MS 8701 Assignment: Karl Marie Von Weber and the Clarinet

Research in Music
Music Studies 8701
Final Project: Annotated Bibliography
Topic: Karl Marie Von Weber and the Clarinet
Introduction
This research project is written to assess the clarinet music of the most prominent German Romanticism in music. Carl Maria von Weber, born 1786 and died 1826, was a composer, conductor, music critic, pianist and Kapellmeister in Germany during the early transition of the country to Romanticism. Weber wrote over three hundred works during his 40 years of existence. His works included operas, singspiels, concert arias, orchestras, choir music, cantatas, chamber music and piano music, to name a few. At a young age of 12, he was able to write an intricate arrangement of a singspiel called “Die Macht der Liebe un des Weins.” Probably his most important work that garnered such tremendous response from the masses of his time was the opera “Der Freishcutz”, which stirred reruns in opera houses in Berlin, throughout Germany, Europe and even reaching the United States. Critics and historians, and most notable musicians, would account for this opera as the trail blazer that allowed German expression in the full artistic sense and gave the German operas the distinction from the already well acclaimed Italian counterparts.
Over-all, Weber’s music encompassed a broad spectrum that allows the use of virtually any musical instrument, and even though he sticks to a conservative use of instrument, his treatment of tone quality was decidedly progressive allowing for much variety. The clarinet was notably one of Weber’s favored instruments. In his arrangements, he would “adopt string tremolos in pianissimo with other instruments in a low register – particularly the clarinet in its chalumeau range – to create a mysterious atmosphere ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Chen", "given" : "Mei-C", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "id" : "ITEM-1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "1999" ] ] }, "number-of-pages" : "190", "publisher" : "University of Maryland, College Park", "title" : "The clarinet music of Carl Maria von Weber", "type" : "thesis" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=a0dac782-be0d-4f8c-81fe-186782156d13" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Chen)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Chen)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Chen)”. Clarinet was also used in Weber’s woodwind choir compositions, playing in duet with the singers during solo runs, or played as a solo instrument during a bridge to transition sections, and as pronounced solo performances in his operas.
This research focuses on the life and works of Claire Marie von Weber and particularly his clarinet compositions, surveying the available literatures that are available that talks about the life of the great composer and the clarinet compositions that he has released.
In surveying the literature that is currently available for this research topic, anything that talks about the life of Weber, especially in connection to his personal life informatio...