Servais, François (Franz Matheiu)

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Servais, François (Franz Matheiu)

Servais, François (Franz Matheiu), French composer and conductor; b. St. Petersburg, c. 1847; d. Asnieres, near Paris, Jan. 14, 1901. It was claimed for him that he was an illegitimate son of Liszt and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, but nothing in her voluminous correspondence with Liszt indicates that she was an expectant mother. However it might be, he was adopted by (Adrien-) François Servais and assumed his name. He studied cello with Kufferath at the Brussels Cons., and won the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1873 with the cantata La mort du Tasse. He founded the Concerts d’Hiver in Brussels. Servais was a champion of Wagner, several of whose operas he introduced to Brussels. He himself wrote an opera, L’Apollonide, later titled Ion (Karlsruhe, 1899).

Bibliography

E. Michotte, Au souvenir de F. S. (Paris, 1907).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire