Until near the end of the eighteenth century all the greatest composers had sprung from the masses of the people. Carl Maria von Weber was the first who came of an aristocratic stock. His ancestors were Austrian barons, the bulk of whose property had been lost in great European wars, and some of whom had latterly led the demoralising kind of life which was too often the lot of their class, in the second-rate courts of Germany. They went by degrees down the hill, and funds and circumstances got lower and lower as time went on, till in the lifetime of Carl Maria's father, Franz Anton, they had become as low as they well could bz. In his case, even the struggle for the ordinary means of subsistence had become a hard one, and the tone and style of his life followed the downward course of his fortunes and became thoroughly unsatisfactory.

The family had long had the reputation of being musical, and of having a taste for the stage; and in Franz Anton's case these qualities appear to have come to a climax. He began life as a gay officer in the guard of the Elector of the Palatinate. After seeing some service and a good deal of dissipation, he made one step towards settling down in life by marrying a lady of some means, and getting the appointment of judge and municipal councillor in the domains of the Elector of Cologne.