Fritz Spiegl (27 January 1926 - 23 March 2003) was born at
ZurndorfZurndorf is a town in the district of Neusiedl am See in Burgenland in Austria....
,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, the son of an agricultural merchant and his
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish wife. He became a
musicianA musician is a person who performs or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.* A singer uses his or her voice as an instrument....
,
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
,
broadcasterA presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...
, humorist and
collectorThe hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever items are of interest to the individual collector. Some collectors are generalists, accumulating merchandise, or stamps from all countries of the world...
who lived and worked in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
from 1939.
Born near Haydn's birthplace, and on Mozart's birthday, Spiegl was also a distant relative of the composer
Gustav MahlerGustav Mahler was a Bohemian-born Austrian composer and conductor. He was best known during his own lifetime as one of the leading orchestral and operatic conductors of the day...
. In 1939, Fritz and his sister, neither of whom spoke English or knew anything of music, were sent separately to England.
Fritz Spiegl (27 January 1926 - 23 March 2003) was born at
ZurndorfZurndorf is a town in the district of Neusiedl am See in Burgenland in Austria....
,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, the son of an agricultural merchant and his
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish wife. He became a
musicianA musician is a person who performs or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.* A singer uses his or her voice as an instrument....
,
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
,
broadcasterA presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...
, humorist and
collectorThe hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever items are of interest to the individual collector. Some collectors are generalists, accumulating merchandise, or stamps from all countries of the world...
who lived and worked in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
from 1939.
Born near Haydn's birthplace, and on Mozart's birthday, Spiegl was also a distant relative of the composer
Gustav MahlerGustav Mahler was a Bohemian-born Austrian composer and conductor. He was best known during his own lifetime as one of the leading orchestral and operatic conductors of the day...
. In 1939, Fritz and his sister, neither of whom spoke English or knew anything of music, were sent separately to England. He was one of three children taken in by the
Secretary of State for WarThe position of Secretary of State for War, commonly called War Secretary, was a British cabinet-level position, first applied to Henry Dundas . In 1801 the post became that of Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. The position was re-instated in 1854...
Captain David Margesson and his American wife.
The Margessons taught Fritz English and sent him to Magdalen College School, near
BanburyBanbury is a market town and civil parish in the district of Cherwell in northern Oxfordshire, England, located on the River Cherwell. It lies northwest of London, southeast of Birmingham, south of Coventry and north northwest of the county town of Oxford...
. At 15 years of age, Spiegl invented a model aeroplane which had another riding piggy-back upon it. The two were rigged together with a series of pulleys and elastic bands and, to his delight, the contraption could fly a short distance. The results were published in model aeroplane magazine. Thereafter Spiegl was hooked on the printed media.
Early life
Spiegl was born near the
HungarianHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
border in the village of Zurndorf,
BurgenlandBurgenland is the easternmost and least populous state or Land of Austria. It consists of two Statutarstädte and seven districts with in total 171 municipalities...
,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, where his father was a businessman manufacturing among other things
carbonated waterCarbonated water, also known as sparkling water, fizzy water, seltzer, and water with gas, , is plain water into which carbon dioxide gas has been dissolved, and is the major and defining component of most soft drinks. The process of dissolving carbon dioxide gas is called carbonation...
. Spiegl attended the
GymnasiumA gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools...
in
EisenstadtEisenstadt is a city in Austria, the state capital of Burgenland. It has a population of about 12,000 .In the Habsburg monarchy, Kismarton was the seat of the Eszterházy Hungarian noble family...
but, as the family were
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish, they soon found themselves being persecuted by the
NazisNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
in the wake of the
AnschlussThe ' , also known as the ', was the 1938 de facto annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime....
of 1938. All their property having been confiscated, Fritz's parents succeeded in leaving the country in 1939, eventually escaping to
BoliviaBolivia, officially Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay and Argentina to the south, and Chile and Peru to the west....
while sending Fritz and his older sister Hanny (born 1923) to England, where, in
NorthamptonshireNorthamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census...
, they received a warm welcome.
Every Saturday, for eight years, Spiegl would discuss such matters as the use of the word "lie", the flagrant misuses of parliamentary language, the prevalence of tautology in popular speech and the verb "jubilize" as it was employed during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. He would even meditate on the habit of young doctors wrapping their stethoscopes in a U round their necks rather than in a Y configuration, as depicted by the
TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 as the Daily Telegraph and Courier...
cartoonist
MattMatthew Pritchett MBE has been the pocket cartoonist on the Daily Telegraph newspaper since 1988.Pritchett studied graphics at St. Martins School of Art. Unable to get work as a film cameraman, he worked as a waiter in a pizza restaurant, drawing cartoons in his spare time...
.
Reading every national newspaper every day, he continued to accumulate knowledge and anecdotes throughout his life. His sure-footed negotiation through the linguistic jungle in an accented English made him immediately recognisable on the television or wireless; this was all the more remarkable since he had arrived in Britain shortly before the Second World War speaking no English, and was later stricken by impaired hearing.
A
native speakerNative Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...
of
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
, Fritz Spiegl did not speak a word of English when he moved to England as a 13 year-old -- a fact which has often been regarded as the trigger for his preoccupation with language phenomena such as, say,
malapropismA malapropism is the substitution of a word for a word with a similar sound, in which the resulting phrase makes no sense but often creates a comic effect. It is not the same as an eggcorn, which is a similar substitution in which the new phrase makes sense on some level...
s and for the biting yet humorous linguistic purism of his later years. As one commentator remarked, Spiegl
...soon knew a great deal more about the language than most English people do. And cared more too. One can understand this. It's galling, when you've taken the trouble to learn that "an alibi" is not the same as "an excuse", to find that the natives themselves seem to have forgotten the difference.
On arrival in Britain, Spiegl was sent to a minor public school, where he learned little beyond "rugger, plane-spotting and a bit of Latin". Eventually he went to
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
to work for an advertising agency. But he soon switched to music, taught himself to play the
fluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind group. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, enrolled at the
Royal Academy of MusicThe Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
and, within a short time, became Principal Flautist with the
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic OrchestraThe Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra based in Liverpool, England, is Britain's oldest established orchestra and one of the oldest in the world. It is owned and administered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society , a registered charity. It is the only orchestral society in the United...
, a position he kept for more than a decade. Ear damage appears to have played a part in his exit from professional playing, as in later years he would occasionally refer to having been "invalided out by the brass section".
However, during that time he also pursued other interests and began his association with the
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC", is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world...
, aiming to be a popularizer of classical music. A resident of
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, he organised annual
Nuts in May concerts, featuring a Liszt Twist and other
parodyA parody , in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
items. This approach helped draw new young audiences into concert halls. Less attracted to
pop musicPop music is a music genre that developed from the mid-1950s as a softer alternative to rock 'n' roll and later to rock music. It has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs...
, Spiegl once called the
Beatles phenomenonThe Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music...
"the greatest
confidence trickA confidence trick or confidence game is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence...
since the
Virgin BirthThe virgin birth of Jesus is a religious tenet of Christianity and Islam which holds that Mary miraculously conceived Jesus while remaining a virgin...
". However, he used to be tolerant towards journalists who, up to his death, often misspelt his name
Spiegel,
Spiegle,
Speigl,
Speigel, or
Speigle.
Fritz Spiegl died suddenly during a Sunday lunch with some friends and his wife, Ingrid Frances Spiegl.
Compositions
As a composer, Spiegl scored a popular success with the original theme from the TV series
Z-CarsZ-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of beat police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Lancashire. Produced by the BBC and screened on BBC Television , it debuted in January, 1962 and ran for 16 years until September, 1978...
, based on "Johnny Todd", a Liverpool
sea shantySea shanties were shipboard working songs. Some speculate that shanties may have been sung as early as the 15th century though there is little evidence to support this claim...
. He also composed the original theme for the
Z Cars spin-off series
Softly, SoftlySoftly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern - supposedly in the Bristol and Chepstow area of the UK...
; the song was also released as a single on
Andrew Loog OldhamAndrew Loog Oldham is an English producer, impresario and author. He was manager of The Rolling Stones in the 1960s, and was noted for his flamboyant style.-Biography:...
's Immediate record label in 1966. His
BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4 is a domestic UK radio station that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967.-Outline:...
UK ThemeThe BBC Radio 4 UK Theme is an arrangement of traditional British airs composed by Fritz Spiegl which was played every morning on BBC Radio 4 between 1978 and 2006. In 2006, an announcement that the broadcast was to be cancelled caused much controversy in the United Kingdom, including extensive...
, in which national songs from each of the four constituent countries of the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
are ingeniously combined, sometimes in
counterpointIn music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent. It has been most commonly identified in Western music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
with each other, and was heard on Radio 4 at the beginning of each morning's broadcasting until April 2006, when, to the disgust of many, it was dropped.
Selected books
- How to Talk Proper in Liverpool (Lern Yerself Scouse S.) (1966)
- Keep Taking the Tabloids. What the Papers Say and How They Say It (1983)
- The Joy of Words. A Bedside Book for English Lovers (1986)
- Fritz Spiegl's Book of Musical Blunders and other Musical Curiosities (1996) Robson Books Ltd. ISBN 1-86105-075-5
- The Lives, Wives and Loves of the Great Composers (1997) Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. ISBN 0-7145-2917-6
- An Illustrated Everyday History of Liverpool and Merseyside (1998)
- MuSick Notes: A Medical Songbook (2001)
- Contradictionary: Of Confusibles, Lookalikes and Soundalikes (published posthumously in 2003)
External links
- Obituary in the Daily Telegraph
- Dennis Barker Fritz Spiegl: Witty musical polymath and broadcaster The Guardian
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation .The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers...
25 March 2003