The plenitude of genius in the classical period of German music has a striking illustration in the rapid succession in the kingship which followed the wresting of the musical sceptre from Italy. Beginning with Bach, there has been no break in the line of succession. Had such a thought occurred to the father of modern music, he might have established a sentimental foundation, a handgrasp, a kiss, or an apostolic laying on of hands, which might have been transmitted down to our day without once leaving the direct and royal line. In the musical succession there is an over-lapping, a concurrence of reigns, nearly all the time. The most significant phrase of this phenomenon is exemplified in the subject of this study. Gluck and Mozart might have come like the good fairies of the nursery tale to kiss him in his cradle. Haydn and Beethoven might have waited till their salutations would inspire his youth. He himself might have blessed the infancy of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Wagner. This it is which helped to give Carl Maria von Weber a position in musical history which now we recognize to be commanding in a sense never realized so fully before. His activities range over the territory through which is drawn the indeterminate line of demarcation between the Classic and Romantic schools. He embodies the spirit of both tendencies, though not in an equal degree. Not only does he touch hands with the kings of the eighteenth century and their successors of the nineteenth, but some of his life threads in the fabric of history were interwoven with theirs. We shall see how in the story of his life.