Weber died in London, whither he had gone to superintend the first performances of his opera _Oberon_, in 1826, about forty years of age. Schubert died in Vienna in 1828, only thirty-one years old. Both were much younger than Beethoven, but both were his contemporaries, and both, moreover, owed much to his influence. The expanded form and warm feeling of their sonatas show this unmistakably. On the other hand, neither was truly at his best in this long form. The cast of their genius led them to new paths, put them in sympathy with other forms, affiliated them more with the new than with the old. Their sonatas are a breaking down, a crumbling; measures and pages in them, however, stand out amid the ruins like foundation stones for the music to come. Their shorter pieces seem not at all related to the classical music of the Viennese period, to have nothing in common with the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Of the two, Weber is far more the virtuoso. There are many pages of his music which are little more than effect. Furthermore, in his combination of pianistic effect and genuine musical feeling, he composed pieces which even today are in the repertory of most pianists, and which this permanence of their worth has led historians and critics to judge as the prototype of much of the pianoforte music of the nineteenth century, chiefly of concert music. Yet in the expansion of pianoforte technique Weber invented little. To him belongs the credit of employing what was generally common property in his day for the expression of fanciful and delightful ideas. The list of his pianoforte works is not very long. It includes several sets of variations, some dances, four big sonatas, two concertos, and the still renowned _Konzertstück_ in F minor, and several pieces in brilliant style, of which the _Polacca_ in E major, the _Polonaise_ in E flat, and the famous ‘Invitation to the Dance’ are the best known. Let us look over the variations. In such a form composers have usually shown the limits and the variety of their technique. The resources which Weber can call upon to vary his theme are not very numerous, not very original. His plan is almost invariably to announce his theme simply and then dress it up in a number of figures. The theme itself undergoes no metamorphosis, as we have seen it do in the variations of Bach and of Beethoven. It is unmistakable in all the variations. It is always clearly a groundwork upon which garlands are hung, which is never for long concealed.