By Seth Colter Walls [Newsweek, 15 March 2010]
The story of Franz Schreker flips classical music’s greatest clichÈ on its head. Instead of toiling in obscurity during his life and gaining fame only after death, the Austrian was a star as a young composer—before he was all but erased from history. In 1919, the influential critic Paul Bekker wrote that Schreker was the only operatic author with a claim to Wagner’s exalted legacy.