The Wondrous World of Weber Program Notes

Working in the world of 18th and early 19th century chamber music with a clarinetist as a collaborator, we find ourselves face-to-face with a few specific pieces pretty frequently. We launched this whole endeavor two years ago with a concert featuring Mozart’s clarinet quintet which is a gem of the genre. Before we were even done with that project, Weber’s quintet was being thrown around as a bucket list piece. Wit’s Folly is always interested in the backstories and webs of influence that lie behind the pieces we play, which is what brought us around to Weber at last. 

Our violinist Guillermo has curated a rich program for us. Weber’s quintet, another stand out in the genre which was composed for Weber’s friend and frequent collaborator clarinetist Heinrich Bärmann, is heard alongside one of Weber’s most famous pieces which was arranged in its own time by no less than legendary composer and orchestrator Hector Berlioz. Rounding out our program is a string quartet composed in 1827 by an 18 year old Felix Mendelssohn who was always enthusiastic about absorbing and integrating his surrounding musical world. In 1821, at the age of 12, he had heard Weber’s opera Der Freischütz and met the composer, an experience that would influence his own compositions for years to come. In fact, Weber’s musical style had an impact on generations composers that came after him! We hope you’ll enjoy this small tip of that iceberg, and that you’ll seek out more of these composer’s works if you like what you hear!

Weber wrote his beloved Invitation to the Dance in 1819 for his wife Caroline. The piece is often credited with being the first concert waltz, that is to say a waltz meant for listening instead of dancing. Weber in fact wrote a whole story to go along with it in which he describes a ball scene. A young man asks a girl for a dance, they move gracefully across the room, and politely part as the tune comes to a close. The French composer Hector Berlioz, who never could resist a good ball, orchestrated the work in 1841 after which it was firmly solidified as one of the favorite tunes of the century. 

Following in Berlioz’s footsteps, and probably equally infatuated by the piece, our violinist Guillermo enthusiastically undertook making an arrangement for us that could be paired with Weber’s Clarinet Quintet. It was a common practice in Weber and Berlioz’ time to arrange famous orchestral and operatic pieces for chamber forces so that music lovers could enjoy them at home, so we figure we’re following in that tradition. Guillermo’s arrangement follows a few of Berlioz’ orchestral solutions, the chief one of which is transposing the whole piece up a step, from the somewhat gnarly original key of D-flat major to the more string-friendly key of D major. After that first executive decision, the arranger’s role mainly consisted in distributing the melody and accompaniment among the clarinet and strings, as well as amplifying or adapting some elements to better fit our formation. Unlike the quintet by Weber that closes today’s program in which the clarinet fills an undeniably soloistic role, here all the instruments trade functions, bouncing back and forth between the spotlight and the background, solo and the orchestral textures, and the different characters that might have been invited to dance.

“Can it be? Can it be, that in the leafy pathways, by the wall of vines, you have been there, waiting for me?”

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847) composed his String Quartet No. 2 in A minor in 1827 at the age of 18, building upon a song he had written earlier that year which expresses the astonished joy of realizing that a youthful crush is reciprocated. The quartet opens with a yearning Adagio, building in intensity until the first three-note quotation of the song’s central question: “Can it be?” Nearly the entire piece then expands this singular moment of epiphany, the time occupied between daring to pose the question and feeling the reflection of newly-requited love. The first movement erupts with sublime terror—the joy of romantic fulfillment colliding with the dizzying vastness of new possibilities, until the inner storm can no longer be contained and the movement closes with an ecstatic roar. In the second movement, a domestic reverie drifts into an uneasy fugue that grows more and more agitated before finding its way back home. The third movement exudes wit and charm in Mendelssohn’s characteristically buoyant and ethereal style. The fourth movement interrupts the dream with an anxious recitative leading to a headlong sprint interspersed with echoes of the second movement’s nervous fugue and finally culminating with a verbatim statement of the final line of the original song: “What I feel, only one can understand—the one who feels it with me and is true to me always.”

Heinrich Bärmann’s (1784–1847) career reflects a historical turning point in the development of the clarinet and its repertoire. Born in Potsdam, Bärmann studied with both Joseph Beer (1744–1811) and Franz Tausch (1762–1817) in Berlin before the Napoleonic Wars flung him onto the battlefield as a Prussian bandsman. He was captured by the French in 1806 at the battle of Jena, but eventually escaped to Munich where he would make his career as an orchestral musician and virtuosic soloist. 

Completed in 1815, Weber’s Op. 34 quintet for clarinet and strings is the final of five works the composer wrote for his “dear brother” Bärmann. Weber and Bärmann’s musical partnership began four years earlier in the spring of 1811 while Weber was visiting Munich. Bärmann’s playing so immediately enamored Weber that the composer wrote his Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra, Op. 26 for him in three short days. Bärmann learned the piece in another three days, and the success of the performance sealed the deal on a lifelong friendship.

The quintet begins with what feels like a nudge to Mozart’s K. 581 for the same instrumentation, but, instead of interrupting the quartet with a haughty Mozartian gesture, the clarinet enters subtly in pianissimo in its upper register. Throughout the first movement, Weber juxtaposes this unassuming entrance with passages of technical virtuosity and theatrics. The next movement, a moody Fantasia featuring long-sustained phrases and wistful chromatic scales, befits the age of the Brothers Grimm and E.T.A. Hoffman. As with Mozart’s quintet, the Menuetto and Trio serve somewhat as comic relief after the slow movement. The work ends with a tour de force demonstrating the full breadth of Bärmann’s skills, from scales spanning nearly the full range of the instrument to meter-defying passagework. 

Notes by DG, GS, JG, JL 2025