This fiery and dramatic overture is such an assured piece that it can be surprising to find that it is quite an early work, completed in Munich in November 1811 shortly before Weber's 25th birthday. Its origins lie earlier still: back in 1804, the 17-year-old Weber had barely completed some months of study in Vienna with the Abbé Vogler when the post of Kapellmeister at Breslau fell vacant, and at Vogler's recommendation he was appointed despite his youth. He had a difficult time there, and composed little, but the one task that absorbed him was some music for an opera Rübezahl, which came to nothing but whose overture was eventually reworked into Der Beherrscher der Geister. Its scoring is noteworthy, being especially colourful and full for such an early date: piccolo, four horns, three trombones and even three timpani are employed, unusual enough but significant since Weber's teacher Vogler used exactly this scoring (even the three timpani are tuned identically) for the second overture (in D) to his opera Samori, composed in the same year 1811. Weber was pleased with the overture in its new guise. After its first performance, only a few days after he finished it, he wrote: “The playing of the overture was most heavenly – it is definitely the most magnificent and glorious one I have ever written.” At the end of his life, in London, it was one of the last works he chose to conduct at two concerts in April and May 1826, barely a fortnight before he died.

sources

A  Autograph score (1811), in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris

P  First edition, published in parts by A. Kühnel, Leipzig in 1813

Br  Full score, published by Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig c.1920

Ur  Urtext edition, nominally edited by the present writer but ‘ghosted’ by “editorial assistants” Joachim Veit and Frank Ziegler, published by Schott in 2008

The story of my involvement in this piece is a sad and tortuous one. The Carl-Mariavon- Weber Gesamtausgabe asked me in 1994 to edit a volume of concert overtures for them, and I did so, but I could not agree to their unbending rules and regulations, and in the end the volume appeared in 2008 bearing my name but no relation to the work I did and little resemblance to the text I advocated.