Overture to ‘Der Freischütz’, J. 277

Program notes

About the Work

Der Freischütz (‘The Marksman’, or ‘The Freeshooter’) had its first performance at the Schauspielhaus in Berlin on 18 June 1821, and it is generally counted as the first German Romantic opera. Weber and his librettist Friedrich Kind took the story from a ghost tale by Johann August Apel: a young huntsman, Max, must win a shooting contest in order to marry Agathe, loses his nerve, and lets himself be talked into casting magic bullets in the Wolf’s Glen with the help of Samiel, the Black Huntsman, who is the devil under another name. The opera has spoken dialogue between its numbers, in the manner of German popular theatre, but the music that surrounds the supernatural scenes was like nothing audiences had heard. Its success went beyond anything Weber had hoped for. Vienna staged it the same year, and within a short time it had been taken up by theatres across the German lands and well beyond them.

The overture has always had a life of its own in the concert hall. It is not a medley, although almost everything in it comes from the opera. Weber took a handful of the score’s most telling ideas and built them into an independent orchestral movement with a slow introduction and a fast main section, so that the piece works as a symphonic drama in miniature. The forest and the hunt, the demonic presence in the Wolf’s Glen, Max’s despair and Agathe’s confidence all appear, and the argument between them is settled in the same way as in the opera: the key of C minor, which belongs to the dark powers, gives way to a bright C major.

For the listener in the concert hall none of the plot needs to be known. What comes across is the thing that made the opera a turning point: an orchestra used for atmosphere and colour, with horns, low clarinets, tremolo strings and soft drum strokes carrying as much of the story as any melody. It is easy to hear why later Romantic composers treated this score as a point of departure, and it makes an apt opening for a programme that goes on to Liszt and Schubert.

What to Listen For

The overture begins with slow swells from the whole orchestra, like a question left hanging. Then comes its best-known passage: a chorale for the horns over quiet strings, the sound of hunting horns softened into something close to a hymn, and an image of the forest at peace.

The peace does not last. The strings begin to shiver in tremolo, the timpani throb softly, and an uneasy diminished seventh chord settles over the music. In the opera that harmony is tied to Samiel. Out of it grows the fast section, agitated music in C minor taken from Max’s aria in the first act.

The contrast, when it comes, is a broad and confident melody in the major: the theme of Agathe’s aria in the second act. Notice that it does not win at once. The low strings and brass answer the woodwinds with doubt, the storm returns, and there is a long silence before the full orchestra lands on a blazing C major chord and Agathe’s melody comes back to carry the overture home.