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Read on to discover all about Franz Schmidt, a talented composer marred by his association with the Nazis…<\/strong><\/p> Although highly regarded in his native Austria as one of the last great composers of the late-Romantic era, Franz Schmidt\u2019s substantial achievements have been recognised only fitfully elsewhere. There are various explanations for this neglect. His reluctance to self-promote his music as aggressively as some of his contemporaries doubtless counted against him, as perhaps did his failure to secure the imprimatur of influential performers who could have helped to make his works better-known abroad. But more uncomfortably, his long-term reputation has inevitably been tarnished by an ill-fated willingness, towards the end of his life, to allow his music to be appropriated by the Nazis.\u00a0<\/p> In his final year, Schmidt regrettably accepted an official commission for a choral work entitled Deutsche Auferstehung <\/em>(German Resurrection) featuring a text celebrating the 1938 Anschluss<\/em> (the Nazi incorporation of Austria into Greater Germany) \u2013 the work is rounded off with a shouted \u2018Sieg Heil!\u2019.<\/p> Though, like many Austrians, Schmidt had sincerely supported this political objective ever since the end of World War I, he entirely repudiated Nazi anti-Semitism and continued to maintain close friendships with Jews.<\/p> What\u2019s more, in 1943 his first wife, Karoline Perssin, would be euthanised by the Nazi regime on account of her mental illness. Nonetheless, although Deutsche Auferstehung <\/em>remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1939 and received only one performance after the score had been completed by one of his pupils, its mere existence did irreparable harm to Schmidt\u2019s reputation following the end of the Second World War.<\/p> But arguably the most important factor that prevented Schmidt from establishing a more secure place on the musical map relates to the turbulent environment he faced during his lifetime. In the Vienna of the early-20th century, Schmidt\u2019s music was competing for attention with the works of a host of hugely important Austro-German composers that included Richard Strauss<\/a><\/strong>, Mahler<\/a><\/strong>, Reger<\/a><\/strong>, Schreker, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg<\/a><\/strong> and the precociously gifted Korngold<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p> Then, following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, he faced a rather different landscape, dominated on the one hand by radical composers from independent Eastern European countries (Bart\u00f3k<\/a><\/strong>, Szymanowski, Enescu<\/a><\/strong>, Jan\u00e1\u010dek<\/a><\/strong> and Martin\u016f<\/a><\/strong>), and on the other by neo-classical and modernist Austro-German figures, including members of the Second Viennese School, Hindemith<\/a><\/strong> and Kurt Weill<\/a><\/strong>. Although by no means unresponsive to the changes in style pioneered by some of these, his dogged adherence to long-standing musical principles branded him, perhaps unfairly, as being irredeemably old-fashioned.<\/p> Born in December 1874 into a family of mixed German and Hungarian origin in the formerly Hungarian city of Pozsony (or Pressburg \u2013 today the Slovakian capital, Bratislava), Schmidt demonstrated remarkable musical gifts from a very early age. At 14, he left his birthplace, moving permanently to Vienna and living with relatives after his father was imprisoned for defrauding the Post Office.<\/p> He enrolled at the Vienna Conservatoire, where he excelled as a solo pianist, later securing the admiration of the great Leopold Godowsky, who regarded him as the only contemporary performer he would acknowledge as a serious rival. Schmidt was also a fine organist, an instrument for which he composed several substantial works. Even more remarkably, after mastering the violin<\/a><\/strong>, he turned his attention to playing the cello<\/a><\/strong> and gained a sufficiently fine technique to join the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, where he played for many years under Gustav Mahler. Such an experience was to prove invaluable in enabling him to write so effectively for a large symphony orchestra.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p> Despite his astonishing versatility as an instrumentalist, his ultimate ambition was to become a composer. A student of Robert Fuchs at the Conservatoire, more significantly he briefly attended a counterpoint class given by a rather frail Bruckner<\/a><\/strong>, and a burgeoning contrapuntal mastery worthy of his great predecessor is in evidence in the finale to his First Symphony, composed in his mid-twenties. This youthful, high-spirited work was awarded the coveted Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Beethoven Prize in 1900 and performed with some success by the Vienna Philharmonic two years later. \u00a0<\/p> Who was Franz Schmidt?<\/h2>
Franz Schmidt: the Nazi connection<\/h2>
An unfortunate commission…<\/h3>
Early support for the Nazis, but later repudiation of the regime<\/h3>
Franz Schmidt: dismissed for being old-fashioned<\/h2>
When was Franz Schmidt born?<\/h2>
A musical prodigy and astonishingly versatile instrumentalist<\/h2>
Composing ambitions and early setbacks<\/h2>