Weber, Carl Maria von.

the full score of the complete work, notated in brown and dark brown inks on twelve staves per page, for piano ("cembalo") flutes, clarinets, horns, bassoons, trumpets, timpani and strings, with musical and written cues for the solo piano part ("col Viol: Imo/ coll Bassi"), with an eight-bar autograph revision for the piano solo written on a slip of paper pasted into the score (p.73), small alterations and deletions  (smudges and erasures), the title-page left mostly blank by the composer ("op.:32"), dated by him at the end of each movement ("vollendet d: 10t December 1812 in Gotha"; "...12t December 1812 in Gotha"; "...d 7 9br 1811 in München")



74 pages, oblong folio, 12-stave paper, the first two movements c.25 x 33cms (watermarked "C & I Honig"), the last movement ('Rondo') on lighter (Italian?) paper c.25 x 32cms (crowned shield with fleur-de-lys), the 'Rondo' partly paginated by the composer (...15-30), with final blank, some later numbering in pencil, contemporary dark blue boards, title label to cover inscribed by F.W. Jähns, Munich and Gotha, November 1811-December 1812, some staining to lower corners of the first few leaves of the 'Rondo' (p.45-50), consistent with use



 

F.W. Jähns, p.172 (J.155)

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This is the complete autograph full score of an important early Romantic piano concerto.  It already calls for the dazzling virtuoso concert performer, presaging the piano concertos of Chopin and Liszt, rather than following in the footsteps of the the classical eighteenth-century concerto.

This is a highly attractive manuscript of Weber's most important full-scale concerto. It is an advanced work, Romantic rather than Classical, full of virtuoso display and dramatic atmospheric.  "It has one of the most beautiful slow movements in the entire Romantic piano literature"  (Paul H. Lang, The Concerto 1800-1900, 1969, p.xvi) 

The autograph manuscript does not appear to have been used for any edition of the piano concerto, and there are frequent differences from the published scores. Only the separate solo and orchestral parts were printed in the first edition of 1814, and these provided the basis for the current edition of the full score, which was published in 1959.  Weber provides cues for the piano solo part indicating that it is to play in the orchestral tuttis, which do not appear in the printed editions. On the other hand, much of the published phrasing proves to be editorial or diverges from Weber's original, particularly in the last movement.

The sequence of keys, with a slow movement in B major, reflects Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto, but the contents are wholly modern. The slow movement has little obvious precedent in Classical models, but instead looks towards Chopin. It is an essay in Romantic scene-painting, with a mysterious atmosphere provided by the opening on four muted violins.  In the manuscript, Weber marks each violin part in the singular (" Violino primo...quarto"), suggesting they may be solos.  The piano part contains elements of operatic cantilena with coloratura and dramatic descending scales (marked "come una fantasia"). These foreshadow the slow movements of Chopin's concertos, written twenty years later. John  Warrack  classes it as "one of the finest movements Weber ever composed...the whole movement is a locus classicus of romantic technique" (Warrack, p.147).  It certainly gives a foretaste of the atmospheric instrumental introductions that characterize Weber's later operas.

Weber composed the final 'Rondo' first, while in Munich; it is written on different (possibly Italian) paper from the rest of the concerto.  This movement contains spectacular Chopinesque leaps for the soloist and a notable solo cello part in the central episode in G minor.  The edition includes a final extra chord for the piano in bar 155, not found in this manuscript.  Weber wrote the opening two movements 'Allegro maestoso' and 'Adagio' on a grand scale after his move to Gotha, and gave the premiere of the entire work there on 17 December 1812.