Franz Schmidt - Musical Works

Musical Works

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. 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. Although Schmidt did not write a lot of chamber music, what he did write, in the opinion of such critics as Wilhelm Altmann, was important and of high quality. Although Schmidt's organ works may resemble others of the era in terms of length, complexity, and difficulty, they are forward-looking in being conceived for the smaller, clearer, classical-style instruments of the Orgelbewegung, which he advocated. Schmidt worked mainly in large forms, including four symphonies (1899, 1913, 1928 and 1933) and two operas: Notre Dame (1904-6) and Fredigundis (1916–21). A CD recording of Notre Dame has been available for many years, starring Dame Gwyneth Jones and James King.