Franz Schmidt
Compositeur
Franz Schmidt was born in the same year as Arnold Schoenberg – but as a traditionalist, he held opposing aesthetic views. Despite his conservative attitude, Schmidt, a late Romantic, found original solutions to the symphonic form, especially in his Fourth Symphony. In his string quartets, he explored modern harmonies and contemporary compositional techniques.
Franz Schmidt was born in Bratislava in 1874 and grew up bilingually in an Austro-Hungarian family. He received his first piano lessons from his mother before going on to study under the then well-known pianists Rudolf Mader and Norbert Burger as well as the organist Felizian Josef Moczik. Archduchess Isabella encouraged the piano prodigy and invited Schmidt to give concerts at the Palais Grassalkovich, today the presidential residence of the Slovak Republic. However, an audition with Theodor Leschetizky ended in a deeply humiliating experience, after which Schmidt wanted to give up playing the piano completely. After the family moved to Vienna, Schmidt studied cello under Ferdinand Hellmesberger and music theory and composition under Robert Fuchs, whose students also included Gustav Mahler, Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, at the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Schmidt graduated with honours in 1896 and became a cellist in the orchestra of the Vienna Hofoper. This was the beginning of the “galley years”, as Schmidt called his time at the Vienna Hofoper and in the Vienna Philharmonic: a time of professional overwork that led to Schmidt leaving behind only a rather modest oeuvre. In addition to four symphonies, he wrote two operas, an oratorio and chamber music, plus several piano and organ works. He remained a member of the orchestra until 1914. He then took up a piano professorship at the Wiener Musikakademie, where he taught theory and composition from 1920. In 1927, he was appointed rector of the Akademie, which had become the Hochschule für Musik. Schmidt was well respected, as evidenced by his being awarded the Imperial Austrian Order of Franz Joseph and an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna on his 60th birthday. In the last year of his life, the composer, who was already terminally ill, witnessed the “Anschluss” of Austria to the German Reich, which he had voted in favour of in the referendum in April 1938. Franz Schmidt died on 11 February 1939.
