Florent Schmitt

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Florent Schmitt (September 28 1870, Blamont, Meurthe et Moselle – August 17 1958 Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French composer. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1889, studying under Albert Lavignac, Pierre Dubois, Jules Massenet, and Gabriel Fauré. In 1900 Schmitt won the Prix de Rome on his fourth attempt.

Schmitt wrote 138 works with opus numbers. He composed examples of most of the major forms of music except for opera. Today his most famous pieces are La tragédie de Salome and Psalm XLVII. The especially fine Piano Quintet in B minor, written in 1908, helped establish his reputation. Other works include a violin sonata (Sonate Libre), a late string quartet, a saxophone quartet, Dionysiaques for wind band, and two symphonies. He was part of the group known as the Apaches. His own style, recognizably impressionistic, owed something to the example of Claude Debussy, though it had distinct traces of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss also. From 1929 to 1939 he worked as a music critic for Le Temps, in which role he created considerable controversy, not least for his indiscreet habit of shouting out verdicts from his seat in the hall; the music publisher Huegel went so far as to call him "an irresponsible lunatic". In 1952 he became a member of the Legion of Honor.

Having been one of the most often performed of French composers in the period between the two world wars, he afterwards fell into comparative obscurity, although he continued writing music till the end. He became the subject of attacks – both in his old age and posthumously – over his pro-German sympathies during the 1930s, and over his willingness to work (as indeed a great many other eminent French musicians did) for the Vichy government later on. But the 1990s witnessed a small-scale revival of his output, and an increased coverage of it on record.