Contemporary to Kornauth and Weigl, Franz Mittler was born in Vienna, where he studied piano with Theodor Leschetizky and counted Richard Heuberger, Josef Labor and Carl Prohaska among his composition teachers.

He became a piano accompanist to singers and, after emigrating to the United States in 1938, joined the First Piano Quartet, well known to American radio, television, concert and record audiences. He was also an esteemed author of spoonerisms and limericks, both in German and English. Some of his compositions written before his move to the US are lost; others were reworked, including the Sérénade-Caprice.

Mauro Piccinini