German music historian and editor.

Career Summary

Ernst Fritz Schmid studied biology at the universities of Tübingen and Göttingen 1922‒24, turning thereafter to the study of music at the State Academy for Music in Munich, followed by a period as a viola player with the Düsseldorf City Symphony Orchestra. He subsequently studied musicology with Willibald Gurlitt at the University of Freiburg, with Wilhelm Fischer, Robert Haas, Alfred Orel and Robert Lach at the University of Vienna, and at Tübingen University, taking his doctorate at the latter with a dissertation Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und seine Kammermusik in 1929 (published by Bärenreiter in 1931).

He worked as an independent musician and scholar between 1929 and 1934, in which year he completed his habilitation at the University of Graz and took up a private lectureship there. In 1935 he was appointed to a chair in musicology at the University of Tübingen. At that institution, he founded the Swabian Music Archive. He published books on Haydn, Mozart, and aspects of Swabian music history. In 1953, he was made general editor of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe.

Schmid and Schenker

In 1930, Schenker and Anthony van Hoboken initiated a plan to publish a complete edition of the works of C. P. E. Bach over a period ten years under the auspices of the Photogram Archive at the Austrian National Library. In June 1930 Ernst Fritz Schmid was engaged as editorial assistant for the project, and was said already to have "done much preparatory work" for it. Schmid was also put in charge of the Photogram Archive itself when its, Robert Haas, was unavailable. However, the Bach edition was aborted in December 1930.

Schenker kept in touch with Schmid to within three months of his death, and on July 27, 1932 had a copy of his Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln , published two days earlier. In a diary entry for June 10, 1933, Schmid is mentioned as "the latest candidate for a regular stipend," though it is unclear for what. Schmid also retained friendly relations with Hoboken, and is mentioned in Hoboken-Schenker correspondence. The final communication from Schmid informs Schenker of his appointment as a private lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Graz.

Correspondence

One letter from Schmid to Schenker, dated 1932, survives as OJ 14/13. In addition, one letter from Oswald Jonas to Schmid dated 1955 and one from Schmid to Jonas of the same year survive as OJ 36/56 and OJ 36/221.

Source

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