Biography
Franz Schmidt was born in Pressburg (Bratislava) in 1874 and received his first music lessons from his mother before studying from 1890 at the Vienna Conservatory, briefly under Anton Bruckner as well as under Robert Fuchs and Ferdinand Hellmesberger. From 1896 to 1911 he played cello in the Vienna Philharmonic, after which he taught cello, piano and composition at the Conservatory and the Academy of Music, eventually serving as the institution's rector until 1933. His opera "Notre Dame" (premiered 1914 at the Vienna Court Opera) brought him his breakthrough as a composer after earlier rejections by Gustav Mahler and Felix Weingartner. Schmidt died in 1939 in Perchtoldsdorf near Vienna; his grave in Vienna's Central Cemetery bears a monument donated by the Philharmonic.
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