Complete Music for Violin and Harp Volume 2

Louis Spohr won an enormous reputation during the nineteenth century as a composer, violin virtuoso, conductor and teacher. He was also known for his upright, noble character and as a man of convinced liberal and democratic beliefs who was not afraid of speaking out against the autocracy which abounded in the small German principalities of the time. His contemporaries, indeed, also saw this 'upright character' translated into physical terms, as Spohr was around six and a half feet tall. He was one of music's great travellers, wrote an entertaining and informative autobiography, compiled an influential violin tutor, invented the violin chin-rest, was one of the pioneers of baton conducting and devised the method of putting letters in a score as an aid to rehearsals. Spohr was born in Brunswick in North Germany on 5th April, 1784, and as a boy showed talent for the violin. When he was fifteen he joined the ducal orchestra and by 1802 had reached a stage at which the Duke considered him ready to go on a year-long study tour with the virtuoso Franz Anton Eck (1774-1804), ending in the then Russian capital, St Petersburg.