For much of the 20th century scarcely any of Spohr’s numerous compositions were performed or recorded, and musicologists showed little interest; the predominant view was expressed by Gerald Abraham in 1938, when he stated bluntly: “Spohr’s music is dead.” Yet traces of Spohr’s former status remained. His name decorated the cover of the Novello oratorio vocal scores alongside Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Weber and Mendelssohn, until he was replaced by Elgar around 1930. In 1954 he still merited a seven-page article in the fifth edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which was only slightly abbreviated from the first edition of 1879. But modifications to the opening of the Grove article charted the changes: in the first edition it was “great violinist and famous composer”, in the third (1928), “great violinist and composer” and in the fifth, “German violinist and composer.”
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