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Franz Schmidt (December 22, 1874 – February
11, 1939) was an Austria|Austrian composer.

Schmidt was born in Bratislava (at that time
called Pressburg: now in Slovakia) on 22 December
1874. He briefly studied piano with Theodor
Leschetizky, with whom he clashed. He moved to
Vienna with his family in 1888, and studied at the
Conservatory there (composition with Robert Fuchs,
cello with Ferdinand Hellmesberger and theory with
Anton Bruckner ), graduating "with excellence" in
1896. He beat 13 other applicants in obtaining a
post as cellist with the Vienna Court Opera
Orchestra, with whom he played (often under the
direction of Mahler) until 1914. He was also in
demand as a chamber musician, playing in the
string quartet led by Arnold Schoenberg’s close
friend Oskar Adler, who also became Schmidt’s
doctor: Schmidt and Schoenberg maintained cordial
relations despite their vast differences in style.
In 1914 he took up a professorship (in piano) at
the State Academy of Music. In 1925 he became
Director of the Academy, and in 1927 Rector.
Schmidt's worsening health forced his retirement
from the Academy in early 1937. He died on 11
February 1939.

As a composer, Schmidt was slow to develop, but
his reputation, at least in Austria, saw a steady
growth from the late 1890s until his death in
1939. Schmidt worked mainly in large forms,
including four symphony|symphonies (1899, 1913,
1928 and 1933) and two operas: Notre Dame (1904-6)
and Fredigundis (1916-21). He also composed two
string quartets (1925, 1929), a piano quintet
(1926) and two quintets for clarinet, string trio
and piano (left hand) (1932, 1938); Concertante
Variations on a Theme of Ludwig van
Beethoven|Beethoven for piano (left hand) and
orchestra (1923); a piano concerto (1934);
Variations on a Hussar's Song for orchestra
(1930); a quantity of important organ
(music)|organ music, including the Prelude and
Fugue in E flat (1924), the Toccata (1924), the
Chaconne (1925, orchestrated 1931) and the Prelude
and Fugue in C (1927). His crowning achievement
was the oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The
Book with Seven Seals)(1935-37), a setting of the
Book of Revelation although the Intermezzo from
Notre Dame is better known.

In his music, Schmidt continued to develop the
Viennese classic-romantic traditions he inherited
from Schubert, Brahms and his own master,
Bruckner. He also takes forward the exotic
‘gypsy’ style of Liszt and Brahms. His works
are monumental in form and firmly tonal in
language, though quite often innovative in their
designs and clearly open to some of the new
developments in musical syntax initiated by Mahler
and Schoenberg.

The later stages of Schmidt’s life were shadowed
by tragedy. He was plagued by numerous serious
illnesses, by the death of his beloved daughter,
and by the collapse of his first marriage (his
wife was confined to a mental hospital and later
eliminated under the Nazi euthanasia laws).
Schmidt himself experienced a spiritual and
physical breakdown after these events, but
achieved an artistic revival and solution to this
crisis in his Fourth Symphony of 1933 and,
especially, his oratorio. It seems, however, that
like many of his contemporaries Schmidt was an
enthusiast for the cause of a ‘Greater
Germany’ and failed to understand the dangers
inherent in the rise of Hitler. He was cynically
lauded by the Nazis and at the triumphant premiere
of his oratorio, shortly after the Anschluss, he
was seen to give the Nazi salute. His last,
unfinished work was a cantata honouring the new
order. These facts long placed his posthumous
reputation under a cloud; yet his lifelong friend
and colleague Oskar Adler, who fled the Nazis in
1938, wrote afterwards that Schmidt was never a
Nazi and never anti-semitic but simply
extraordinarily naïve about politics. Hans Keller
proffered similar endorsement. Most of his
principal musical friends were Jews, and they
benefited from his generosity. It might also be
said that, whatever his personal naïvety in these
matters, Schmidt’s music was realistic, and
prophetic: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln is now seen
to foretell, in the most powerful terms, the
disasters that were shortly to be visited upon
Europe in the Second World War. Here his invention
rises to a sustained pitch of genius: the work may
be seen as the last majestic representative of the
great Austro-German oratorio tradition stretching
back through Brahms and Bruckner to the masses of
Haydn and Bach and the oratorios of Handel. It
owes much, too, to such choral symphonies as
Mahler’s Eighth and Beethoven’s Ninth.

Schmidt is generally, if erroneously, regarded as
a conservative composer, but the rhythmic subtlety
and harmony|harmonic complexity of much of his
music belie this. His music is modern without
being modernist, combining a reverence for the
great Austro-German lineage of composers with very
personal innovations in harmony and orchestration.
The considerable technical accomplishment of his
music ought to compel respect, but he seems to
have fallen between two stools: his works are too
complex for the conservatively-minded, yet too
obviously traditional for the avant-garde (they
are also notoriously difficult to perform). Since
the 1970s his music has enjoyed a modest revival
which looks set to continue as it is rediscovered
and re-evaluated.

== References ==
*Thomas Bernard Corfield - Franz Schmidt
(1874-1939) - A Discussion of His Style With
Particular Reference to the Four Symphonies and
'Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (Garland Publishing,
New York, 1989)
*Harold Truscott - The Music of Franz Schmidt - 1:
The Orchestral Music (Toccata Press, London, 1984)