The Coda has a dream-like quality all its own.
[Footnote 183: So appropriately called by Berlioz the "heroine of the orchestra."]
Weber's permanent contribution to musical literature has proved to be his operas--a form of art not treated in this book. But the whole nature of his genius was so closely related to the Romantic spirit, as shown in the intimate connection between literature and music, in his descriptive powers and his development of the orchestra, that for the sake of comprehensiveness some familiarity should be gained with the essential features of his style. Of Weber it may be said with conviction that there is hardly a composer of acknowledged rank in whom style, _i.e._, the way and the medium by which musical thought is presented, so prevails over the substance of the thought itself. There are few if any of Weber's melodies which are notable for creative power, and as a harmonist he was lamentably weak. It has been scathingly said, though with considerable truth, that all his melodies are based upon an alternation of tonic and dominant chords![184] But when we consider what his themes are meant to describe, the pictures they evoke and their orchestral dress, we must acknowledge in Weber the touch of real poetic genius. To quote Runciman[185]--
"If you look, and look rightly, for the right thing in Weber's music, disappointment is impossible, though I admit that the man who professes to find there the great qualities he finds in Mozart, Beethoven, or any of the giants, must be in a very sad case. Grandeur, pure beauty, and high expressiveness are alike wanting. Weber's claim to a place amongst the composers is supported in a lesser degree by the gifts which he shared, even if his share was small, with the greater masters of music, than by his miraculous power of vividly drawing and painting in music the things that kindled his imagination. Being a factor of the Romantic movement, that mighty rebellion against the tyranny of a world of footrules and ledgers, he lived in a world where two and two might make five or seven or any number you pleased, and where footrules were unknown; he took small interest in drama taken out of the lives of ordinary men and enacted amidst every-day surroundings; his imagination lit up only when he thought of haunted glens and ghouls and evil spirits, the fantastic world and life that goes on underneath the ocean, or of men or women held by ghastly spells."