Leó Weiner

Leó Weiner (born April 16, 1885, Budapest—died Sept. 14, 1960, Vienna) was a composer in the tradition of Brahms and Mendelssohn. He was a coach at the Budapest Comic Opera and won the Franz Josef Jubilee Prize, a travelling fellowship that took him to Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, and Paris. From 1908 to 1949, he was a professor at the Budapest Academy.

As a composer Weiner published about 30 works, the best known of which is his witty incidental music for Mihály Vörösmarty’s fairy play Csongor és Tünde (1903). Unlike his compatriots Bartók, Kodály, and their followers, he handled folk music only as raw material instead of synthesizing it into a personal style. His other works include Carnival, a humoresque for orchestra (1907); Pastorale, phantasie et fugue, for strings (1941); and Serenade, for orchestra (1906). Of his textbooks, Analytical Harmony (1944) is best known.