Franz Schmidt’s reputation has waned significantly in the decades since his 1939 death, due both to his relatively conservative and unfashionable post-Romantic style and to the Nazis’ championing of his work. Born in Austria-Hungary in 1874, Schmidt grew up in a musical family and attended conservatory in Vienna. During Schmidt’s early years in the city, his mentors included two of his clearest stylistic progenitors: Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. Schmidt’s devotion to tonality and well-tested symphonic forms placed him most clearly in the Bruckner lineage. His most enduring works include 1933’s lyrical and motivically complex Symphony No. 4, intended as an elegy for his daughter, who died shortly after giving birth, and his stormy 1938 oratorio, The Book with Seven Seals, inspired by the Book of Revelation. The latter was celebrated as an idiomatic work of Germanic music by the Third Reich, and the Nazis endorsed Schmidt as a model composer of the newly annexed Austrian state. Schmidt passed away a year after the premiere, a symbol of the Nazi cause if not an avowed supporter.