Leó Weiner (16 April 1885 – 13 September 1960) was one of the leading Hungarian

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

educators of the first half of the twentieth century, and a

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

Life

Education

Weiner was born in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

to a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family. His brother gave him his first music and

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

lessons. As children, he and

Fritz Reiner Frederick Martin "Fritz" Reiner (December 19, 1888 – November 15, 1963) was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century. Hungarian born and trained, he emigrated to the United States in 1922, where he rose t ...

played

piano four hands Piano four hands (french: À quatre mains, german: Zu vier Händen, Vierhändig, it, a quattro mani) is a type of piano duet involving two players playing the same piano simultaneously. A duet with the players playing separate instruments is ...

. Weiner later studied at the Academy of Music in Budapest, studying with János (Hans) Koessler. While there, he won numerous prizes, including the Franz Liszt Stipend, the Volkmann Prize and the Erkel Prize (all for one composition, his Serenade Op. 3); the Haynald Prize for his ''Agnus Dei''; and the Schunda Prize for the ''Hungarian Fantasy'' for

tárogató The tárogató (''töröksíp'', ''Turkish pipe''; plural ''tárogatók'' or, anglicized, ''tárogatós''; ro, taragot or ''torogoata'') refers to two different woodwind instruments commonly used in both Hungarian and Romanian folk music. The ...

and

cimbalom The cimbalom (; ) or concert cimbalom is a type of chordophone composed of a large, trapezoidal box on legs with metal strings stretched across its top and a damping pedal underneath. It was designed and created by V. Josef Schunda in 1874 in ...

Teaching career

In 1908 he was appointed

music theory Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (ke ...

teacher at the Budapest Academy of Music, professor of composition in 1912 and professor of chamber music in 1920. In 1949 he retired as emeritus professor, but continued to teach until the end of his life. Among his many notable students were conductors

Antal Doráti Antal Doráti (, , ; 9 April 1906 – 13 November 1988) was a Hungarian-born conductor and composer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1943. Biography Antal Doráti was born in Budapest, where his father Alexander Doráti was a vi ...

,Lyman (1986). p. 62 in "Antal Doráti, Outstanding Trainer of Orchestras (1906–)": "At fourteen young Doráti entered the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, where his principal teachers were Leó Weiner (chamber music) and

Zoltán Kodály Zoltán Kodály (; hu, Kodály Zoltán, ; 16 December 1882 – 6 March 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály method of music ed ...

(theory and composition)."

Peter Erős Peter Sandor Erős (22 September 1932, Budapest - 12 September 2014, Seattle) was a Hungarian-American conductor. Erős attended the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where he studied composition with Zoltán Kodály, chamber music with Leó Weiner, a ...

Béla Síki Béla Síki (21 February 1923 – 29 October 2020) was a Hungarian pianist. Career He was born in Hungary, where he was a student in Budapest of Leo Weiner and Ernest von Dohnányi at the Franz Liszt Music Academy. He moved to Switzerland in 194 ...

, and

Georg Solti Sir Georg Solti ( , ; born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-servin ...

; violinist Tibor Varga; cellists

Edmund Kurtz Edmund Kurtz (29 December 190819 August 2004) was a Russian-born Australian cellist and music editor. He was renowned for his "impeccable technique", "innate musicality", and his "rich tone", with a "warm, sensuous quality that seldom loses its l ...

and

János Starker János Starker (; ; July 5, 1924 – April 28, 2013) was a Hungarian-American cellist. From 1958 until his death, he taught at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he held the title of Distinguished Professor. Starker is consider ...

; and pianist

György Sebők György Sebők (November 2, 1922 – November 14, 1999) was a Hungarian-born American pianist and professor at the Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. He was known worldwide as a soloist with major ...

. He died in Budapest.

Compositions

The early Romantics from

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

through

Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositi ...

most strongly influenced Weiner's compositional style. His orchestration seems much indebted to later Romantic

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

composers not notably affected by

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become on ...

in particular. This conservative Romantic approach formed the basis of his style, to which elements of

Hungarian folk music Hungarian folk music ( hu, magyar népzene) includes a broad array of Central European styles, including the recruitment dance verbunkos, the csárdás and nóta. The name ''Népzene'' is also used for Hungarian folk music as an umbrella designati ...

were added sometime later, although he was not an active field researcher of folk music as were his contemporaries Bartók and Kodály, but simply shared an interest in the subject and added elements of folk music into his established harmonic language without significantly changing it. Among Weiner's notable compositions are a

string trio A string trio is a group of three string instruments or a piece written for such a group. From at least the 19th century on, the term "string trio" with otherwise unspecified instrumentation normally refers to the combination violin, viola and cell ...

, three

string quartet The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...

s, two

violin sonata A violin sonata is a musical composition for violin, often accompanied by a keyboard instrument and in earlier periods with a bass instrument doubling the keyboard bass line. The violin sonata developed from a simple baroque form with no fixed form ...

s, five

divertimenti ''Divertimento'' (; from the Italian '' divertire'' "to amuse") is a musical genre, with most of its examples from the 18th century. The mood of the ''divertimento'' is most often lighthearted (as a result of being played at social functions) and ...

for orchestra, a

symphonic poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...

, and numerous

chamber Chamber or the chamber may refer to: In government and organizations *Chamber of commerce, an organization of business owners to promote commercial interests *Legislative chamber, in politics *Debate chamber, the space or room that houses deliber ...

and piano pieces.

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

Biography
at Allmusic

* Janos Konrad violin, David Herman piano Recorded by Matyas Veer in the Muziektheater Amsterdam on 4 February 2014 * Janos Konrad violin, David Herman piano Recorded by Matyas Veer in the Muziektheater Amsterdam on 4 February 2014 * Janos Konrad violin, David Herman piano Recorded by Matyas Veer in the Muziektheater Amsterdam on 4 February 2014 * Janos Konrad violin, David Herman piano Recorded by Matyas Veer in the Muziektheater Amsterdam on 4 February 2014 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Weiner, Leo 1885 births 1960 deaths Hungarian composers Hungarian male composers Jewish classical composers Franz Liszt Academy of Music alumni Franz Liszt Academy of Music faculty Hungarian Jews Musicians from Budapest Burials at Kerepesi Cemetery Jewish classical pianists Male classical pianists 20th-century Hungarian male musicians