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

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

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 def ...

Life

Education

Weiner was born in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

to a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family. His brother gave him his first music and

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

lessons. As children, he and

Fritz Reiner Frederick Martin Reiner (; December 19, 1888 – November 15, 1963) was an American 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 to promine ...

played

piano four hands Piano four hands (, , ) is a type of piano duet involving two players playing the same piano simultaneously. A duet with the players playing separate instruments is generally referred to as a ''piano duet, piano duo''.Bellingham, Jane"piano du ...

. 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 and

cimbalom The cimbalom, cimbal (; ) 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 József Schunda, V. ...

Teaching career

In 1908 he was appointed

music theory Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, ...

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 to a Jewish family. His father Alexander Do ...

, Peter Erős, Béla Síki, 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-servi ...

; violinist Tibor Varga; cellists Edmund Kurtz and János Starker; and pianist György Sebők. 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. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

through

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

most strongly influenced Weiner's compositional style. His orchestration seems much indebted to later Romantic French composers not notably affected by

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

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

Hungarian folk music Hungarian may refer to: * Hungary, a country in Central Europe * Kingdom of Hungary, state of Hungary, existing between 1000 and 1946 * Hungarians/Magyars, ethnic groups in Hungary * Hungarian algorithm, a polynomial time algorithm for solving the ...

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, three

string quartet The term string quartet refers 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 Violin, violini ...

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 music, baroque form wi ...

s, five divertimenti 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 ( ...

, and numerous chamber and piano pieces. On July 1, 2003, his ''Carnival Humoresque (Fasching)'', Op. 5, had its US premiere when it was performed at the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, in the Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park, in the summer series.

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 * * Steven Honigberg, cello Carol Honigberg, piano recorded in 2002 {{DEFAULTSORT:Weiner, Leo 1885 births 1960 deaths Hungarian composers Hungarian male composers Jewish classical composers Franz Liszt Academy of Music alumni Academic staff of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music Hungarian Jews Composers from Budapest Burials at Kerepesi Cemetery Jewish classical pianists Hungarian male classical pianists 20th-century Hungarian male musicians