"EXPERIENCE of every kind is beneficial," held the eighteen-year-
old Carl Maria von Weber, ⁶⁷ and the extensive variety of events
which influenced his life seems indeed to have benefited his inspiration.
However turbulent his existence, the music he conceived overflowed
with verve and a wholly individual fantasy.

Before his birth, the Webers had given only minor vocalists and fid-
dlers to the arts. Their earliest claim to prestige dates from the mid-eight-
eenth century, when Franz Anton Weber, father of Carl Maria, became
briefly associated with the strings of the court band of the Elector Carl
Theodor of Mannheim. It may have been this experience which in-
spired him to invent a descent from an extinct noble Austrian house.
Though genealogists have been able to connect the family with only mill-
ers and foresters, the spurious "von" preceded their name from this time
forward.

As Franz Anton traveled from one to another of his short-lived posts,
he had his eleven children educated far beyond the capacity of the aver-
age adult in the hope of finding spectacular talent. Carl Maria, the ninth
child, was born in Eutin, a suburb of Hamburg, in 1786. The same year,
Franz Anton organized his flock into a theatrical troupe, and for a decade
thereafter the Von Weberische Schauspielgesellschaft toured provincial Ger-
many in a repertory of German classics. Records of their performances
still remain in Cassel, Meiningen, Augsburg and other German cities.

By the time Carl Maria was twelve, he had gained a knowledge of the
stage through this barnstorming existence which no amount of academic
training could have given. His playground was the implausible landscapes
of provincial theatre scenery, his toys were the paraphernalia of the the-
atre wardrobe, his one interest was the theatre's lore. There were no
tricks of production that he had not learned, no extravagances of their
effect that he could not recreate into a secret actuality. This acceptance
of illusion even when the underlying mechanics were understood was
never outgrown. It charged his ultratheatrical music with a living con-

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