The orientalism of Carlo Gozzi's play, Turandot, fascinated German audiences; in 1804 Schiller translated the play for the German National Theater at Weimar. For the premiere of Schiller's translation in September 1809, Weber contributed an overture and six instrumental pieces. The overture is the most extensive contribution to the incidental music, and it consists of 136 measures, in contrast to the much shorter length of each of the remaining numbers. The other numbers include a "Marcia" (no. 2); a "Marcia maestoso" (no. 3); three very short pieces labeled "Moderato" (nos. 4-7); and a "Marcia funebre" (no. 7). For each of the six pieces after the Overture Weber indicated specific text cues for their insertion in Turandot.

He had composed several years before the Overtura chinesa (1804), which set the tone for this play. The overture and most of the other incidental music is based on a single oriental theme that Weber had found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionnaire de la Musique (1768). This "air chinois," as Rousseau labeled it, is characteristically pentatonic, and sounds almost like a cliche of a Chinese-style melody. In Weber's setting, the oriental elements are prominent and supported by his harmonies. The orchestration of the tune in Weber's incidental music for Turandot also supports the exotic nature of the music.

Weber used Rousseau's "air chinois" as the principal theme of the overture and brought the idea back in each of the subsequent pieces of incidental music. In this manner, Weber allowed music to serve as a unifying device within Schiller's translation of Turandot. At the same time, his careful placement of the music at specific text cues makes the incidental music less arbitrary in its execution. Music supports the play to contribute to an overall impression, not just its own effect.

While Weber's incidental music to Turandot may be less famous than his other contributions to music for the stage, the pieces here have renewed prominence in the twentieth century. Over a century after Weber composed the music for Turandot Paul Hindemith would use the "air chinois" theme in his own Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber (Sinfonische Metamorphosen Carl Maria von Weber'scher Themen), completed in 1943. In the latter work, Hindemith explores the theme in the second of four symphonic movements that pay homage to the music of Weber.





© All Music Guide