Apart from his dramatic compositions, Weber is known for his many beautiful overtures and symphonies for the orchestra, and his various works for the piano, from sonatas to waltzes and minuets.  Among his most pleasing piano-works are the “Invitation to the Waltz,” the “Perpetual Rondo,” and the “Polonaise in E major.”  Many of his songs rank among the finest German lyrics.  He would have been recognized as an able composer had he not produced great operas; but the superior excellence of these cast all his other compositions in the shade.

Weber was fortunate in having gifted poets to write his dramas.  As rich as he was in melodic affluence, his creative faculty seems to have had its tap-root in deep personal feelings and enthusiasms.  One of the most poetic and picturesque of composers, he needed a powerful exterior suggestion to give his genius wings and fire.  The Germany of his time was alive with patriotic ardor, and the existence of the nation gathered from its emergencies new strength and force.  The heart of Weber beat strong with the popular life.  Romantic and serious in his taste, his imagination fed on old German tradition and song, and drew from them its richest food.  The whole life of the Fatherland, with its glow of love for home, its keen sympathies with the influences of Nature, its fantastic play of thought, its tendency to embody the primitive forces in weird myths, found in Weber an eloquent exponent; and we perceive in his music all the color and vividness of these influences.

Weber’s love of Nature was singularly keen.  The woods, the mountains, the lakes, and the streams, spoke to his soul with voices full of meaning.  He excelled in making these voices speak and sing; and he may, therefore, be entitled the father of the romantic and descriptive school in German operatic music.  With more breadth and robustness, he expressed the national feelings of his people, even as Chopin did those of dying Poland.  Weber’s motives are generally caught from the immemorial airs which resound in every village and hamlet, and the fresh beat of the German heart sends its thrill through almost every bar of his music.  Here is found the ultimate significance of his art-work, apart from the mere musical beauty of his compositions.

MENDELSSOHN.

I.

Few careers could present more startling contrasts than those of Mozart and Mendelssohn, in many respects of similar genius, but utterly opposed in the whole surroundings of their lives.  Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was the grandson of the celebrated philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and the son of a rich Hamburg banker.  His uncles were distinguished in literary and social life.  His friends from early childhood were eminent scholars, poets, painters, and musicians, and his family moved in the most refined and wealthy circles.  He was nursed in the lap of luxury, and never knew