s he had seen a keyboard sonata published in Vogler's Mannheimer Monatsschrift, and in 1784 a set of songs issued together with F. Fraenzl the younger. After studying theology and law in Heidelberg, he apparently toured parts of Germany as a virtuoso with Röllig's Xänorphika, an experimental instrument whose sound was produced by friction. In 1787 he was appointed musical director of Grossmann's theatre company in Hanover, where he became acquainted with the music of Handel and premiered his first stage work.

In 1790 he accompanied Vogler on a tour of Holland, parts of Germany and Scandinavia, and after a lengthy stay in Stockholm, where he composed several sacred pieces, he achieved success as a keyboard soloist in Hamburg. In 1792 he shared the musical directorship of the Nationaltheater in Berlin with Bernhard Wessely. During a journey to Vienna in 1793, in search of singers for the company, he struck up a friendship with Salieri, who encouraged him to write for the theatre and introduced him to Gluck's operas. His promotion to first musical director of the theatre in 1796 is, according to some accounts, connected with the success of Iphigenie auf Tauris, which he conducted in February 1795; he had earlier turned down a post in Rheinsberg, which Wessely ended up taking.

His stage output included the heroic singspiel Mudarra (Berlin, 1800), which failed, the monodrama Hero, written for the soprano Madame Schick, and the duodrama Sulmalle (1802), all with texts by Karl Alexander Herklots. He also composed Die Wette (1805), based on a German translation of Guillet's Un quart d'heure de silence, and Deodata (1810), to a libretto by Kotzebue, as well as incidental music for plays, such as Schiller's Wilhelm Tell (1804). In 1803 he travelled to Paris and met Cherubini. He received the title of Kapellmeister and kept his post when the German and Italian theatres were merged in 1811. After a serious illness in 1818 he gradually withdrew from his duties, and in 1820 Spontini assumed overall musical direction.

Weber was a prolific composer, but only a few songs from his stage works have survived, such as those in Wilhelm Tell, among them «Mit dem Pfeil dem Bogen» and «Rasch tritt der Tod den Menschen an». His principal contribution was as an interpreter of other composers' music, above all that of Gluck, whose operas he helped to establish in the Berlin repertoire.