During his lifetime, Louis Spohr was considered to be an iconic musical figure of the era: he was hailed as a leading composer, worthy of the stature of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and was also a celebrated and accomplished violinist and conductor. Furthermore, he was a remarkable innovator who was responsible for many new concepts that today's musicians take for granted – he invented the chinrest, was one of the first conductors to use a baton, and introduced rehearsal numbers to scores. This pioneering spirit is reflected in Spohr's works, which, although they are rooted in the Classical tradition, also anticipate the formal and harmonic experimentation and programmatic writing associated with Romanticism.