Florizel von Reuter

Florizel von Reuter (21 January 1890 – 10 May 1985) was an American-born violinist and composer, a child prodigy who went on to an adult career, mainly in Germany, as distinguished soloist and teacher of violin.

During the 1920s his mother, Grace Reuter, developed apparent psychic powers by receiving supposed spirit messages through automatic writing.

Florizel became closely involved with this and acted as a medium and as recorder of the findings, which were first described in The Psychic Experiences of a Musician (in Search of Truth) (1928)[4] — with a foreword by writer Arthur Conan Doyle — and in its sequel The Consoling Angel (1930).

[citation needed] He contributed an essay on "Nature Spirits" to the 1928 revised edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Coming of the Fairies, p. 156–157, and was associated with Baron von Schrenck-Notzing in a series of experiments with the Schneider brothers.

[5] Other messages followed claiming to be from Giuseppe Tartini, Pietro Locatelli, Karol Lipiński, Pierre Baillot, Charles Auguste de Bériot, Henri Vieuxtemps, Joseph Joachim (who was also supposed to have sent etheric messages to his relatives Jelly d'Arányi and Adila Fachiri[6]), Ferdinand Hérold, Édouard Lalo, Max Reger, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Edvard Grieg.

He made various solo recordings for Polydor Records, and also chamber ensemble works (in 1935–1936) with Elly Ney, Max Strub (violin), Walter Trampler (viola), Ludwig Hoelscher (cello), (the second manifestation of the Strub String Quartet[9]) and under the direction of Willem van Hoogstraten, husband of Elly Ney.

It was in this period, at Munich, that he taught the young Walter Barylli, whom (aged 15) he invited into his own home as a resident guest so that he could afford to receive violin instruction.