Hanns Löhr (composer)

Hanns Löhr (1957)

Hanns Löhr (according to the birth certificate Johann Karl August Löhr ; * May 28, 1892 in Braunschweig ; † March 8, 1982 ibid) was a German composer of light music . Löhr's extensive work includes numerous waltzes , overtures , intermezzi , serenades , songs , humoresques , polkas and marches as well as several concerts for solo instruments.

life and work

Hanns Löhr grew up as the firstborn of typesetter August Löhr and his wife Sophie (née Meyer) in a musical environment. The father played the violin and had a good singing voice. He performed regularly with friends in various locations around the city. His children adopted his pronounced musicality. Hanns' brother August became an organist and composer, sister Grete an opera singer and the sisters Else and Irmgard were good pianists. Hanns learned to play the violin and piano from his strict and sometimes despotic father. However, he soon showed a certain talent for drawing.

Because there was no money for the conservatory, Hanns Löhr was given a painting apprenticeship with the aim of training as a decorative painter. With the support of his mother and through successful auditions, he got a job in a music school. He received good reports and was now encouraged more intensively by his father.

Making music

In 1929 Löhr, now married to Emmy Mewes, went public with his first compositions. The self-proclaimed "jazz devil" (German pronunciation!) Earned good reviews and some success with the audience. But the compositions in jazz style should only remain an examination of the zeitgeist. His real field has always been concert entertainment music .

In 1932 the waltz "Königskinder" was published by the music publisher Henry Litolff . In the introduction , Löhr introduces the old folk song in simple harmony , the touching tension of which is taken up by the subsequent main theme, practically played around. The music writer Arthur von Gizycki-Arkadjew wrote in the “Artist”: “This is a work in which Hanns Löhr's so beautifully blooming imagination could fully live out. Soft, poetic suppleness, abundant strength and stormy temperament, brilliant technical figurations and, above all, elegant architecture ” .

Soon afterwards, the same publisher published the “Symphonic Waltz”, to which a detailed work analysis was devoted in the magazine “Die Unterhaltungsmusik”. Encouraged by the good criticism and the immediate inclusion in the concert and radio programs - the first records also appeared - Löhr immediately started again with a great waltz and wrote what is probably his most successful work, the concert waltz "In the beautiful valley of the Isar" at Heinrichshofen-Verlag. It was always astonishing that the North German Hanns Löhr was able to write a work so woven through with Bavarian folklore. Löhr, however, liked and often stayed in Bavaria, where he enjoyed a warm friendship with a family in Aschau .

With the “Isar Valley”, Löhr finally achieved the breakthrough. From now on he devoted himself entirely to composing. He also appeared in public occasionally as a conductor until the 1960s.

During the war, Löhr stayed with his wife, daughter Waltraut and the granddaughter, who was born in 1940, in his house in the southern part of Braunschweig. When the aerial warfare began, he took the family to Braunlage, but stayed in the house himself, which fortunately remained intact.

Hanns Löhr loved it and was also extremely skilled at tracing and reciting caricatures by Wilhelm Busch . During the war Löhr also set some Wilhelm Busch poems to music, mainly from the “Critique of the Heart” (first performance in 1943).

post war period

In the post-war period, Löhr was able to build on his successes; the first composition to appear in 1948 was the suite for piano, solo “Kinderzeit”. Almost all broadcasters in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany played his most famous works. At that time, Löhr was in great demand and traveled a lot. Only his lifelong weak constitution set him limits now and then, and increasingly with age.

The last catalog of works lists over 100 titles, not including works for choirs, harmonica groups and accordion orchestras.

literature

• Rolf Paland: Hanns Löhr: a Braunschweig composer , Braunschweig, City Library 1992

Web links

• Literature by and about Hanns Löhr in the catalog of the German National Library

Sound samples

• [1] Grammophon 24 447-A (Matr. 4262 BR III) “The cheeky sparrows” - Characteristic interlude (Löhr): Paul Godwin artist orchestra, aufgen. 1932
• [2] “Murzel und Purzel”. Concert polka for 2 clarinets (Löhr, arr. Huhn): Musikkapelle Mittenwald

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Autograph in the Saxon State Archives in Leipzig , holdings: Musikverlag Benjamin / Sikorski.