Louis Spohr - Life, Works

Composer, violinist, and conductor, born in Brunswick, NC Germany. Largely self-taught, he became court conductor at Kassel (1822–57), and is remembered chiefly as a composer for the violin, for which he wrote 17 concertos. He also composed nine symphonies, 11 operas, and other choral and chamber works.

Louis Spohr (Braunschweig, April 5, 1784–Kassel, October 22, 1859) was a German composer, violinist and conductor.

Life

Spohr was born in Braunschweig in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and showed talent for the violin from his early childhood. Spohr's first notable compositions, including his First Violin Concerto, date from this time. A concert in Leipzig 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.

In 1805, Spohr got a job as concertmaster at the court of Gotha, where he stayed until 1812. They performed successfully together as a violin and harp duo, touring in Italy (1816-1817), England (1820) and Paris (1821), but Dorette later abandoned her harpist's career and concentrated on raising their children.

Spohr later worked as conductor at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna (1813-1815), where he became friendly with Beethoven; Spohr's longest post, from 1822 until his death, was as the director of music at the court of Kassel, a position offered him on the suggestion of Carl Maria von Weber.

Like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and his own slightly older contemporary Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Spohr was an active Freemason.

Works

A prolific composer, Spohr produced more than 150 works with opus numbers, in addition to a number of works without such numbers. Between 1803 and 1844 Spohr wrote more violin concertos than any other composer of the time, sixteen in all.

Among Spohr's chamber music is a series of no fewer than 36 string quartets, as well as four interesting 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, and works for violin and harp to be played by him and his wife together.

Though obscure today, Spohr's best operas Faust (1816), Zemire und Azor (1819) and Jessonda (1823) remained in the popular repertoire through the 19th century and well into the 20th when Jessonda was banned by 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 and other choral works.

Spohr was a noted violinist, and invented the violin chin-rest, about 1820. He was also a significant conductor, being one of the first to use a baton and also inventing rehearsal letters, the large letters which are found on sheet music (they enable a conductor to ask the orchestra to start playing "from letter C", for example).

In addition to musical works, Spohr wrote an entertaining and informative autobiography, published posthumously in 1860.