Max Spicker was a German Jewish musician, composer and conductor. He was born in Königsberg

Königsberg

Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...

, Prussia. He studied with Louis Köhler

Louis Köhler

Christian Louis Heinrich Köhler was a German composer, conductor and piano teacher.Köhler was born in Braunschweig. He studied piano in Vienna under Carl Maria von Bocklet, Simon Sechter and Ignaz von Seyfried. As a conductor, he worked in Marienburg and Elbing...

 for 5 years, and then attended Leipzig Conservatory from 1877-9.

In 1882, he moved to New York, where he began conducting the "Beethoven Männerchor". He was Director of the Brooklyn Conservatory from 1888 to 1895, after which he was a teacher of harmony and counterpoint at the National Conservatory

National Conservatory of Music of America

The National Conservatory of Music of America was an institution for higher education in music founded in 1885 in New York City by Jeannette Meyers Thurber...

 in New York. He also served for 12 years as choir director of Temple Emmanuel on Fifth Ave.

He worked for G. Schirmer

G. Schirmer

G. Schirmer Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1861. It publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Italian Ricordi, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello,...

, in which position he edited the Anthology of Sacred Song and Operatic Anthology. Both became standard anthologies for young singers. He also revised the T. Tertius Noble

T. Tertius Noble

Thomas Tertius Noble was an English-born organist and composer, resident in the United States for the latter part of his career...

 edition of Handel's

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

 Messiah

Messiah (Handel)

Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...

for Schirmer, which remains in wide use.

He died October 15, 1912 in New York City.

Compositions

• Suite for orchestra
• incidental music to Schiller's
  Friedrich Schiller
  Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
  
   Demetrius
  Demetrius (play)
  Demetrius is an incomplete drama by the German playwright Friedrich Schiller based on the life of Demetrius, briefly Russian czar between 1604 and 1605. It is a reflection on the individual's responsibility in history and on the rule of Napoleon...
  
  
• cantata Der Pilot for bar. solo, male chorus and orchestra.
• choral compositions
• Many songs

Editions

• Aus aller Herren Länder (a collection of folk songs arranged for male choir)
• Anthology of Sacred Song (G. Schirmer)
• Operatic Anthology (G. Schirmer)
• The Messiah (G. Schirmer)
• Synagogal Services