SPOHR, LUDWIG (1784-1859), German composer and violinist, was born at Brunswick on April 24, 1784. He spent his childhood at Seesen, where in 1789 he began to study the violin, and at six years old was able to take part in chamber music. He had a few lessons in composition, but, as he himself tells us, he learnt more from studying the scores of Mozart. After playing a concerto of his own at a school concert with marked success, he was placed under Maucourt, the leader of the duke's band; and in 1798 he started on an artistic tour. He made his way to Hamburg, but had to return on foot. The duke then gave him an appointment in his band, and provided for his future edu cation under Franz Eck, with whom he visited St. Petersburg and other European capitals. His first violin concerto was printed in 1803. In 18o5 he became violinist to the duke of Gotha. Soon after this he married, his first wife being Dorette Scheidler, a celebrated harpist.
In 1812 Spohr became leader of the orchestra at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna. He then began his dramatic masterpiece, Faust, which he completed in 1813, though it was not performed until five years later. He resigned his appointment at Vienna in 1815, and made a tour in Italy, where he performed his eighth and finest violin concerto, the Scena cantante nello stilo dram matico. The leading Italian critics called him "the finest singer on the violin that had ever been heard." On Spohr's return to Germany in 1817 he was appointed conductor of the opera at Frankfort ; and there in 1818 he first produced his Faust. It was followed by Zemire and Azor, which, though by no means as fine as Faust, soon attained a much greater popularity. Faust suf fered from its libretto, which is on quite a different plot from Goethe's poem.
Spohr first visited England in 1820, and on the 6th of March played his Scold cantante with great success in London at the first Philharmonic concert. At the third he produced a new sym
phony (No. 2 in D minor) and, instead of having it led by the first violinist and a maestro al cembalo, conducted it himself with a baton; a great innovation in London at the time. After a visit to Paris, and a short sojourn in Dresden, Weber recom mended him strongly to the elector of Hesse-Cassel as Kapell meister. Spohr began his duties at Cassel on Jan. 1, 1822, and produced his sixth opera, Jessonda, in 1823.
In 1822 Mendelssohn, then a boy of thirteen, visited Cassel; a firm friendship sprang up between the two, which ceased only with Mendelssohn's death in 1847. Spohr's next three operas, Der Berggeist (1825), Pietro von Abano (1827) and Der Alchy mist (1830), attained only temporary success. At the Rhenish musical festival held at Dusseldorf in 1826, his oratorio Die letzten Dinge (The Last Judgment), the most famous of his sacred compositions, was produced. In 1831 Spohr published his admirable Violin School. The year 1834 was saddened by his wife's death. Two years later he married a pianist, Marianne Pfeiffer. During 1833 he had been working at an oratorio—Des Heilands letzte Stunden (Calvary or The Crucifixion), which was per formed at Cassel on Good Friday 1835, and sung in English at the Norwich Festival of 1839 under Spohr's own direction, with an effect which he afterwards always spoke of as the great est triumph of his life. For the Norwich Festival of 1842 he composed The Fall of Babylon, which also was a perfect success, though the elector of Hesse-Cassel refused Spohr leave of absence to conduct it. His last opera, Die Kreuzfahrer, was produced at Cassel in 1845. Of his nine symphonies the finest, Die Weihe der Tone, was produced in 1832.
Spohr's compositions for the violin include concertos, quartets, duets and other concerted pieces and solos, and among these a high place is taken by four double quartets (i.e., octets for two antiphonal string-quartet groups), an art-form of his own inven tion. He was, indeed, keenly interested in experiments, notwith standing his attachment to classical form; and the care with which he produced Wagner's Fliegender Hollander and Tann kaiser at Cassel in 1842 and 1853, in spite of the elector's oppo sition, shows that his failure to understand Beethoven lay deeper than pedantry. He died at Cassel on Oct. 16, 1859.