Hans Rott was an Austrian composer known for his Symphony in E major. He had a considerable influence on his friend Gustav Mahler, who labeled Rott “the founder of the new symphony.” Rott was born in Vienna in 1858, and his parents both worked in the Viennese court theater. His tragically short life was riddled with loss, poverty, and rejection. When he was 14 years old his mother passed away, and just a few years later in 1874, his father was the victim of a stage mishap that left him crippled and unable to work; he died in 1876. Rott’s formal music education began in 1874 when he entered the Vienna Conservatory. Here he studied the organ with Bruckner, and piano and composition. After Rott’s father passed, Bruckner and the other professors at the conservatory agreed to waive his tuition fees, knowing that he was having financial difficulties. By 1878 Rott had finished his schooling at the conservatory, and he was working at the Piarist church in Vienna as the organist. While studying at the conservatory, Rott started working on his Symphony in E major, and in 1880 he showed it to both Johannes Brahms and Hans Richter hoping that they would perform it. Brahms harshly refused, and while Richter offered some encouragement, he also refused to perform the new composition. This unfortunate series of events was too much for Rott to bear, and he was committed to the Provincial Lunatic Asylum of Lower Austria for “hallucinatory insanity” in 1881, where he eventually died of tuberculosis in 1884 at 25 years old. At the asylum, Rott continued to compose but he discarded most of it, calling it “worthless.” In addition to the symphony, he also completed several orchestral pieces, songs, a string quartet, and a string quintet. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi