From 1926 to 1930 he studied composition in Vienna with Paul Amadeus Pisk and afterwards began to attract international attention with works which were performed at the ISCM Festivals or awarded prizes.
Fearing Nazi persecution Spinner emigrated to England in 1939 and spent the war years in Yorkshire, working part of the time as a lathe operator in a locomotive factory in Bradford.
[1] From 1926 to his death in London in 1980 Spinner steadily and painstakingly built up an individual body of work,[4] adapting and renewing classical forms along the lines (but eventually, much further) that had been indicated by his teacher Webern.
[6] Malcolm Hayes highlighted the unusual scoring of the Wind Sonata (D clarinet, oboe, horn and bassoon), and its evocation of the sound world of Viennese expressionism, but combined with the articulation and clarity more associated with late Stravinsky.
In his later music, beginning with the sonatina for piano, the expressive pressure applied to strict motivic working results in a wholly individual style of almost explosive force.