Leo Spies

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Leo Spies (born June 4, 1899 in Moscow , † May 1, 1965 in Ahrenshoop ) was a German composer and conductor .

Leo Spies 1946
Grave of Leo Spies in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin.

Life

Leo Spies, actually Leon Spies, called Lyowa, came from a musical family. His sister Ira was a singer and pianist, his brother Walter a painter and musician who later worked in Bali (Kapellmeister, pianist and musicologist) and his sister Daisy a ballet dancer and choreographer. Spies spent his childhood in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where his German, Baltic and Scottish ancestors had already settled in the second generation. From the age of seven he received piano, violin and composition lessons.

Due to the First World War , the family had to leave Moscow in 1915 and moved to Dresden , where Spies took composition lessons from the Bach researcher Johannes Schreyer for a year . He also made him familiar with the writings of Jakob Boehme , which would later play a major role for Spies. In 1916 and 1917 he studied composition in Berlin at the Musikhochschule Charlottenburg with Engelbert Humperdinck and Robert Kahn . In 1917 Spies was called up for military service and assigned to the Eastern Front. After the end of the war he went back to Dresden.

After Oskar Fried had introduced him to the basics of conducting, Spies made the decision in 1919 to become Kapellmeister. He initially received smaller engagements at northern German provincial theaters. From 1922 to 1923 he worked as a composer and Kapellmeister at the UFA in Berlin and composed large synchronous orchestral music for the premiere of two films by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , Phantom after Gerhart Hauptmann (1922) and The Expulsion after Carl Hauptmann (1923). Ernst Krenek , whom Spies later referred to several times as his teacher, helped him with the composition for Phantom . In his memoirs, Krenek describes this joint work as completely new and a beginning in film music. In addition to Krenek, he was close friends with Eduard Erdmann , Hermann Scherchen and especially intensely with the writer and composer Hans Jürgen von der Wense . From 1924 to 1928 he conducted at the Rostock city ​​theater before becoming ballet conductor at the opera Unter den Linden for Max Terpis and Rudolf von Laban . He held this position until 1935.

Around 1928 he made contact with Hanns Eisler and made contact with the workers 'movement , so he also conducted workers' choirs. From 1935 Spies took over the musical direction of the ballet of the Deutsche Oper Berlin-Charlottenburg until the opera was closed in 1944. Here he worked closely with his sister Daisy Spies. During the war years there was also close cooperation with Tatjana Gsovsky in Leipzig. Their main product, the ballet Don Quixote (1944) , could not be premiered until 1949 at the Berlin State Opera.

Until the end of the war, Spies had to work in the Siemens factory. After that he made great contributions to the rebuilding of Berlin's musical life. He conducted the first public concert in the large broadcasting hall in Masurenallee ( Haus des Rundfunks ) and temporarily conducted again at the Städtische Oper in Kantstrasse, before he was appointed by Walter Felsenstein in 1947 to set up the orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin . He worked there until 1954 as a conductor and director of studies. In 1952 he became a member of the German Academy of the Arts (Berlin) and in 1953 he was appointed 1st Secretary for Music. He also held this position on a temporary basis alongside Hanns Eisler, and after his serious illness, again for the rest of his life. At the Akademie der Künste he has been teaching his own composition class since 1954 (from 1959 as a full professor). Master students are u. a. Gerhard Rosenfeld , Georg Katzer , Wolfgang Hohensee and Siegfried Thiele . Spies was very respected in the GDR and received, among other things, the Goethe Prize of the City of Berlin (1954) and the National Prize (1957).

Personal style and work

Spies was deeply rooted in the Western musical tradition, but was fundamentally open to new ideas. As a composer, one could call him “conservative values”. He believed in the power and inexhaustibility of tonality . But Alexander Scriabin's departure to the modern age, who made guest appearances in his parents' house and with relatives, had fascinated him from an early age. With Scriabin's approach to broadening the tonality, his tonal language comes close to Prokofiev , Shostakovich and the neoclassical Stravinsky . In addition, Spies processed suggestions from English music of the Elizabethan period and the 20th century (for example from Gerald Finzi or William Walton ). But influences from German and Austrian composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach , Johannes Brahms , Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler also shaped Spies. He was also a great admirer of Leoš Janáček , for whose music he also campaigned in the GDR and which he recommended to his students as exemplary. The work of this composer also left clearly audible traces in some of Spies' works (e.g. in the viola concerto, in the first symphony and in the second “Köpenick piano book”). With creative processing of the influences mentioned, Spies developed a clearly recognizable personal style, which is characterized by cantable melodies, free tonality (which sometimes tends towards bitonality), sometimes dance rhythms and clarity and simplicity of form. His composition is characterized by high mastery, his music is authentic and not infrequently original. When composing, he says he always kept an eye on the audience, which explains the relatively easy comprehension of his music.

Like his colleague Hanns Eisler , Spies was also critical of the Western post-war avant-garde, but at the same time defended the young composers from the prevailing cultural policy of socialist realism and said: “Here, the boundaries of the tonal system can and must, if the truth demands it, be expanded and expanded may also be blown up. "

During his long career as a theater musician, he wrote over 40 drama music for the most famous directors of the Berlin theater scene from the 1930s to 1950s, such as Gustaf Gründgens , Lothar Müthel , Jürgen Fehling , Heinrich George , Walter Felsenstein and Fritz Wisten , including Faust music for Gründgens famous production. Because of this theater experience and the compositions for the ballet, a dramatic dance attitude with programmatic features can be found in many of his works .

Spies was interested in political subjects, especially in his vocal music. As early as 1930 he wrote the cantata "Turksib" after Vladimir Mayakovsky . His connection to communist circles and Jewish friends earned him surveillance by the Gestapo in the Third Reich . He hid his political compositions and found protection for himself and his family in the indispensable ballet and theater work. He succeeded in doing this without joining the NSDAP , probably mainly through the patronage of General Director Gustaf Gründgens and his then very successful sister Daisy. His work during this time was accordingly based on classic literary subjects or tried out popular pieces. In the case of his very successful Berlin ballet “Der Stralauer Fischzug” (1936), based on the literary draft of Adolf Glassbrenner and Theodor Hosemann , he felt the displeasure of the then “theater gods” Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels because of all too cheeky, easily understood political allusions bargained. Nonetheless, the ballet composed for the Berlin Olympics was also performed for the 700th anniversary of Berlin in 1937 in the second season at the Deutsche Oper.

One focus of Spies' late work is music for children, schools and amateurs. Because of his special merits in the field of educational music, the Prenzlauer-Berg music school was baptized in his name in the 1980s. Spies experienced his most successful time in the GDR, where he was one of the most important and influential composers.

Works (selection)

Vocal music

  • Sanctus for choir a cappella (1927)
  • Symphonic cantata No. 1 for solos, choir and orchestra; Text: Leo Spies (1929/30)
  • Turksib for double choir a cappella (1932, rev. 1945)
  • In Praise of the Restless , Symphonic Cantata No. 2 for solos, choir and orchestra (1934, rev. 1959)
  • Hölderlin songs for baritone and orchestra (1937-55)
  • Hölderlin cantata for choir (1943)
  • Children's anthem (“Grace does not save effort”, text: Bertolt Brecht ) for children's choir or acc. Choir u. Str. Or. Other Instr. (1951/59)
  • 5 children's songs (based on texts by Erika Engel and Rob. Kurt hanging basket ), including the spring flower song "I ordered flowers" (1953), which became popular in the GDR
  • Children of the World , cantata (1954)
  • Rosenberg cantata , after Howard Fast (1955)
  • Dance of the Electrons , for baritone, choir and orchestra for the 500th anniversary of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (1956)
  • Der Rote Platz , cantata based on Vladimir Mayakovsky (1957)
  • 5 Shakespeare songs for baritone (or medium voice) and piano (1958)
  • St. Amor or The Defense of Love , cantata based on Shakespeare (1964)
  • 7 children's songs based on texts by Eugenie Sandberg (1964/65)

Orchestral works

  • Divertimento notturno (1939)
  • Violoncello Concerto (1940)
  • Funeral music (1941–45, rev. 1951)
  • Happy Overture (1952)
  • Violin Concerto (1953)
  • Orchestra fantasy in memory of Friedrich Engels (1953)
  • Symphony (No. 1) in D (1957)
  • Viola Concerto (1960)
  • Symphony No. 2 (1961)
  • Festival music for teachers and students (1964)

Drama and film music

Ballets

  • Man and Machine (1931)
  • Apollo and Daphne (1936)
  • The Stralauer Fischzug (1936)
  • The Seafaring (1936)
  • The sun is laughing (1942)
  • Pastoral (1942)
  • The lovers of Verona (1942)
  • Don Quixote (1944)

Chamber music

  • String Quartet No. 1 in B flat minor (1939)
  • Divertimento goldoniano for nonet (1939)
  • Serenade for 5 wind instruments, harp, double bass and percussion (1946)
  • 4 preludes for string quartet (1953)
  • 5 summer pictures for viola and piano (1954)
  • Adagio and Allegro for violoncello and piano (1956)
  • 2 sonatas for wind quintet (1959, 1963)
  • Trio for 2 cellos and piano (1959)
  • Rustic Fantasies for Nonet (1961)
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1963)
  • Trio sonatina for violin, cello and piano (1963)

Piano music

  • 2 Poemes (1915)
  • 2 Intermezzi (1916)
  • 3 sonatas (1917, 1938, 1963)
  • Piano piece 1923
  • Piano piece 1929
  • 5 piano pieces (1938)
  • 3 ballads (1939)
  • 2 suites (1940, 1941)
  • Köpenicker piano book , 3 issues (1956–60)
  • Sonatina (1958)
  • Birthday March (1958)
  • 3 character studies (1959)
  • Dance in the Sunshine (1960)
  • Ulen Mirror Egg (1960)
  • Canzonetta (1961)
  • Songs of the Forest (1961)
  • 13 Bagatelles (1962)
  • 6 inventions (1962)
  • Photo album (1962)
  • 4 marches for peaceful people for piano 4 hands (1964)
  • House music (1964)

Others

The St. Petersburg architect Alexander Parland was a maternal great-uncle of Leo Spies with Scottish roots. Information with portrait painting Parland can be found on web links under Church of the Resurrection (Saint Petersburg) . A great-uncle on my father's side was the Swedish builder of the Nikolai Railway (Moscow-Petersburg-Helsinki) Knut Adolf Ludwig v. Stjernvall-Walleen (1819-1899) , who was the Russian Minister of Railways in the 19th century. Through the ramified Baltic family, Spies was distantly related to Olof Palme and to the Rimski and Tchaikovsky biographer Nikolai van Gilse van der Pals in St. Petersburg.

Discography

  • Leo Spies: Violin Concerto - Symphony No. II. Hastedt label, Bremen 2005.
  • 2nd piano suite (1941), on CD Hommage à Walter Spies ; Executed by: Steffen Schleiermacher, piano; Dabringhaus and Grimm (MDG) 2003.

literature

  • Article in MGG and Grove Music Lexicon.
  • Vera Grützner: Leo Spies. in: Edition Texte u. Criticism . Contemporary Composers (KGD). Edited by H.-W. Heister, WW Sparrer. Richard Boorberg, Munich 1992 ff. ISBN 3-88377-810-9 .
  • Martin Torp: Authentic composing beyond avant-garde fashions. Leo Spies and Gerhard Frommel. in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (NZfM). Schott, Mainz 2005/5 (Sept./Oct.), P. 24 ff. ISSN  0945-6945
  • Marlene Weller: Leo Spies. in: From the life and work of great musicians. Issue 4. Composers of the GDR. People and Knowledge, Berlin 1978, p. 38 ff.
  • David Sandberg: Leo Spies. in: Musicians of our time. Members of the Music Section d. Academy of Arts of the GDR. Edited by D. Brennecke, H. Gerlach, M. Hansen. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1979, p. 101 ff.
  • Torsten Musial:  Spies, Leo . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Dieter Heim: Jürgen von der Wense . Story of a youth. Diaries and letters. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1999. ISBN 3-88221-821-5 (including numerous mentions of Spies, especially in the 1920s).
  • Fred K. Prieberg: Music in the Nazi State. Frankfurt M. 1982. ISBN 3-596-26901-6 .
  • Lilian Karina, Marion Kant: Dance under the swastika. Henschel, Berlin 1996. ISBN 3-89487-244-6 (here also the Gestapo documents).
  • Georg Spies: Memories of a German Abroad. Berlin 1926, new ed. v. Wolfgang Sartor. Olearius, St. Petersburg 2002. ISBN 5-901603-02-8 (economic history, the life of parents and ancestors).
  • Oliver Fink: Theater on the castle. On the history of the Heidelberg Festival. Heidelberg City Archives. Brigitte Gruderjahn, Heidelberg 1997. ISBN 3-924973-54-7 (for which Spies wrote 10 original compositions).
  • Günter Hofmeyer (Ed.): Leo Spies. Preliminary catalog raisonné of the compositions , printed as a manuscript by the Deutsche Akademie der Künste zu Berlin, 1966.

Web links

Commons : Leo Spies  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leo Spies, in: About music , text in the program booklet of the German Academy of the Arts, Berlin, December 9, 1953.
personal data
SURNAME Spies, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1965
Place of death Ahrenshoop