Sommer, Johann Matthias 1705 - 1785

The Composer Manfred Spiller, born at Halberstadt in 1932, studied theology and music in Leipzig. From Johannes Weyrauch, his composition teacher, the student received vital inspiration for his later creative work. From 1960, Manfred Spiller served in the ministry for a decade and a half, first as a pastor, then as the head of a hospital run by nurses of a Protestant order. Since 1976 he has dedicated himself to composition, with an emphasis on ecclesiastical and chamber music as well as orchestral works. Since 1978 the composer has been living at Wolfenbuettel near Braunschweig. Manfred Spiller continues the linear, diatonically modal style of his teacher, Johannes Weyrauch; by including "softer structures", however, he pursues his individual idiom, which, altogether, is "moderately modern". Reviews emphasize "the accessibility" of his compositions showing "mastery of form" and "wealth of imagination","avoiding to produce hard and glassy, icy cold structures". His music, they say, is "warmly felt" and "inspired with great intellectual profundity"