Franz Bornschein

Franz Carl Bornschein (February 10, 1879 – June 8, 1948) was an American composer, teacher, and music critic based in Baltimore.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. He later became a professor there. He also served for a time as the music critic of the Baltimore Evening Sun. He also taught violin at Baltimore's Western High School. Among his students was Ruth Krauss.

His wife, Hazel Knox, was a singer who taught at Peabody.

Much of Bornschein's output is orchestral, including a number of suites as well as a violin concerto; he also wrote a good deal of chamber music, some songs, and some works for choir which won a handful of prizes. In larger forms, he wrote cantatas, oratorios, and operettas. Some of his music was published under the pseudonym Frank Fairfield.

Bornschein died in 1948; his papers are held at the library of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore.

Selected compositions

Joy, choral setting of Walt Whitman's The Mystic Trumpeter, joint winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs' 1943 choral composition contest. Emperor and the Nightingale, cantata Independence Bell, cantata King Nutcracker, a fantasy for chorus of women's voices and ballet, based on Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite. Seasons, a choral adaptation of Schubert Tuscan Cypress, a cantata The French Clock Six French Folk Songs, in an arrangement for youth string orchestra and three-part treble voices.