Louis Spohr was a German composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist and conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

. Born Ludewig Spohr, he is usually known by the French form of his name. Described by Dorothy Mayer as "The Forgotten Master", Spohr was once as famous as Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

. As a violinist, his virtuoso playing was admired by Queen Victoria. As a composer he ranks as a historic figure in the development of German music drama whose greatest triumph was in the oratorio

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...

. His orchestral writings and chamber works were once considered on a par with Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

’s.

Life

Spohr was born in Braunschweig

Braunschweig

Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....

 in the duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel to Karl Heinrich Spohr and Juliane Ernestine Luise Henke. Spohr's first musical encouragement came from his parents: his mother was a gifted singer and pianist, and his father played the flute. A violinist named Dufour gave the lad his earliest violin teaching. The pupil's first attempts at composition date from the early 1790s. Dufour, recognizing the boy's musical talent, persuaded his parents to send him to Brunswick for further instruction.

The failure of his first concert tour, a badly planned venture to Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 in 1799, caused him to ask Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick for financial help. A successful concert at the court impressed the duke so much that he engaged the 15-year old Spohr as a chamber musician. In 1802, through the good offices of the duke, he became the pupil of Franz Ignaz Beck

Franz Ignaz Beck

Franz Ignaz Beck was a German violinist, composer, conductor and music teacher who spent the greater part of his life in France, where he became director of the Bordeaux Grand Théâtre. Possibly the most talented pupil of Johann Stamitz, Beck is an important representative of the second generation...

 and accompanied him on a concert tour which took him as far as St. Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

. Beck, who completely retrained Spohr in violin technique, was a product of the Mannheim school

Mannheim school

Mannheim school refers to both the orchestral techniques pioneered by the court orchestra of Mannheim in the latter half of the 18th century as well as the group of composers who wrote such music for the orchestra of Mannheim and others.-History:...

, and Spohr became its most prominent heir. Spohr's first notable compositions, including his First Violin Concerto, date from this time. After his return home, the duke granted him leave to make a concert tour of North Germany. A concert in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 in December 1804 brought the influential music critic Friedrich Rochlitz "to his knees," not only because of Spohr's playing but also because of his compositions. This concert brought the young man overnight fame in the whole German-speaking world.

In 1805, Spohr got a job as concertmaster at the court of Gotha

Gotha (town)

Gotha is a town in Thuringia, within the central core of Germany. It is the capital of the district of Gotha.- History :The town has existed at least since the 8th century, when it was mentioned in a document signed by Charlemagne as Villa Gotaha . Its importance derives from having been chosen in...

, where he stayed until 1812. There he met the 18-year-old harp

Harp

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...

ist Dorette Scheidler, daughter of one of the court singers. They were married on February 2, 1806, and lived happily until Dorette's death 28 years later. They performed successfully together as a violin and harp duo (Spohr having composed the “Sonata in C minor for violin and harp” for her), touring in Italy (1816–1817), England (1820) and Paris (1821), but Dorette later abandoned her harpist's career and concentrated on raising their children.

In 1808, Spohr practiced with Beethoven at the latter's home, working on the Piano Trio Opus 70 No. 1, The Ghost

Piano Trios Nos. 5 - 6, Opus 70 (Beethoven)

Opus 70 is a set of two Piano Trios by Ludwig van Beethoven, written for piano, violin, and cello. They were published in 1809.The first, in D major, known as the Ghost, is one of his best known works in the genre . The D major trio features themes found in the second movement of Beethoven's...

. Spohr's writing indicates the piano was out of tune and that Beethoven's playing was harsh or careless, which has not been explained with certainty. Spohr later worked as conductor at the Theater an der Wien

Theater an der Wien

The Theater an der Wien is a historic theatre on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district of Vienna. Completed in 1801, it has seen the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music...

, Vienna (1813–1815), where he continued to be on friendly terms with Beethoven; subsequently he was opera director at Frankfurt (1817–1819) where he was able to stage his own operas — the first of which, Faust

Faust (Spohr)

Faust is an opera by the German composer Louis Spohr. The libretto, by Josef Karl Bernard, is based on the legend of Faust; it is not influenced by Goethe's Faust, though Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy had been published in 1808. Instead, Carl Bernard's libretto draws mainly on Faust plays...

, had been rejected in Vienna. Spohr's longest post, from 1822 until his death in Kassel

Kassel

Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...

, was as the director of music at the court of Kassel, a position offered him on the suggestion of Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....

. In Kassel on 3 January 1836, he married his second wife, the 29-year-old Marianne Pfeiffer. She survived him by many years, living until 1892.

In 1851 the elector refused to sign the permit for Spohr's two months' leave of absence, to which he was entitled under his contract, and when the musician departed without the permit, a portion of his salary was deducted. In 1857 he was pensioned off, much against his own wish, and in the winter of the same year he broke his arm, an accident which put an end to his violin playing. Nevertheless he conducted his opera Jessonda

Jessonda

Jessonda is a grand opera in German by Louis Spohr, written in 1822. The German libretto was written by Eduard Gehe.Spohr, who wrote the work in 1822, had been newly appointed Hofkapellmeister in Kassel...

at the fiftieth anniversary of the Prague Conservatorium in the following year, with all his old-time energy. In 1859 he died at Kassel.

Like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and his own slightly older contemporary Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Johann Nepomuk Hummel or Jan Nepomuk Hummel was an Austrian composer and virtuoso pianist. His music reflects the transition from the Classical to the Romantic musical era.- Life :...

, Spohr was an active Freemason. He was also active as a violin instructor throughout his career. His notable pupils included violinists Henry Blagrove

Henry Blagrove (violinist)

Henry Gamble Blagrove was a celebrated English violinist. A child prodigy, he began studying the violin at the age of 4 and performing in public concerts at the age of 5. In 1822 he became one of the first students admitted to the newly established Royal Academy of Music...

 and Henry Holmes

Henry Holmes (composer)

Henry Holmes was an English violinist, composer, and music educator. His compositional output includes a violin concerto, several works for solo violin, four symphonies, a concert overture, two sacred cantatas for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, and other chamber and choral works.Born in...

.

Works

A prolific composer, Spohr produced more than 150 works with opus number

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

s, in addition to a number of works without such numbers. He wrote music in all genres. His nine symphonies (a tenth was completed, but withdrawn) show a progress from the classical style of his predecessors to the program music

Program music

Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...

 of the ninth symphony, Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons). Between 1803 and 1844 Spohr wrote more violin concerto

Violin concerto

A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble, customarily orchestra. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day...

s than any other composer of the time, eighteen in all, including works left unpublished at his death. Some of them are formally unconventional, such as the one-movement Concerto No. 8, which is in the style of an operatic aria, and which is still periodically revived (Jascha Heifetz

Jascha Heifetz

Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...

 championed it), most recently in a 2006 recording by Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn is an American violinist.Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia. Beginning her studies when she was three years old at Baltimore's Peabody Institute, she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age ten, and in 1991, made her major orchestral debut with the...

. There are two double-violin concertos as well. Better known today, however, are the four clarinet concerto

Clarinet concerto

A clarinet concerto is a piece for clarinet and orchestra . Albert Rice has identified a work by Giuseppe Antonio Paganelli as possibly the earliest known concerto for solo clarinet; its score appears to be titled "Concerto per Clareto" and may date from 1733. It may, however, be intended for...

s, all written for the virtuoso Johann Simon Hermstedt

Johann Simon Hermstedt

Johann Simon Hermstedt was one of the most famous clarinettists of the 19th century. A German, he served as court clarinettist to Duke Günther I of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, and taught the Duke to play the clarinet...

, which have established a secure place in clarinettists' repertoire.

Among Spohr's chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 is a series of no fewer than 36 string quartets, as well as four double quartets for two string quartets. He also wrote an assortment of other quartets, duos, trios, quintets and sextets, an octet and a nonet, works for solo violin and for solo harp

Harp

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...

, and works for violin and harp to be played by him and his wife together.

Though obscure today, Spohr's opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s Faust

Faust (Spohr)

Faust is an opera by the German composer Louis Spohr. The libretto, by Josef Karl Bernard, is based on the legend of Faust; it is not influenced by Goethe's Faust, though Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy had been published in 1808. Instead, Carl Bernard's libretto draws mainly on Faust plays...

(1816), Zemire und Azor (1819) and Jessonda

Jessonda

Jessonda is a grand opera in German by Louis Spohr, written in 1822. The German libretto was written by Eduard Gehe.Spohr, who wrote the work in 1822, had been newly appointed Hofkapellmeister in Kassel...

(1823) remained in the popular repertoire through the 19th century and well into the 20th when Jessonda was banned by the Nazis because it depicted a European hero in love with an Indian princess. Spohr also wrote dozens of songs, many of them collected as Deutsche Lieder (German Songs), as well as a mass

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

 and other choral

Choir

A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...

 works. His oratorios, particularly Die letzten Dinge (The Last Judgement) (1825—1826), were greatly admired during the 19th century. During the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

  Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

 mentioned him in Act 2 of The Mikado

The Mikado

The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

in a song by the title character.

Spohr, with his fifteen violin concertos, won for himself a conspicuous place in the musical literature of the nineteenth century. He endeavored (without any good result) to make the concerto a substantial and superior composition free from the artificial bravura of the time. He achieved a new romantic

Romantic music

Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....

 mode of expression. The weaker sides of Spohr’s violin compositions are observed in his somewhat monotonous rhythmic structures; in his rejection of certain piquant bowing styles, and artificial harmonic

Artificial harmonic

To produce an artificial harmonic, a stringed instrument player holds down a note on the neck with the non-dominant hand, thereby shortening the vibrational length of the string, uses a finger to lightly touch a point on the string that is an integer divisor of its vibrational length, and plucks or...

s; and in the deficiency of contrapuntal

Counterpoint

In 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 classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...

 textures.

Spohr was a noted violinist, and invented the violin chinrest

Chinrest

A chinrest is a shaped piece of wood attached to the body of a violin or a viola to aid in the positioning of the player's jaw or chin on the instrument. The chinrest may be made of ebony, rosewood, boxwood, or plastic...

, about 1820. He was also a significant conductor, being one of the first to use a baton

Baton (conducting)

A baton is a stick that is used by conductors primarily to exaggerate and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians. They are generally made of a light wood, fiberglass or carbon fiber which is tapered to a grip shaped like a pear, drop, cylinder...

 and also inventing rehearsal letter

Rehearsal letter

A rehearsal letter is a boldface letter of the alphabet in an orchestral score, and its corresponding parts, that provides a convenient spot from which to resume rehearsal after a break. Rehearsal letters are most often used in scores of the Romantic era, beginning with Louis Spohr...

s, which are placed periodically throughout a piece of sheet music

Sheet music

Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...

 so that a conductor may save time by asking the orchestra or singers to start playing "from letter C", for example.

In addition to musical works, Spohr is remembered particularly for his Violinschule, a treatise on violin playing which codified many of the latest advances in violin technique, such as the use of spiccato. In addition, he wrote an entertaining and informative autobiography, published posthumously in 1860. A museum is devoted to his memory in Kassel.

According to Longyear, Spohr's best works were hailed by many of his contemporaries as quintessentially Romantic and inherited by Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

.

Selected recordings

• Opera Der Alchymist Bernd Weikl, Moran Abouloff, Jörg Dürmüller, Jan Zinkler, Susanna Pütters, Staatsorchester Braunschweig, Christian Fröhlich
  Christian Fröhlich
  Christian Fröhlich is a German footballer who plays for Heidenauer SV.-External links:*...
  
  . Oehms, 2009

External links

• The Spohr Society of Great Britain
• The Spohr Society of the United States
• Werke von Louis Spohr im Verlag Dohr Köln
• The German Louis Spohr website (links)
• "Spohr" Titles; Spohr as author from archive.org
• "Spohr" Titles; Spohr as author from books.google.com
• "Spohr" titles from Gallica
• http://rex.kb.dk/primo_library/libweb/action/preferences.do?fn=change_lang&vid=KGL&prefLang=en_US&prefBackUrl=http:%2F%2Frex.kb.dk%2Fprimo_library%2Flibweb%2Faction%2Fsearch.do?dscnt=0%26fctN=facet_tlevel%26vl(1UI0)=contains%26vl(61142532UI2)=sub%26scp.scps=scope%3A%28KGL%29%26fctV=online_resource%26vl(1UI2)=contains%26tab=default_tab%26dstmp=1291362150176%26srt=rank%26mode=Advanced%26vl(45742256UI3)=all_items%26vl(48924786UI4)=all_items%26tb=t%26indx=1%26backFromPreferences=true%26vl(freeText0)=%26fn=search%26vid=KGL%26vl(freeText2)=%26vl(45742261UI5)=all_items%26title1=1%26vl(1UI1)=contains%26frbg=%26ct=facet%26dum=true%26Submit=Search%26vl(48924784UI1)=creator%26vl(freeText1)=Spohr%26vl(48924785UI0)=title%26vid=KGL"Spohr" Titles] 1 Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Denmark
• "Spohr" Titles from the Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ)
• "Spohr" Titles from the University of Rochester